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Patterns of Gender Development

Carol lynn martin.

1 Arizona State University, School of Social and Family Dynamics, Program in Family and Human Development, Tempe, Arizona 85287-3701; ude.usa@nitramc

Diane N. Ruble

2 Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, New York 10003; [email protected]

A comprehensive theory of gender development must describe and explain long-term developmental patterning and changes and how gender is experienced in the short term. This review considers multiple views on gender patterning, illustrated with contemporary research. First, because developmental research involves understanding normative patterns of change with age, several theoretically important topics illustrate gender development: how children come to recognize gender distinctions and understand stereotypes, and the emergence of prejudice and sexism. Second, developmental researchers study the stability of individual differences over time, which elucidates developmental processes. We review stability in two domains—sex segregation and activities/interests. Finally, a new approach advances understanding of developmental patterns, based on dynamic systems theory. Dynamic systems theory is a metatheoretical framework for studying stability and change, which developed from the study of complex and nonlinear systems in physics and mathematics. Some major features and examples show how dynamic approaches have been and could be applied in studying gender development.

INTRODUCTION

Understanding the changes that correspond with the passage of time is a hallmark of developmental studies, including the study of gender development. Gender developmental scientists are concerned with age-related changes in gender typing, and more broadly, with many issues about the emergence and patterning of gendered behaviors and thinking. Description of these changes is vitally important as it informs theoretical approaches to gender development. Using a broad lens on age-related changes provides important information describing how development occurs, but shorter time frames are also useful for identifying processes that may underlie developmental patterns. Gender developmental scientists are beginning to conceptualize temporal change and measurement of relevant variables over time in more nuanced ways and with new methods and analytic strategies.

Our goal in this article is not to provide an extensive review of changes in gender over childhood, but instead to focus on the perspective of developmental patterning. In selecting issues to review, we attempted to find a set of issues that would provide insights into processes underlying gender development while also being representative of contemporary issues and future directions in the field. First, to highlight developmentalists' interest in average or normative changes across age, we review the timeline of gender development for the emergence of gender understanding and stereotyping and how discrimination and prejudice develop in childhood. Second, we examine continuities within individuals over time as an important theoretical complement to the first focus on mean-level, normative patterns over time. Longitudinal studies are reviewed to examine whether individual differences are stable over time in two areas of gender typing: sex segregation and activities and interests. Finally, we discuss how dynamic systems theory may be applied in gender development and describe its potential for understanding patterns over different time frames.

HOW EARLY DO CHILDREN ACQUIRE GENDER CONCEPTS AND EXHIBIT PREJUDICE AND DISCRIMINATION?

The first few years of life and into adolescence have been the focus of much theorizing and empirical research on gender development. Major questions have arisen about the timeline of gender development, and resolving these issues is central to understanding processes underlying gender development. In this section, we discuss two key aspects of gender development. First, the earliest emergence of gender understanding and behaviors provides insights about the origins of sex differences and the prominence of gender as a social category, and so it is not surprising that these topics have been highlighted in contemporary research on gender development. Second, because of the far-ranging implications on human social interactions, we review research evidence concerning the emergence of gender prejudice and discrimination.

Do Infants Understand and Use Gender?

A major issue that has driven research is whether children's basic understanding of gender identity motivates and organizes the development of gender-typed behaviors, an idea proposed by “self-socialization” theories of gender development. Self-socialization perspectives posit that children actively seek information about what gender means and how it applies to them and that an understanding of gender categories motivates behavior such that, in essence, they socialize themselves (see Martin et al. 2002 ). In contrast, others ( Bussey & Bandura 1999 , Campbell et al. 2002 ) have argued that gender understanding must not play an important role in the emergence of gendered behaviors because some gender-typed behaviors emerge prior to age two, presumably earlier than children's understanding or identification with gender. The evidence needed to resolve this controversy concerns whether behavior becomes increasingly gender typed with the onset of basic gender understanding, and recent findings have extended our knowledge of these fundamental issues. Much has been written about these topics and about the surrounding controversies ( Bandura & Bussey 2004 ; Martin et al. 2002 , 2004 ); here, we provide an overview and update of the evidence.

