13-5 How does the meaning of gender differ from the meaning of sex?

We humans share an irresistible urge to organize our worlds into simple categories. Among the ways we classify people—as tall or short, younger or older, smart or dull—one stands out. Immediately after your birth (or perhaps even before), everyone wanted to know, “Boy or girl?” Your parents may have offered clues with pink or blue clothing. The simple answer described your sex, your biological status, defined by your chromosomes and anatomy. For most people, those biological traits help define their gender, their culture’s expectations about what it means to be male or female.

Our gender is the product of the interplay among our biological dispositions, our developmental experiences, and our current situations (Eagly & Wood, 2013). Before we consider that interplay in more detail, let’s take a closer look at some ways that males and females are both similar and different.

13-6 What are some ways in which males and females tend to be alike and to differ?

Whether male or female, each of us receives 23 chromosomes from our mother and 23 from our father. Of those 46 chromosomes, 45 are unisex. Our similar biology helped our evolutionary ancestors face similar adaptive challenges. Both men and women needed to survive, reproduce, and avoid predators, and so today we are in most ways alike. Tell me whether you are male or female and you give me no clues to your vocabulary, happiness, or ability to see, hear, learn, and remember. Women and men, on average, have comparable creativity and intelligence and feel the same emotions and longings. Our “opposite” sex is, in reality, our very similar sex.

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But in some areas, males and females do differ, and differences command attention. Some much talked-about differences (like the difference in self-esteem shown in FIGURE 13.4) are actually quite modest. Other differences are more striking. The average woman enters puberty about a year earlier than the average man, and her life span is 5 years longer. She expresses emotions more freely, can detect fainter odors, and receives offers of help more often. She also has twice the risk of developing depression and anxiety and 10 times the risk of developing an eating disorder. Yet the average man is 4 times more likely to die by suicide or to develop an alcohol use disorder. His “more likely” list includes autism spectrum disorder, color-blindness, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). And as an adult, he is more at risk for antisocial personality disorder. Male or female, each has its own share of risks.

Let’s take a closer look at three areas—aggression, social power, and social connectedness—in which the average male and female differ.

AggressionTo a psychologist, aggression is any physical or verbal behavior intended to hurt someone physically or emotionally. Think of some aggressive people you have heard about. Are most of them men? Men generally admit to more aggression. They also commit more extreme physical violence (Bushman & Huesmann, 2010). In romantic relationships between men and women, minor acts of physical aggression, such as slaps, are roughly equal—but extremely violent acts are mostly committed by men (Archer, 2000; Johnson, 2008).

Laboratory experiments have demonstrated gender differences in aggression. Men have been more willing to blast people with what they believed was intense and prolonged noise (Bushman et al., 2007). And outside the laboratory, men—worldwide—commit more violent crime (Antonaccio et al., 2011; Caddick & Porter, 2012; Frisell et al., 2012). They also take the lead in hunting, fighting, warring, and supporting war (Liddle et al., 2012; Wood & Eagly, 2002, 2007).

Here’s another question: Think of examples of people harming others by passing along hurtful gossip, or by shutting someone out of a social group or situation. Were most of those people men? Perhaps not. Those behaviors are acts of relational aggression, and women are slightly more likely than men to commit them (Archer, 2004, 2007, 2009).

Social PowerImagine walking into a job interview. You sit down and peer across the table at your two interviewers. The unsmiling person on the left oozes self-confidence and independence and maintains steady eye contact with you. The person on the right gives you a warm, welcoming smile but makes less eye contact and seems to expect the other interviewer to take the lead.

Which interviewer is male?

If you said the person on the left, you’re not alone. Around the world, from Nigeria to New Zealand, people have perceived gender differences in power (Williams & Best, 1990). Indeed, in most societies men do place more importance on power and achievement and are socially dominant (Schwartz & Rubel-Lifschitz, 2009):

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Men and women also lead differently. Men tend to be more directive, telling people what they want and how to achieve it. Women tend to be more democratic, more welcoming of others’ input in decision making (Eagly & Carli, 2007; van Engen & Willemsen, 2004). When interacting, men have been more likely to offer opinions, women to express support (Aries, 1987; Wood, 1987). In everyday behavior, men tend to act as powerful people often do: talking assertively, interrupting, initiating touches, and staring. And they smile and apologize less (Leaper & Ayres, 2007; Major et al., 1990; Schumann & Ross, 2010). Such behaviors help sustain men’s greater social power.

