How Do Children Learn Gender and Why?

Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject Gender Studies, grade: 12,00, Justus-Liebig-University Giessen (Institut für Anglistik), course: Applied Linguistics, language: English, abstract: he aim of this paper is to critically discuss the hypothesis that children learn gender behaviour and if this is true, when and why do they do so. In order to do so, first of all it is necessary to define the terminology used in this paper. In a second step we need to evaluate the present findings with the view to finding out if there are other approaches to the topic. The following paper will therefore present the standpoints of different researchers, display both contrasts and similarities and try to find arguments supporting or opposing the findings.

From my point of view, both genetics and socialisation are responsible for the gender behaviour, which can be observed in even very young children. ¿Gender¿, in contrast to sex, is a term, which is investigated at the social, sociological level, but used interchangeably with ¿sex¿, which in Western cultures is used in dichotomous categories: male and female. ¿Sex¿ is commonly understood as a biological, genetic concept which is stable over time, whereas gender is seen as dynamic, shifting, having multiple versions. In general it can be described as the sense of oneself as man or woman and it reinforces the differences between men and women. However, there is no real agreement on the definition of gender so far. Later on, we will put this concept into perspective by introducing further categories of sex and gender.