When do children begin to recognize that there are two types of people—males and females—and when are they able to link this information to other qualities to form basic stereotypes? A related question is, when do children recognize their own sex? Infants as young as three to four months of age distinguish between categories of female and male faces, as demonstrated in habituation and preferential looking paradigms ( Quinn et al. 2002 ). By about six months, infants can discriminate faces and voices by sex, habituate to faces of both sexes, and make intermodal associations between faces and voices (e.g., Fagan & Singer 1979 , Miller 1983 , Younger & Fearing 1999 ). By 10 months, infants are able to form stereotypic associations between faces of women and men and gender-typed objects (e.g., a scarf, a hammer), suggesting that they have the capacity to form primitive stereotypes ( Levy & Haaf 1994 ). Infants' early associative networks about the sexes may not carry the same conceptual or affective associations that characterize those of older children or adults, although the nature of these associations has yet to be examined in any depth (see Martin et al. 2002 ).

Because of the difficulties associated with testing infants, it has been challenging to determine when children first recognize their own or others' sex. Early studies suggested that labeling and understanding of gender may not emerge until about 30 months of age, but more recent studies have moved the age of understanding gender identity and labeling downward. In a study using a preferential looking paradigm, about 50% of 18-month-old girls showed knowledge of gender labels (“lady,” “man”), but boys did not, and 50% of 18- and 24-month-old boys and girls showed above-chance understanding of the label “boy” ( Poulin-Dubois et al. 1998 ). In another non-verbal testing situation, 24- and 30-month old children knew the gender groups to which they and others belonged ( Stennes et al. 2005 ). Similarly, most 24- and 28-month-old children select the correct picture in response to gender labels provided by an experimenter ( Campbell et al. 2002 , Levy 1999 ).

A recent study examined the naturally occurring instances of gender labels (e.g., girl, boy, woman, man, lady, guy) as indicators of knowledge of gender categories and assessed whether the onset of use of these terms related to children's observed free play with toys ( Zosuls et al. 2009 ). Information about gender labels was obtained from examining biweekly parent diaries of children's speech from 10 months of age onward. Zosuls and colleagues (2009) also analyzed videotapes of the children at 17 months and 21 months playing with a set of toys varying from high to neutral in gender typing. The results showed that 25% of children used gender labels by 17 months and 68% by 21 months. On average, girls produced labels at 18 months, one month earlier than did boys. These labeling results were used to predict changes in gender-typed behavior with the two most strongly gender-typed toys (trucks and dolls). Children who knew and used gender labels were more likely than other children to show increases in gender-typed play with toys.

Taken together, these studies suggest that most children develop the ability to label gender groups and to use gender labels in their speech between 18 and 24 months. As proposed by self-socialization theorists, the results from the Zosuls et al. study (2009) suggest that developing this ability has consequences: Knowing basic gender information was related to increased play with strongly stereotyped toys. These findings are consistent with research suggesting that children develop awareness of their own “self ” at roughly 18 months and then begin to actively engage in information seeking about what things mean and how they should behave ( Baldwin & Moses 1996 ).

When Do Children Develop Stereotypes?

Developmental researchers have identified that rudimentary stereotypes develop by about two years of age ( Kuhn et al. 1978 ), and many children develop basic stereotypes by age three ( Signorella et al. 1993 ). Children first show an understanding of sex differences associated with adult possessions (e.g., shirt and tie), physical appearance, roles, toys, and activities, and recognize some abstract associations with gender (e.g., hardness as male; softness as female) ( Leinbach et al. 1997 , Weinraub et al. 1984 ). Children develop stereotypes about physical aggression at an early age, and by age 41½, children believe that girls show more relational aggression than boys ( Giles & Heyman 2005 ). Interestingly, even when researchers examine children's spontaneous associations about boys and girls, a consistent pattern is found from preschool through fourth/fifth grade: girls are seen as nice, wearing dresses, and liking dolls, and boys are seen as having short hair, playing active games, and being rough ( Miller et al. 2009 ).