Social ConnectednessWhether male or female, we all have a need to belong, though we may satisfy this need in different ways (Baumeister, 2010). Males tend to be independent. Even as children, males typically form large play groups. Boys’ games brim with activity and competition, with little intimate discussion (Rose & Rudolph, 2006). As adults, men enjoy doing activities side by side, and they tend to use conversation to communicate solutions (Tannen, 1990; Wright, 1989). When asked a difficult question—“Do you have any idea why the sky is blue?”—men are more likely than women to hazard answers than to admit they don’t know, a phenomenon researchers have called the male answer syndrome (Giuliano et al., 1998).

Females tend to be more interdependent. In childhood, girls usually play in small groups, often with one friend. They compete less and imitate social relationships more (Maccoby, 1990; Roberts, 1991). Teen girls spend more time with friends and less time alone (Wong & Csikszentmihalyi, 1991). In late adolescence, they spend more time on social-networking Internet sites (Pryor et al., 2007, 2011). As adults, women take more pleasure in talking face to face, and they tend to use conversation more to explore relationships.

Brain scans suggest that women’s brains are better wired to improve social relationships, and men’s brains to connect perception with action (Ingalhalikar et al., 2013). The communication style gender difference is apparent even in electronic communication. In one New Zealand study of student e-mails, people correctly guessed two-thirds of the time whether the author was male or female (Thomson & Murachver, 2001). The gap appears in phone-based communications, too. How many texts does an American teen send and receive each day? Girls average 100, boys only 50 (Lenhart, 2012). In France, women have made 63 percent of phone calls and, when talking to a woman, stayed connected longer (7.2 minutes) than men did when talking to other men (4.6 minutes) (Smoreda & Licoppe, 2000).

Do such findings mean that women are just more talkative? No. In another study, researchers counted the number of words 396 college students spoke in an average day (Mehl et al., 2007). Not surprisingly, the participants’ talkativeness varied enor-mously—by 45,000 words between the most and least talkative. (How many words would you guess you speak a day?) Contrary to stereotypes of wordy women, both men and women averaged about 16,000 words daily.

The words we use may not peg women or men as more talkative, but those words do open windows on our interests. Worldwide, women’s interests and vocations tilt more toward people and less toward things (Eagly, 2009; Lippa, 2005, 2006, 2008). In one analysis of over 700 million words collected from Facebook messages, women used more family-related words, whereas men used more work-related words (Schwartz et al., 2013). More than a half-million people’s responses to various interest inventories reveal that “men prefer working with things and women prefer working with people” (Su et al., 2009). On entering American colleges, men are seven times more likely than women to express interest in computer science (Pryor et al., 2011).

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In the workplace, women are less often driven by money and status and more apt to opt for reduced work hours (Pinker, 2008). In the home, they are five times more likely than men to claim primary responsibility for taking care of children (Time, 2009). Women’s emphasis on caring helps explain another interesting finding: Although 69 percent of people have said they have a close relationship with their father, 90 percent said they feel close to their mother (Hugick, 1989). When searching for understanding from someone who will share their worries and hurts, people usually turn to women. Both men and women have reported their friendships with women as more intimate, enjoyable, and nurturing (Kuttler et al., 1999; Rubin, 1985; Sapadin, 1988).

Bonds and feelings of support are even stronger among women than among men (Rossi & Rossi, 1993). Women’s ties—as mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts, and grandmothers—bind families together. As friends, women talk more often and more openly (Berndt, 1992; Dindia & Allen, 1992). “Perhaps because of [women’s] greater desire for intimacy,” reported Joyce Benenson and colleagues (2009), first-year college and university women are twice as likely as men to change roommates. How do they cope with their own stress? Compared with men, women are more likely to turn to others for support. They are said to tend and befriend (Tamres et al., 2002; Taylor, 2002).

