martinemonster (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
martinemonster) wrote2009-04-02 01:20 pm
martinemonster) wrote2009-04-02 01:20 pm
Re-posted about sex and gender
Stolen from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
shehasathree
Connell, R.W. Gender, Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers; Cambridge, UK: Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishers, 2002.
*****
"At the centre of common-sense thinking about gender is the idea of difference between women and men. When pop psychologists tell us that women are naturally more emotional than men, or that our lives are ruled by 'brain sex', or that boys fight and steal cars because of testosterone, they are appealing to familiar beliefs about sex differences, especially bodily differences" (Connell, 2002: 28).
"The fact of reproductive difference between male and female humans is not controversial, but its significance is" (31)
'sex difference' research in psychology
"The beginning of this research is described in a fascinating historical study by Rosalind Rosenberg, Beyond Separate spheres (1982). The first generation of psychological researchers found, contrary to mainstream Victorian belief, that the mental capacities of men and women were more or less equal. It is an interesting fact that this finding of 'no difference' was rapidly accepted by men as well as women in the mental-testing filed. Indeed, as they developed standardized tests of general ability or intelligence (the so-called IQ tests) during the first half of the twentieth century, psychologists incorporated the 'no difference' finding as a given, choosing and scoring test items in such a way that males and females would have equal average scores. Later attempts to find sex differences in this field have come to nothing (Halpern and LaMay 2000). It is now very widely accepted that in general intelligence, there are no significant sex differences.
An even more interesting fact is that this is the usual finding the in the sex difference research as a whole. In table after table of Maccoby and Jacklin's book [The Psychology of Sex Differences], the commonest entry in the column for the finding about difference is 'none'. Study after study, on trait after trait, comparing women's results with men's or girls' with boys', finds no significant difference. In summarizing these findings, the first thing Maccoby and Jacklin (1975: 349) did was list a series of 'Unfounded Beliefs about Sex Differences'. On the evidence they compiled, it is not true that girls are more social than boys, that girls are more suggestible than boys, that girls have lower self-esteem, that girls are better at rote learning and boys at higher-level cognitive processing, that boys are more analytic, that girls are more affected by heredity and boys by environment, that girls lack achievement motivation, or that girls are auditory while boys are visual. All these beliefs turn out to be myths.
Maccoby and Jacklin were not alone in this conclusion. Hugh Fairweather (1976), after an extensive examination of the research on sex differences in cognitive skills, concluded that sex differences were too few and uncertain to be worth bothering about. Mark Hogrebe and colleagues (1985), in a very large study of US high school students' reading achievement, concluded that sex differences accounted for just 1 per cent of the variation in scores - compared with 20 per cent accounted for by 'demographic' (social class related) variables" (41).
"the overwhelming conclusion from a hundred years of 'sex difference' research is that men and women are not very different at all, across a wide range of traits examined in psychology and related social sciences. To put it more positively, the main finding is thatwomen and men are psychologically very similar, as groups. We should long ago have been calling this field 'sex similarity' research" (42).
"The psychological similarity of men and women might be regarded, on the volume of evidence supporting it, as one of the best-established generalizations in all the human sciences.
It is therefore intensely interesting to find that this conclusion is widely disbelieved. The acceptance of gender similarity in the field of intelligence testing turns out to have been exceptional.. Now pop psychologists, in books selling millions of copies, insist that women and men have different desires, speak different languages, have different capacities and express different attitudes. In the academic world generations of researchers, in the teeth of the evidence their own disciplines have produced, have gone on relentlessly searching for, and writing about, sex differences...The gap between the main pattern actually found, and the widespread belief about what should be found, is so great that Cynthia Epstein (1988) entitled her admirable book about dichotomous thinking and gender reality Deceptive Distinctions" (Connell, 2002: 42).
“When ‘sex role’ theory provided the main framework for discussion of gender, there was a fairly straightforward account of how people acquired gender…In the fullness of time the former blue babies would be taught to run cars and solve mathematical equations, to compete in the marketplace and earn a living, and to pursue former pink babies. The former pink babies would be taught to cook, to be good at human relations, to do / what they were told, and to make themselves attractive to the former blue babies” (76-77).
Halpern, D.F. * LaMay, M.L. (2000) The smarter sex: A critical review of sex differences in intelligence. Educational Psychology Review, 12(2): 229-46.
