Sex: male/ female biological sex
- Gender: -an ambiguous term but usually means a sense of masculinity or femininity
- – Also known as gender identity
- – Also encompasses psychological characteristics and gender role behaviours associated with being male or female
- Biological Influences on Gender Development
- A persons biological sex is determined at the time of conception by the fathers sperm. The ovum produces XX chromosomes and the sperm XY. Some of the sperm will be X and some Y, the sex is dependent on which sperm fertilises the egg.
- There are two systems which can determine the sex organs, the Mullerian System which has the potential to develop into female sex organs and the Wolffian System is the precursor to the male sex organ.
- Up until the 6th week all foetuses, regardless of their genetic potential, contain the same sex organs which have the potential to grow into either female or male.
- During pregnancy with XY individuals, androgens form the testes and create testosterone. Collectively these lead to changes to external genitalia which leads to a specific gender label which in turn creates specific socialisation.
- Androgens such as testosterone, are male hormones. Some XY individuals have an insensitivity to these hormones, their bodies do no respond to the effects of the male hormones and in some extreme cases, no male genitalia develop. One case comes from a family in the Dominican Republic. Four children in the Batista family were born with female genitalia and raised as girls, the large amounts of testosterone during puberty caused their male genitalia to appear. The children were genetically XY but had not developed male due to the inherited gene that caused AIS.
- Male and female brains are different, although the differences are few. For example, girls generally appear to be better at social skills and boys are better at spatial navigation (Hoag, 2008).
- Geschuind and Galaburda (1978) were the first to suggest that such sex differences may be caused by the effects of testosterone levels developing in the brain. Male brains are exposed prenatally to more testosterone and this leads to a masculinised brain. If the brain of a female is exposed to too much testosterone this may lead to masculinity of the brain.
- Evaluation:
- There is supporting evidence in the role of biological factors in gender development. Money and Ehrhardt 1972, claimed that biological sex was not the main factor in determining gender development, it was sex of rearing. They argued that intersex children could be raised as either a boy or a girl. However, Moneys famous case study, David Reimer is un-supporting of this as despite being raised as a girl, after David learnt of his real gender, he reverted back to male and lived the remainder of his life as a male. This shows that biological sex is more a determiner of gender development. However, there are issues with using evidence of case studies. The main problem is the lack of generalisability to a wider population. It could also be argued that intersex individuals may be susceptible to social influences more so than others meaning that they are looking for others for guidance in their identity. Despite this, there is further supporting evidence from Reiner and Gerhardt 2004. They studied 16 genetic males with almost no penis, 2 were raised as males and the other 14 were raised as females. However, 8 reverted to male by the age of 16. This is therefore unsupporting of Moneys claims and supporting of the biological influences explanation of gender development.
- The gender outcome for individuals cannot be attributed to just one factor. The eventual outcome for each individual when establishing gender appears to be complex and an unpredictable combination of genes, hormones, sex of rearing and socialisation. There do not appear to be any simple rules. For example, CAH occurs when XX females have high levels of male hormones, resulting in varying degrees of external male genitalia. Therefore research appears to indicate that whatever gender is assigned at birth is accepted by some and not others. Thus indicating gender development is partially determined by nature but also experience and socialisation (nurture) plays a role.
- There have been real world applications from the gender research findings. Since 1968 and until 1991 the International Olympics Committee excluded all individuals that weren’t XX females or XY males, meaning that AIS individuals couldn’t compete. However, in 1991 the rules changed so that indivuals are only not allowed to participate if they are physically male but wanting to participate in female events. Therefore in this case, genetic sex no longer determines gender.