As children grow older, the range of stereotypes about sports, occupations, school tasks, and adult roles expands, and the nature of the associations becomes more sophisticated (e.g., Sinno & Killen 2009 ). Specifically, early in childhood, children make vertical associations between the category label (“girls,” “boys”) and qualities (e.g., “boys like trucks”). They appear slower to make horizontal inferences (e.g., recognizing that trucks and airplanes are associated with being “masculine”), which tend to appear around age eight. For instance, when told about an unfamiliar sex-unspecified child who likes trucks, older children but not younger ones predict that the child also likes playing with airplanes ( Martin et al. 1990 ). Concreteness of gendered items influences the ability of younger children to make these property-to-property inferences ( Bauer et al. 1998 ). In contrast, adults often rely on individuating information rather than the person's sex to make similar types of judgments ( Deaux & Lewis 1984 ). The difficulty that children have with these judgments suggests that they may not understand within-sex individual differences.

Meta-analytic studies find that stereotypes become more flexible with age ( Signorella et al. 1993 ). A longitudinal study of children from 5 to 10 years of age showed a peak in the rigidity of stereotypes at either 5 or 6 years of age and then an increase in flexibility two years later. Neither the timing nor the level of peak rigidity affected the developmental trajectory, suggesting that children generally follow the same normative path across development despite variations in when rigidity starts and how extreme it becomes ( Trautner et al. 2005 ).

Many questions remain to be answered about the developmental progression in learning the content of stereotypes and in exploring individual differences in patterns of development. For instance, when do children first begin to assume that there are similarities within one sex and dissimilarities between the sexes? Theorists are interested in examining the roles that personal interests and idiosyncratic knowledge play in the development or hindrance in stereotype formation ( Liben & Bigler 2002 , Martin & Ruble 2004 ). Furthermore, how children apply stereotypes once they have learned them is an issue of continuing interest in the field.

When Do Children Exhibit Prejudice and Discrimination?

Recent conceptual analyses suggest a range of factors that likely contribute to the development of stereotypes and prejudice, such as highly salient categorizing dimensions (e.g., sex) ( Martin & Ruble 2004 ) and labeling of these dimensions by others ( Bigler et al. 1997 ). Because recent reviews of Developmental Intergroup Theory have covered the influence of these factors and discussed studies of children's responses to novel stereotyping situations ( Arthur et al. 2008 , Bigler & Liben 2007 ), the focus here is on the age-related changes in cognitive and behavioral expressions of gender prejudice and discrimination, not with their origins.

Attitudes about the two sexes

How do children's evaluations of the two sexes change with age? This question involves a number of different kinds of attitudes and beliefs; we focus on two: ( a ) ingroup/outgroup biases, and ( b ) perceptions of status differences and discrimination. There has been relatively little research on these topics, but interest has increased recently.

Ingroup/outgroup biases

Children's growing awareness of membership in a social group (i.e., male or female) becomes an evaluative process through self-identification and thus affects how positively children regard the ingroup relative to the outgroup ( Ruble et al. 2004 ). Some research suggests that as early as preschool, children report feeling more positively about their own sex ( Yee & Brown 1994 ), and differential liking is also seen among older children (e.g., Heyman 2001 , Verkuyten & Thijs 2001 ). Studies are mixed regarding age trends, depending on the measure. Those examining negative versus positive trait ratings suggest that intergroup biases decline in elementary school (e.g., Egan & Perry 2001 , Powlishta et al. 1994 ), consistent with increasing stereotype flexibility described above; but studies tapping more affective reactions (e.g., liking the ingroup better) do not show this decline (e.g., Yee & Brown 1994 ), at least not until early adolescence ( Verkuyten & Thijs 2001 ).