As empowered people generally do, men value freedom and self-reliance, which may help explain why men of all ages, worldwide, are less religious and pray less (Benson, 1992; Stark, 2002). Men also dominate the ranks of professional skeptics. All 10 winners and 14 runners-up on the Skeptical Inquirer list of outstanding twentieth-century rationalist skeptics were men. In one Skeptics Society survey, nearly 4 in 5 respondents were men (Shermer, 1999). And in the Science and the Paranormal section of the 2010 Prometheus Books catalog (from the leading publisher of skepticism), one could find 98 male and 4 female authors. (Women are far more likely to author books on spirituality.)

The gender gap in both social connectedness and power peaks in late adolescence and early adulthood—the prime years for dating and mating. Teenage girls become less assertive and more flirtatious, and boys appear more dominant and less expressive. Gender differences in attitudes and behavior often peak after the birth of a first child. Mothers especially may become more traditional (Ferriman et al., 2009; Katz-Wise et al., 2010). By age 50, most parent-related gender differences subside. Men become less domineering and more empathic, and women—especially those with paid employment—become more assertive and self-confident (Kasen et al., 2006; Maccoby, 1998).

So, although women and men are more alike than different, there are some behavior differences between the average woman and man. Are such differences dictated by our biology? Shaped by our cultures and other experiences? Do we vary in the extent to which we are male or female? Read on.

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13-7 How do sex hormones influence prenatal and adolescent sexual development, and what is a disorder of sexual development?

Men and women employ similar solutions when faced with challenges: sweating to cool down, guzzling an energy drink or coffee to get going in the morning, or finding darkness and quiet to sleep. When looking for a mate, men and women also prize many of the same traits. They prefer having a mate who is “kind,” “honest,” and “intelligent.” But according to evolutionary psychologists, in mating-related domains, guys act like guys whether they’re chimpanzees or elephants, rural peasants or corporate presidents (Geary, 2010).

Biology does not dictate gender, but it can influence it in two ways:

These two sets of influences began to form you long before you were born, when your tiny body started developing in ways that determined your sex.

Prenatal Sexual DevelopmentSix weeks after you were conceived, you and someone of the other sex looked much the same. Then, as your genes kicked in, your biological sex—determined by your twenty-third pair of chromosomes (the two sex chromosomes)—became more apparent. Whether you are male or female, your mother’s contribution to that chromosome pair was an X chromosome. From your father, you received the one chromosome out of 46 that is not uni-sex—either another X chromosome, making you female, or a Y chromosome, making you male.

About seven weeks after conception, a single gene on the Y chromosome throws a master switch, which triggers the testes to develop and to produce testosterone, the principal male hormone that promotes development of male sex organs. (Females also have testosterone, but less of it.) The male’s greater testosterone output starts the development of external male sex organs at about the seventh week.

Later, during the fourth and fifth prenatal months, sex hormones bathe the fetal brain and influence its wiring. Different patterns for males and females develop under the influence of the male’s greater testosterone and the female’s ovarian hormones (Hines, 2004; Udry, 2000). Male-female differences emerge in brain areas with abundant sex hormone receptors (Cahill, 2005).

Adolescent Sexual DevelopmentA flood of hormones triggers another period of dramatic physical change during adolescence, when boys and girls enter puberty. In this two-year period of rapid sexual maturation, pronounced male-female differences occur. A variety of changes begin at about age 11 in girls and at about age 12 in boys, though the subtle beginnings of puberty, such as enlarging testes, appear earlier (Herman-Giddens et al., 2012). A year or two before the physical changes are visible, girls and boys often feel the first stirrings of attraction toward someone of the other or their own sex (McClintock & Herdt, 1996).

Girls’ slightly earlier entry into puberty can at first propel them to greater height than boys of the same age (FIGURE 13.5). But boys catch up when they begin puberty, and by age 14, they are usually taller than girls. During these growth spurts, the primary sex characteristics—the reproductive organs and external genitalia—develop dramatically. So do the secondary sex characteristics. Girls develop breasts and larger hips. Boys’ facial hair begins growing and their voices deepen. Pubic and underarm hair emerges in both girls and boys (FIGURE 13.6).

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For boys, puberty’s landmark is the first ejaculation, which often occurs first during sleep (as a “wet dream”). This event, called spermarche (sper-MAR-key), usually happens by about age 14.