Rosenberg, Rosalind (1982) Beyond Separate Spheres: Intellectual Roots of Modern Feminism Yale University Press.
shehasathreeConnell, R.W. Gender, Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers; Cambridge, UK: Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishers, 2002.
*****
"At the centre of common-sense thinking about gender is the idea of difference between women and men. When pop psychologists tell us that women are naturally more emotional than men, or that our lives are ruled by 'brain sex', or that boys fight and steal cars because of testosterone, they are appealing to familiar beliefs about sex differences, especially bodily differences" (Connell, 2002: 28).
"The fact of reproductive difference between male and female humans is not controversial, but its significance is" (31)
'sex difference' research in psychology
"The beginning of this research is described in a fascinating historical study by Rosalind Rosenberg, Beyond Separate spheres (1982). The first generation of psychological researchers found, contrary to mainstream Victorian belief, that the mental capacities of men and women were more or less equal. It is an interesting fact that this finding of 'no difference' was rapidly accepted by men as well as women in the mental-testing filed. Indeed, as they developed standardized tests of general ability or intelligence (the so-called IQ tests) during the first half of the twentieth century, psychologists incorporated the 'no difference' finding as a given, choosing and scoring test items in such a way that males and females would have equal average scores. Later attempts to find sex differences in this field have come to nothing (Halpern and LaMay 2000). It is now very widely accepted that in general intelligence, there are no significant sex differences.
An even more interesting fact is that this is the usual finding the in the sex difference research as a whole. In table after table of Maccoby and Jacklin's book [The Psychology of Sex Differences], the commonest entry in the column for the finding about difference is 'none'. Study after study, on trait after trait, comparing women's results with men's or girls' with boys', finds no significant difference. In summarizing these findings, the first thing Maccoby and Jacklin (1975: 349) did was list a series of 'Unfounded Beliefs about Sex Differences'. On the evidence they compiled, it is not true that girls are more social than boys, that girls are more suggestible than boys, that girls have lower self-esteem, that girls are better at rote learning and boys at higher-level cognitive processing, that boys are more analytic, that girls are more affected by heredity and boys by environment, that girls lack achievement motivation, or that girls are auditory while boys are visual. All these beliefs turn out to be myths.
Maccoby and Jacklin were not alone in this conclusion. Hugh Fairweather (1976), after an extensive examination of the research on sex differences in cognitive skills, concluded that sex differences were too few and uncertain to be worth bothering about. Mark Hogrebe and colleagues (1985), in a very large study of US high school students' reading achievement, concluded that sex differences accounted for just 1 per cent of the variation in scores - compared with 20 per cent accounted for by 'demographic' (social class related) variables" (41).
"the overwhelming conclusion from a hundred years of 'sex difference' research is that men and women are not very different at all, across a wide range of traits examined in psychology and related social sciences. To put it more positively, the main finding is thatwomen and men are psychologically very similar, as groups. We should long ago have been calling this field 'sex similarity' research" (42).
"The psychological similarity of men and women might be regarded, on the volume of evidence supporting it, as one of the best-established generalizations in all the human sciences.
It is therefore intensely interesting to find that this conclusion is widely disbelieved. The acceptance of gender similarity in the field of intelligence testing turns out to have been exceptional.. Now pop psychologists, in books selling millions of copies, insist that women and men have different desires, speak different languages, have different capacities and express different attitudes. In the academic world generations of researchers, in the teeth of the evidence their own disciplines have produced, have gone on relentlessly searching for, and writing about, sex differences...The gap between the main pattern actually found, and the widespread belief about what should be found, is so great that Cynthia Epstein (1988) entitled her admirable book about dichotomous thinking and gender reality Deceptive Distinctions" (Connell, 2002: 42).
“When ‘sex role’ theory provided the main framework for discussion of gender, there was a fairly straightforward account of how people acquired gender…In the fullness of time the former blue babies would be taught to run cars and solve mathematical equations, to compete in the marketplace and earn a living, and to pursue former pink babies. The former pink babies would be taught to cook, to be good at human relations, to do / what they were told, and to make themselves attractive to the former blue babies” (76-77).
Halpern, D.F. * LaMay, M.L. (2000) The smarter sex: A critical review of sex differences in intelligence. Educational Psychology Review, 12(2): 229-46.
Rosenberg, Rosalind (1982) Beyond Separate Spheres: Intellectual Roots of Modern Feminism Yale University Press.
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Thanks again!