We do not yet know whether and when ingroup favoritism is associated with outgroup derogation. That is, do children actually dislike or have hostile attitudes toward the other sex, or is it simply that children like their own sex better? Because many studies use difference scores, ingroup positivity and outgroup negativity are often confounded ( Brewer 2001 , Cameron et al. 2001 ). Moreover, Kowalski (2007) reports that studies of young children's interactions do involve evaluative comments between boys and girls but rarely involve animosity, suggesting that some researchers may have misinterpreted children's positive ingroup feelings in structured interviews as overt rejection of the other group. Recent research suggests that when they are decoupled, ingroup positivity effects are stronger than outgroup negativity among elementary school children ( Susskind & Hodges 2007 ). It is also not clear whether young girls' willingness to judge boys as “bad,” for example, indicates outright hostility ( Rudman & Glick 2008 ) or if, instead, such judgments reflect stereotypes about boys getting into trouble (e.g., Heyman 2001 ). On the other hand, studies showing that the other sex is disliked (e.g., Yee & Brown 1994 ) are consistent with a conclusion of negative outgroup evaluation. An important issue for future research concerns this distinction between cognitive and affective aspects of intergroup bias and its connection to the development of gender prejudice ( Halim & Ruble 2009 ).

A distinction in the adult literature between hostile and benevolent sexism ( Glick & Fiske 2001 ) represents a potentially very useful conceptualization for future developmental research. The idea is that, unlike most forms of prejudice toward outgroups, negative intergroup attitudes between males and females are likely to be complicated by intimate interdependence and thus are likely to be ambivalent, involving benevolent as well as hostile aspects. For example, women may be viewed as competitors seeking to gain power over men, but they may also be viewed as angelic (put on a pedestal) and vulnerable, in need of protection. Men may be resented for their dominance over women but also admired as providers and heroes. Applying this distinction to the developmental course of intergroup attitudes, Rudman & Glick (2008) argued that ambivalence does not characterize gender prejudice in young children, but rather that it moves from a simple form of childhood hostility toward competing groups to ambivalent sexism.

This is an interesting proposal with important implications, but questions remain. First, outgroup negativity in young children can be interpreted differently, as suggested above; their perceptions may be simple and competitive, but not extreme enough to be characterized as hostile. Perhaps, instead, children's need to master important categorical distinctions coupled with relatively limited cognitive skills make it threatening when peers cross gender boundaries ( Kowalski 2007 ). Second, young children's attitudes may involve some complexity and ambivalence, but of a different sort than for adults. For example, young children may dislike members of the other sex because they are boring (about girls) or rough (about boys) while still holding positive views about other characteristics of other-sex peers, such as girls are nice and boys play exciting games. Moreover, children begin to anticipate adult roles at an early age, and benevolent feelings could arise from a “princess” anticipating her “prince” or the expectation by two young opposite-sex friends that they will one day be husband and wife. Further examination of different interpretations of preschoolers' ingroup bias is important because knowing what it represents is critical to knowing when to intervene to minimize sexism.

Awareness of status differences and discrimination

When do children become aware of the status difference applied to males and masculine activities relative to females and feminine activities in most cultures? Although studies of gender stereotypes in young children show that they attribute greater power to males and helplessness to females ( Ruble et al. 2006 ), only a few studies have examined perceptions of inequality directly. First, research has found awareness of status differences in occupations typically held by men and women ( Liben et al. 2001 , Teig & Susskind 2008 ). Children as young as 6 years understood that jobs more likely to be held by men (e.g., business executive) are higher in status than female-typical jobs, but only older children (11-year-olds) associated fictitious “male” jobs as being higher in status ( Liben et al. 2001 ). A study of perceptions of a high-status job—the U.S. presidency—found that 87% of children aged 5–10 years knew that only men had been presidents, though knowledge increased significantly with age ( Bigler et al. 2008 ).

Second, research has examined the development of children's general perceptions of gender inequalities ( Neff et al. 2007 ). The findings showed a notable increase between 7 and 15 years of age in beliefs that males are granted more power and respect than females.

Finally, a few recent studies examined children's perceptions of gender discrimination. First, in the study of the presidency, only approximately 30% of the 5- to 10-year-old children attributed the lack of women presidents to discrimination, although this percentage increased with age. Instead, the most frequent explanation was ingroup bias: that men would not vote for women. These findings suggest that even young children are aware of how ingroup biases shape behavior and that they perceive such reasons as more important than institutional discrimination in determining the selection of the president ( Bigler et al. 2008 ). In a second study, children in two age groups (5–7 and 8–10 years) responded to a set of hypothetical stories about teachers deciding whether a boy or a girl did better on an activity ( Brown & Bigler 2005 ). The findings showed that the younger children were somewhat aware of gender discrimination, but such perceptions were higher in the older group. Children perceived discrimination, however, only when explicitly told that the teacher may be biased, not when the context was ambiguous.