In girls, the landmark is the first menstrual period (menarche—meh-NAR-key), usually within a year of age 12½ (Anderson et al., 2003). Early menarche is more likely following stresses related to father absence, sexual abuse, insecure attachments, or a history of a mother’s smoking during pregnancy (DelPriore & Hill, 2013; Rickard et al., 2014; Shrestha et al., 2011). In various countries, girls are developing breasts earlier (sometimes before age 10) and reaching puberty earlier than in the past. Suspected triggers include increased body fat, diets filled with hormone-mimicking chemicals, and possibly greater stress due to family disruption (Biro et al., 2010, 2012; Herman-Giddens, 2012).

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Girls prepared for menarche usually experience it positively (Chang et al., 2009). Most women recall their first menstrual period with mixed emotions—pride, excitement, embarrassment, and apprehension (Greif & Ulman, 1982; Woods et al., 1983). Men report mostly positive emotional reactions to spermarche (Fuller & Downs, 1990).

Sexual Development VariationsSometimes nature blurs the biological line between males and females. When a fetus is exposed to unusual levels of sex hormones, or is especially sensitive to those hormones, the individual may develop a disorder of sexual development, with chromosomes or anatomy not typically male or female. A genetic male may be born with normal male hormones and testes but no penis or a very small one.

In the past,medical professionals often recommended sex reassignment surgery to create an unambiguous identity for some children with this condition. One study reviewed 14 cases of boys who had undergone early surgery and been raised as girls. Of those cases, 6 had later declared themselves male, 5 were living as females, and 3 reported an unclear male or female identity (Reiner & Gearhart, 2004).

Sex-reassignment surgery can create confusion and distress among those not born with a disorder of sexual development. In one famous case, a little boy lost his penis during a botched circumcision. His parents followed a psychiatrist’s advice to raise him as a girl rather than as a damaged boy. Alas, “Brenda” Reimer was not like most other girls. “She” didn’t like dolls. She tore her dresses with rough-and-tumble play. At puberty she wanted no part of kissing boys. Finally, Brenda’s parents explained what had happened, whereupon “Brenda” immediately rejected the assigned female identity. He cut his hair and chose a male name, David. He eventually married a woman and became a stepfather. And, sadly, he later committed suicide (Colapinto, 2000).

The bottom line: “Sex matters,” concluded the National Academy of Sciences (2001). Sex-related genes and physiology “result in behavioral and cognitive differences between males and females.” Yet environmental factors matter too, as we will see next. Nature and nurture work together.

13-8 How do gender roles and gender identity differ?

For many people, biological sex and gender coexist in harmony. Biology draws the outline, and culture paints the details. The physical traits that define us as biological males or females are the same worldwide. But the gender traits that define how men (or boys) and women (or girls) should act, interact, or feel about themselves may differ from one place to another (APA, 2009).

Gender RolesCultures shape our behaviors by defining how we ought to behave in a particular social position, or role. We can see this shaping power in gender roles—the social expectations that guide our behavior as men or as women. Gender roles shift over time. A century ago, North American women could not vote in national elections, serve in the military, or divorce a husband without cause. And if a woman worked for pay outside the home, she would more likely have been a midwife or a seamstress, rather than a surgeon or a fashion designer.

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Gender roles can change dramatically in a thin slice of history. At the beginning of the twentieth century, only one country in the world—New Zealand—granted women the right to vote (Briscoe, 1997). Today, worldwide, only Saudi Arabia denies women the right to vote. Even there, the culture shows signs of shifting toward women’s voting rights (Alsharif, 2011). More U.S. women than men now graduate from college, and nearly half the work force is female (Fry & Cohn, 2010). The modern economy has produced jobs that rely not on brute strength but on social intelligence, open communication, and the ability to sit still and focus (Rosin, 2010). What changes might the next hundred years bring?

Gender roles also vary from one place to another. Nomadic societies of food-gathering people have had little division of labor by sex. Boys and girls receive much the same upbringing. In agricultural societies, where women work in the nearby fields and men roam while herding livestock, cultures have shaped children to assume more distinct gender roles (Segall et al., 1990; Van Leeuwen, 1978).

