Gender

Gender: A Learned Behaviour

Gender: The social-cultural dimension.

1. There are gender ideals
2. There are gender challenges
3. There are gender ranges (continuum's)
4. Some people find the ideals and continuum's oppressive.

In many ways gender ideals are completely subjective, but they are mainly a way that a society views the perfection femininity and masculinity. Some people think that a woman should be a classic beauty like Audrey Hepburn, or a curvey women with sex appeal like Marilyn Monroe, or even a women that challenges the boundries and are more athletic like Angelina Jolie. There are a wide range of ideas of femininty, but in my views the same is not true for masculinity. Masculinity throughout time has shown me that the ideas around being a man has not changed, men with masculine attrubutes are strong, fit, are scene as providers, and have courage. I may be wearing rose colored glasses because I am a female, but in many cases, the images of men are in this view like Chuck Norris.

Sex: A biological feature (aspect of gender) Male or Female Genitalia

Gender Roles: Expectations of thinking, acting and feeling. (cognition, behaviour, and affect)

Gender Development: Theories of gender typing, and how we learn to fulfill gender roles.

Biological view: Rooted in Physiology, specifically Neurobiology. Source of where gender comes from in the brain. Determining mechanisms that make someone male of female. But biology is not destiny, especially for complex attitudes.
Social Learning: Albert Bandura suggests that how we learn gender is said to be by imitating and identifying roles models. Mom and Dad are really influential when mirroring gender. Many reacting to what they see, and how others react to those role models. * Observation and Modelling.
Cognitive Developmental: Lawerence Kholberg, who is influential in Moral Development, is also influential in Gender Development. This idea is that the individual learns gender concepts, interprets the experience and processes the information. The individual will learn gender ideas over time the ideas will become permanent. Gender permanence in the individuals mind. *Even though the child looks different they can distinguish what they are, or what other people are.
Gender Schema Theory: This is a information processing approach. The child learns cultural frameworks of gender from the community. Overtime there might be a overlap. When individuals have the same views of gender as society they tend to have a greater self esteem and more success, while if your ideas do not match society even if society does not know your views these people have a lower self esteem, and form a disconnection from society.

Issues

Stereotypes: Broad categories of expected behaviours. People might have lower expectations, based on what people think of you.

Gender Bias: The separation of gender in a way which prefers one sex over the other. In education some teachers give more time for males to answer questions then females.

Sexual Orientation: Is the pattern of emotional, romantic, or sexual attraction to a specific gender or both. In a educational setting some people might have issues with what is not the norm, and may discriminate based on a persons identity.