Taken together, these studies suggest that children's awareness of the differential status of the sexes and gender discrimination are relatively late-developing phenomena. Young children show limited awareness, but only when contextual cues (e.g., explicit mention of biases) or social experiences (knowledge of status of real occupations) make inequities obvious. More subtle awareness of inequities may not emerge until later in elementary school. The slow development of this more “public” evaluation, such as recognizing status and power differences and institutional discrimination, is in stark contrast to the early developing “personal” regard shown by ingroup biases, suggesting different developmental underpinnings of the two types.

Gender prejudice and discrimination

In what ways might developmental changes in stereotypic beliefs and intergroup attitudes play out in actual choices and behavior? What little research there is on gender prejudice development has primarily focused on two types: ( a ) negative reactions to peers' violations of gender norms and ( b ) preferential treatment.

Reactions to gender norm violations

Because preschoolers have strong beliefs that boys and girls do different things, they would be expected to respond negatively to gender norm violations. Several early studies found support for this prediction ( Huston 1983 ). For example, when 3- to 5-year-olds were videotaped while playing with either a male- or female-typed toy (e.g., soldiers; dollhouse) in the presence of a same-sex peer, children were punished (e.g., ridiculed) by the peer when playing with cross-sex toys ( Langlois & Downs 1980 ).

Recent research has supported and expanded these findings. For example, teachers report that kindergarten children tend to respond in one of three ways to gender norm violations: correction (“give that girl puppet to a girl”), ridicule, and “identity negation” (e.g., “Jeff is a girl”) ( Kowalski 2007 ). Interestingly, one recent study found that preschool children are able to identify children who are more likely to enforce the gender rules and gender-segregated boundaries ( McGuire et al. 2007 ). Preschoolers were asked, “Who in your classroom says you shouldn't play because you are a boy/girl?” The findings showed that children who had greater exposure to “gender enforcer” peers were more likely to limit their play to same-sex peers. These findings suggest that there may be individual differences in overt “sexist” behavior as early as preschool, and that the actions of these gender “police” contribute more broadly to the maintenance of gender distinctions in the classroom.

Because children show age-related increases in the flexibility of stereotypes and other aspects of gender category knowledge, such as gender constancy and the ability to make multiple classifications, their negative reactions to gender norm violations should decline after preschool. Unfortunately, age trends in older children have received little attention, though examples of such behavior abound. Based on extensive qualitative ethnographic observations in middle-elementary school, Thorne (1993) found that boys who violated norms for masculinity were teased, shunned, or referred to as “girls.” For example, one girl excluded a boy from jump rope because “…you don't know how to do it, to swing it. You gotta be a girl” (p. 45). Other research documented the various “rules” that children have about maintaining gender boundaries and found that children who maintain boundaries are more popular with peers ( Sroufe et al. 1993 ). Finally, research with children exhibiting extreme gender-nonnormative behaviors suggests that girls and especially boys are teased and rejected by peers ( Zucker & Bradley 1995 ).

Studies using hypothetical stories also indicate that children make negative judgments of, and consider unpopular, peers who engage in gender-atypical behavior, especially boys. In contrast to the implications from the more behavioral studies described above, however, many of these studies fail to find negative evaluations of gender-atypical behaviors before middle-elementary school (e.g., Berndt & Heller 1986 ), and children often show increased negativity with age, although findings are mixed ( Ruble et al. 2006 ). The findings in the judgment studies may be influenced by the qualities and salience of the stimuli as well as by children's cognitive abilities and gender knowledge ( Arthur et al. 2008 , Lutz & Ruble 1995 ). For example, one recent study showed a dramatic decrease in negative judgments between 5 and 7 years of age, which was mediated by increasing gender knowledge—specifically, gender constancy ( Ruble et al. 2007b ).

