Gender+Psychology

The major emphasis of gender psychology is to recognize and acknowledge gender differences in the psychological realm. These gender differences are studied across cultures and time. Gender psychology usually includes topics such as gender socialization, gender differences in math and science, gender roles in society and how they are either broken or perpetuated. Other topics include gender identification, gender differences in aggression, and sexuality. Typical questions studied in gender psychology include, “Why do females differ from males in expression of emotions?” or “Why do males show more aggression than females?” Other questions might include, “Do toys influence gender identification?” or “How do males develop differently from females?” Perhaps the first psychologist to look at gender differences was Freud. He looked at how females and males differed in development. Early in the 1900’s, Karen Horney authored papers against Freud’s theory of the sexual development of females. Leta Hollingworth also looked at the differences in the sexes in terms of the variability hypothesis, which tries to explain the difference in achievements of men and women in different fields. Some psychologists in the field of gender psychology include Luce Irigaray who wrote //The Sex Which Is Not One//, Jeff Hearn who published //The Gender of Oppression// , Alfred Kinsey, who published the //Kinsey Reports// , and who is perhaps the first person to study sex disorders in the different genders, and Gayle Rubin, who published //The Traffic in Women: Notes on the 'Political Economy' of Sex.//

King, D. B., Viney, W., & Woody, W. D. (2009). //A History of Psychology: Ideas ad Context. 4th Edition. Boston: Pearson Education. // Lips, H. (2007). //Sex & Gender: An Introduction.// 6th Edition. Columbus: McGraw-Hill.