male vs. female development...

In this grad class, a couple of weeks ago, I selected an article by Carol Gilligan, "In a Different Voice," about psychological studies about brain development in infants thru adolescents. The premise of this paper was that the early and hallmark studies of this subject were focused on boys, who exhibit compettive behaviors toward winning, while, it was discovered, by the studies of Gilligan, girls will relinquish winning in favor of maintaining relationships, ending a competition in favor of that. Further, girls place lmportance on caregiving and nurturing, while males place importance on "individuation," moving on toward success, negating the caring aspect.
Another memorable thread in this paper mentioned that women exhibit a "fear of success," because of the potential of loss of femininity and social rejection. I have experienced this myself.
I wonder what any of you have to say about this.
Patty

I do find it interesting...

Environmental factors (including social) are an important causal influence on neurological development and on behaviour.

When people find differences between male brains and female brains (or male behaviours and female behaviours) I always get to wondering how much of those differences are the fairly inevitable response to hormones and the like and how much of those differences are the fairly inevitable response to social factors (such as gender roles) that are NOT inevitable.

For example, if a boy is praised for exhibiting competitiveness and is mocked for persuing social harmony and a girl is praised for forsaking competitiveness to pursue social harmony then their differential history of reinforcement would be an important causal factor for the difference in male and female behaviour.

I'm also interested in the differences... Typically they are differences across averages. So lets say W is winning and S is maintaining social relationships.

Boys: W, W, W, W, W, W, S, S, S, S
Girls: S, S, S, S, S, S, W, W, W, W

(The notion here is that 6 out of 10 boys went for winning and 6 out of 10 girls went for social relationships).

What does this show us? Some conclusions we could draw:

- Boys tend to go for winning rather than social relationships (well yes, but only just!)
- Girls tend to go for social relationships rather than winning (well yes, but only just!)

What seems most interesting is: Why?

Even if there is something in common in the W brains and something in common in the S brains this doesn't seem to help (of course we would expect that when behaviour is different neurology is different). How did their brains get to be different?

Could be maturation with respect to hormones and the like...
Could be part of socialisation into a culture.

E.g., give little boys guns to play with and give little girls dolls.

I've never had the problem with 'fear of success'. My Mother didn't really raise me according to traditional gender stereotypes, however.

I have read something on the influence of movies such as 'Kill Bill' and 'The Matrix' which are typically seen as liberating for women... These films have been critiqued with respect to their possible role in increasing female violence, however.

Alexandra...Your response is really thoughtful and insightful.
However, I can only respond to this from a subjective point of view, from having raised a daughter and witnessing the development of her twin boys.
She, daughter, was very dainty and demure from the start. Twin boys are rowdy, competitive and much more messy and rambuctuous than she was as a little girl. Daughter and hubby are highly educated (Ph.D) and not inclined to encourage male macho behavior. It is just there with these boys!
I don't know what to make of this other than to surmise that it is hormonal and genetic!
Patty

More studies are being done on the way that mothers respond differently to male and female infants right from the start (without realising that they are doing so).

Mothers smile more at male infants than female infants was one finding that I found surprising.

I'm fairly sure that they continued to do so (unconsciously) even after being made aware of that (though don't quote me on that) ;-)

Also...

It could be the case that 99.999% of all people do x and only a very small minority do y instead. The trouble with 'experience' (compared with studies) is that some people will of course have had salient experience with that 0.001%.

As such...

The social hypothesis is still going strong.

(Of course it is genetic. It is just that environmental including social factors determine which of the genes are 'turned on' / get to be expressed as proteins. The question is really about whether the relevant genes are fairly invarient to the social differences in the way males / females are treated or whether the relevant genes are highly dependent on those social differences. With respect to hormones the same thing goes. It might be that rough and tumble play (of a very subtle variety) is an environmental cause of increased testosterone where high levels of testosterone are associated with increased violence).

Even if the mother doesn't differentially reinforce behaviour that is in synch with social stereotypes most of the rest of society does.

I don't typically see males getting excited over a new household cleaner or females getting excited over some new SUV. When baby needs a diaper change does daddy do this or is baby handed back to mummy? With respect to advertising household cleaning products and childrens toys have the greatest social role differential.

And of course there are other children who are raised very much in accordance with social roles. And children are exposed to those other children (and what those other children think of their behaviour) at daycare and school and the like...

Social nitches can be fairly robust. Gender stereotypes are changing... But fairly slowly... Fairly slowly...

yea, it's right...... I throw competitions all the time for people, and I could never do something like grad school in fear that no man would want me......... geez, women are stero typical......lol