Thus, conclusions about evidence of sexism in young children drawn from judgment studies can be different from conclusions drawn from studies of actual behaviors. This observation raises interesting questions for future about what exactly children are reacting to when they demonstrate seemingly sexist behaviors or attitudes toward peers engaging in atypical behavior. First, children's liking or popularity judgments in hypothetical situations may reflect egocentric considerations, such as preferring targets engaged in activities typical of their own sex (e.g., girls preferring male targets with feminine interests) ( Alexander & Hines 1994 , Zucker et al. 1995 ). Thus, young children's liking for gender nonconforming targets may not reflect their tolerance for gender nonconformity but instead their personal interest in masculine or feminine activities.

Second, it is not clear if the sexist behaviors found in preschool children (e.g., hitting a boy who wears fingernail polish) are based on global negative evaluations of such children as being gender atypical or if they reflect a more limited evaluation of a specific instance of a child breaking a rule (such as stealing cookies). Children's judgments of gender atypicality are likely influenced by additional factors such as their perceptions of the targets' dissimilarity to same-sex others (e.g., Egan & Perry 2001 ) and/or awareness of within-sex variability. Moreover, it may be only when children begin to recognize and understand the stability of behavior that individual atypical behaviors coalesce into a broader and more negative view of the person as being deviant ( Ruble & Dweck 1995 ). Unfortunately, developmental changes in children's perceptions of others' gender typicality have received little attention. This is surprising because perceptions of gender typicality are key to understanding reactions to gender norm violations and what they mean. Whether preschoolers' negative judgments and reactions reflect sexism and, if so, what form of sexism are interesting questions for future research.

Preferential treatment

Given that the in-group liking bias occurs at a young age, one might expect that children would show favoritism toward their own sex. When affiliative behavior is measured, children begin to show preferential selection of same-sex peers starting at age 3 ( La Freniere et al. 1984 ). Children also preferentially allocate resources to their own-sex group, beginning in preschool ( Yee & Brown 1994 ).

Other research has examined ingroup favoritism in terms of children's responses to hypothetical stories about excluding peers from gender stereotypic activities, such as a ballet or baseball “club” ( Killen et al. 2008 ). In these studies, there has been little evidence that children were more likely to choose same-sex members. Instead, children's exclusion and inclusion decisions were found to vary across age depending on exactly what they were told about the situation. When children were asked about a single child who wanted to join the club, most children responded that exclusion was wrong (e.g., to exclude a boy from a ballet club), even though they knew the stereotypes. Consistent with findings of increasing flexibility of stereotypes with age, however, this was true for only about 60% of preschoolers ( Theimer et al. 2001 ) versus 90% of older children ( Killen & Stangor 2001 ). When children were asked to select between a boy and a girl of equal competence, age differences in the influence of gender stereotypes on inclusion decisions appeared to be even stronger. Children in the study of preschoolers selected the stereotyped choice (e.g., the girl for the ballet class) ( Theimer et al. 2001 ). Older children, however, preferred the counterstereotypic choice ( Killen & Stangor, 2001 ) and offered justifications based on equal access (e.g., boys don't get a chance to take ballet). Such “fairness” considerations in inclusion decisions coupled with relatively low levels of exclusion are surprising in that they seem inconsistent with the observations of behavioral exclusion described above. Perhaps only a few children engage in exclusion (e.g., the “gender police”), or hypothetical situations might allow children to think instead of answering impulsively and thus may not invoke ingroup favoritism as much as more personal, immediate situations might.

In short, it appears that gender prejudice and discrimination begin as early as preschool; this finding is particularly evident in research examining actual behavior, whether naturalistic or experimental. That is, preschoolers respond negatively to violations of gender norms and favor ingroup members in actual choices of play partners (sex segregation) and allocation of resources. Findings of studies examining responses in hypothetical situations appear to be more mixed, however. From these studies, it appears that the form and bases of gender prejudice and discrimination vary across age and context. For example, in young children, prejudice may reflect simple same-sex liking biases or relatively straightforward applications of gender norms, whereas at older ages, prejudice may involve differential evaluation of capabilities and past history and thus be more closely linked to knowledge of status differences and discrimination. The few studies examining these issues have involved very different paradigms. Thus, findings that apparently conflict across studies cannot be evaluated without future research.

