551 • • • • • • • Sex, gender and sexuality Floretta Boonzaier & Cheryl de la Rey CHAPTER 19 CHAPTER OBJECTIVES After studying this chapter you should be able to: define some key concepts in the psychology of gender differentiate between a variety of different sexual orientations identify the ways in which psychology has approached gender/sex differences construct accounts of gender development in childhood by discussing the basic views of each theory explain the differences between an essentialist and a social constructionist approach to gender explain how gender inequality is often expressed in violence against women describe the rise of feminism and the corresponding emergence of a new understanding of masculinity. CASE STUDY Nosipho saw herself as a feminist because she believed in the fair and equal treatment of women and girls. She had grown up in quite a traditional household where, even though her father had treated her mother with respect, if ever there was any difference of opinion, her father’s decision was final. Fortunately, her father was a kind and gentle man so this had not been the problem it might have been. But Nosipho had seen many families where the father bullied his wife, and the children too. Everyone in her community knew of homes where the wife was being beaten by her husband – even if they didn’t say it openly. When Nosipho and her mother discussed these kinds of things, they both felt angry on behalf of the women, but they also felt helpless to do anything about it. It seemed to Nosipho that many of the things that went wrong in families had to do with the way that men and women related to each other. Nosipho had often tried to make sense of the problems she saw between men and women. Why did men seem so aggressive and why did women so often land up being treated badly? Nosipho had found herself sometimes wondering about how different men and women seemed from one another and what had made them that way. Were they just born different or did their society and culture force them into these gender roles? She also wondered if these problems could ever change; perhaps some of them already had? Sometimes, for example, it seemed to Nosipho that the men in her generation were less afraid of showing their softer feelings and that the women were often more assertive than their mothers had been. Had others observed these improvements? And what other changes needed to be made? Introduction In order to address the kinds of questions Nosipho asks, we need to examine some of the concepts and theories scholars have developed to understand gender. We begin by defining sex, gender, sexuality and sexual orientation. We review the main psychological theories that account for gender/sex differences. Through our discussion of biological accounts, psychoanalytic theory, social learning theory, cognitive developmental approaches, gender schema theory and social , we explore the key concepts in the study of gender. These include the constructionism performance of gender (or doing gender), gender stereotypes, socialisation, gender constancy and . In the second part of the chapter, we focus on gender in society by highlighting some of androgyny Copyright @ 2016. Oxford University Press Southern Africa. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. EBSCO : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 3/27/2019 8:54 AM via UNIVERSITY OF KWAZULU NATAL AN: 1193911 ; Townsend, Loraine, O'Neill, Vivien, Swartz, Leslie, De la Rey, Cheryl, Duncan, Norman.; Psychology: An Introduction Account: s7246381.uknms.ehost