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Evaluate two or more psychological theories in terms of their

gender bias (25 marks)


Gender is the psychological element of a person’s sex, which refers to masculinity
and femininity as opposed to the biological category of male or female. Gender bias
refers to learning in a particular direction and a distortion of one’s attitudes and
beliefs based on prejudices towards someone sue to their gender.

Freud’s psychodynamic theory took male behaviour as the standard norm for all
human behaviour, and described female behaviour as a deviation from this. This is an
example of alpha bias, whereby male and female behaviour is looked upon as being
different and these differences are maximised. An example of this, Freud stated that
all females are jealous of males because they have a penis, this is known as penis
envy. Also, Freud came up with the idea of the Oedipus complex, whereby young
males unconsciously desire their mother and want to remove or kill their father so
they can have their mother all to themselves. However, this theory is gender biased as
Freud focused his theory more heavily on the Oedipus complex but ignored the
Electra complex, which is the female equivalent.

The Electra complex would state tat young females would unconsciously desire their
father and want to remove or kill the mother. Freud’s theory clearly show just how
gender biased it really was. His theory even had widespread implications whereby in
1900 society, many people’s attitudes reflected that women were second-class citizen
when compared to males. This was also shown in the fact that women we supposed to
be jealous of males by penis envy but males were never jealous of females. This
implies a superiority of males over females and this shows gender bias.

This is quite unusual, because Freud did not conduct many studies on middle class
Viennese women to illustrate his theory of repression, so therefore Freud felt that
women did in fact deviate from the norm, especially as these women had many
psychological problems such as depression and hysteria. Freud felt that women were
vulnerable and full of emotional traumas where as me seemed to have a stable psyche.
This implies that Freud’s theory is gender biased and created gender discrimination in
the 1900s. As Freud also only studied middle class Viennese women, this in itself
creates a gender bias as the results cannot be generalised to the whole population as
only a female sample were used. This is called beta bias or estro-centric bias.

Gilligan’s theory of moral development looked at morals that males and females held.
Differences were noted, as it seems that men base their moral judgements on the
element of justice, where as women base them on interpersonal and caring concerns.
The research is based on men and women who had been interviewed about moral
dilemmas and their responses noted. It was also found that females tend to have a
strong bong with their mother due to their maternal nature and inter-connectedness,
but males tend to be more independent from their mothers and this helps them form
their moral judgement based on justice.

This study shows gender bias because it makes males look more independent and
females seem more inter-dependent. Gilligan’s theory reflects alpha bias as it is
maximising the gender differences between males and females. Surely not all females
display the traits of inter-connectedness and all males the traits of justice.
This is really down to individual differences in personality and how a person
perceives the world. This research is trying to make males and females appear very
different which is increasing gender bias. We should really look towards Bem’s
androgyny theory, which states that to be a successful human being, males and
females should adopt both females and male personality traits.

Males should therefore have the element of justice in their personality as well as inter-
connectedness and being caring. The same could be said for females; they should be
caring but should also think about justice when looking at moral dilemmas. To have
the trait androgyny would be a positive thing, because males and females would be
more alike and this would minimise the element of gender bias.

By uniting male and female personalities together, maybe males and females would
be treated more equally, instead of looking for differences that separate the genders
and cause more bias. PMS is an example of a behaviour that separate males and
females’ behaviour. PMS is only experienced by women and once it was viewed as
something that did not exist. Nowadays, in society it has been recognised as an illness
that really does exist. PMS reflects gender bias as it’s only reflected by women and
males may not have a full understanding of the symptom.

This causes a gender divide because male psychologists have often decided that PMS
can be used by women as an excuse for their bad behaviour, e.g. underachievement,
crimes and bad moods. This created gender bias as PMS has been given a bad label by
males, but they do not suffer from this illness. Therefore, this causes a further gender
divide that illustrates bias.

A third theory that illustrates gender bias is by Buss’s socio-biology theory of


reproduction. In this theory, it states that males often look for young, healthy, fertile
females, who would produce good offspring. Males can afford to impregnate many
women at the same time as they produce millions of sperm. On the other hand,
women look for older, wealthy, resourceful men who can provide for their future
offspring.

Females must be careful when seeking for a potential mate, as they cannot afford to
make mistakes. They only produce one egg per month, and once pregnant they must
make sure that their mate will support them. Evidence to support this has come from
dating advertisements, which reflect that males advertise themselves as wealthy and
resourceful, and women advertise themselves based on attractiveness.

This theory reflects gender bias as it maximises the differences between males and
females (alpha bias). It is showing that the fact that males are allowed to be
promiscuous in society and impregnate many women, but women must find the right
man and should be cautious. This theory can be applied to wider society, as males are
often applauded for having many sexual partners, but females cannot do this as it goes
against what society expects from them as a female. This shows social constructionist
approaches whereby society created boundaries and guidelines for males and females’
behaviour that have different rules.

This shows extreme gender bias that is present in research findings and society’s
attitudes. It seems that there is one rule for males and another for females. TAVRIS
also showed this in his research, where he found that in 1995, 95% of bank managers
were males. He stated that this was normal for males to excel and reach the top of
their profession. However, females who did have a managerial position were
condemned by TAVRIS. He claimed that they had a masculine brain fuelled by
testosterone and that is why they reach the top. He did not look at factors of
motivation, ambition or personality, just the fact that females who were successful
seemed to be masculine.

This creates gender bias, as this implies that men are expected to reach the top, but
women must be abnormal of they do. This would suggest that men are deemed to be
more successful in the work place than women. Is there room for women in the
workplace?
BOWLBY would argue that women’s place is in the home looking after the children
so that they do not suffer from maternal deprivation.

From this evidence, it seems that Freud’s psychodynamic theory, Gilligan’s moral
development theory and the socio-biological theory all imply gender bias.

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