Take a minute to check your own gender expectations. Would you agree that “When jobs are scarce, men should have more rights to a job”? In the United States, Britain, and Spain, barely over 12 percent of adults agree. In Nigeria, Pakistan, and India, about 80 percent of adults agree (Pew, 2010). We’re all human, but my how our views differ. Australia and the Scandinavian countries offer the greatest gender equity, Middle Eastern and North African countries the least (Social Watch, 2006).

How Do We Learn Gender?A gender role describes how others expect us to think, feel, and act. Our gender identity is our personal sense of being male, female, or a combination of the two. How do we develop that personal viewpoint?

Social learning theory assumes that we acquire our gender identity in childhood, by observing and imitating others’ gender-linked behaviors and by being rewarded or punished for acting in certain ways. (“Tatiana, you’re such a good mommy to your dolls”; “Big boys don’t cry, Armand.”) Some critics think there’s more to gender identity than imitating parents and being repeatedly rewarded for certain responses. They point out that gender typing—taking on the traditional male or female role—varies from child to child (Tobin et al., 2010). No matter how much parents encourage or discourage traditional gender behavior, children may drift toward what feels right to them.

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Some organize themselves into “boy worlds” and “girl worlds,” each guided by rules. Others seem to prefer androgyny: A blend of male and female roles feels right to them. Androgyny has benefits. Androgynous people are more adaptable. They show greater flexibility in behavior and career choices (Bem, 1993). They tend to be more resilient and self-accepting, and they experience less depression (Lam & McBride-Chang, 2007; Mosher & Danoff-Burg, 2008; Ward, 2000).

How we feel matters, but so does how we think. Early in life, we form schemas, or concepts that help us make sense of our world. Our gender schemas organized our experiences of male-female characteristics and helped us think about our gender identity, about who we are (Bem, 1987, 1993; Martin et al., 2002). Our parents help to transmit their culture’s views on gender. In one analysis of 43 studies, parents with traditional gender schemas were more likely to have gender-typed children who shared their culture’s expectations about how males and females should act (Tenenbaum & Leaper, 2002).

As a young child, you (like other children) were a “gender detective” (Martin & Ruble, 2004). Before your first birthday, you knew the difference between a male and female voice or face (Martin et al., 2002). After you turned 2, language forced you to label the world in terms of gender. If you are an English speaker, you learned to classify people as he and she. If you are a French speaker, you learned also to classify objects as masculine (“le train”) or feminine (“la table”).

Once children grasp that two sorts of people exist—and that they are of one sort—they search for clues about gender. In every culture, people communicate their gender in many ways. Their gender expression drops hints not only in their language but also in their clothing, interests, and possessions. Having divided the human world in half, 3-year-olds will then like their own kind better and seek them out for play. “Girls,” they may decide, are the ones who watch Dora the Explorer and have long hair. “Boys” watch battles from Kung Fu Panda and don’t wear dresses. Armed with their newly collected “proof,” they then adjust their behaviors to fit their concept of gender. These rigid stereotypes peak at about age 5 or 6. If the new neighbor is a boy, a 6-year-old girl may assume that she cannot share his interests. For young children, gender looms large.

For a transgender person, comparing one’s personal gender identity with cultural concepts of gender roles produces feelings of confusion and discord. A transgender person’s gender identity differs from the behaviors or traits considered typical for that person’s birth sex (APA, 2010; Bockting, 2014). A person who was born a female may feel he is a man living in a woman’s body, or a person born male may feel she is a woman living in a man’s body. Some transgender people are also transsexual: They prefer to live as members of the other birth sex. Some transsexual people (about three times as many men as women) may seek medical treatment (including sex-reassignment surgery) to achieve their preferred gender identity (Van Kesteren et al., 1997).

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Note that gender identity is distinct from sexual orientation (the direction of one’s sexual attraction). Transgender people may be sexually attracted to people of the opposite birth sex (heterosexual), the same birth sex (homosexual), both sexes (bisexual), or to no one at all (asexual).

Transgender people may express their gender identity by dressing as a person of the other biological sex typically would. Most who dress this way are biological males who are attracted to women (APA, 2010).