HOW STABLE ARE INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN GENDER TYPING?

It seems intuitively obvious that individuals vary greatly in how gender typed they are. Some girls are extremely “girly” and refuse to go anywhere without wearing a dress, often pink and frilly, whereas other girls have no such interest and instead prefer playing ball with the boys. Some men can handle any kind of tool (except kitchen tools!), whereas others lack such mechanical facility. It is commonly assumed that attributes associated with being a typical male or female are seen early on, show at least some continuity across time, and influence personal preferences and behaviors throughout life.

How much empirical support is there for these assumptions? Maccoby (2002) has argued that there is not much. According to her analysis, this is because different manifestations of gender typing in childhood do not cohere and because there is considerable situational variation in how gender typed a given child seems. Instead, she suggests that gender typing at this age may be more of a group phenomenon rather than something that reflects the dispositions of relatively more or less gender-typed children. Thus, she advocates a shift in research focus away from individual differences in gender-related outcomes and toward the study of how gender is manifested in groups of males and females.

Although we agree wholeheartedly about the importance of studying group-based elements of gender, we suggest that it may be premature to dismiss the importance of examining gender typing as an individual difference variable. Variation across contexts and domains of gender typing does not preclude the possibility that some aspects show stability across time within individuals. For example, some boys may show an interest in moving parts or vehicles that persists in different forms into adulthood, even if that interest shows no connection to rough-and-tumble play or to other male-typical interests and behaviors. Surprisingly, researchers have rarely directly examined the stability of gender-typed interests and behaviors, and the existing database is piecemeal and sketchy ( Huston 1983 , Powlishta et al. 1993 ). This is unfortunate, because knowing more about which aspects of gender typing are stable is critical to a full understanding of the nature and processes involved in gender development.

In the sections below, we provide a detailed analysis of longitudinal studies of gender typing in children and what the studies show about stability. We then reevaluate the evidence that led to Maccoby's (2002) conclusions that examining individual differences in gender typing is not productive.

Evidence of the Stability of Gender Typing from Longitudinal Studies

What do longitudinal studies of gender development tell us about stability? Although gender typing can involve a number of different features, we limit the present review to behavioral-type variables (e.g., play with same-sex peers; interests and activities) rather than cognitive-type variables such as stereotyping or gender identity. We do this because much research on gender typing has concerned young children's peer and activity preferences. It is also partly because cognitive variables show considerable variation during childhood ( Ruble et al. 2006 ) and may not be conducive to demonstrating stability, at least in young children.

Surprisingly, the few longitudinal studies of gender typing that exist have paid relatively little attention to this issue of stability. This may be partly because it has not been a primary component of major theories of gender development. Because most theories emphasize the factors that lead to gender typing, longitudinal studies have often focused on such issues as how contextual, socialization, or social-cognitive factors at one point in time affect gender-typing at a later point in time (e.g., McHale et al. 2004 ) rather than on the stability of gender typing across time. Other longitudinal studies have focused on normative changes in gender-typed behaviors or cognitions, such as attitudes or stereotyping (e.g., Bartini 2006 ).

In interpreting the theoretical significance of such studies, however, it is essential to determine whether gender typing represents some continuing characteristic of individuals that influences future beliefs and behaviors or whether it is better viewed as linked to a particular developmental time point or context, with little future implications ( Serbin et al. 1993 ). Moreover, identifying the factors that lead children to be more or less gender typed should help distinguish among alternative theories of gender typing ( Powlishta et al. 1993 ). Thus, information about which elements of gender typing are stable, over what period of time, and during which developmental periods seems essential to the study of gender development.

Longitudinal studies examining the stability of sex segregation

Some studies have used observational methods to examine the stability of preferences for spending time with same-sex versus other-sex others. Different types of assessments have been used: ( a ) split-half correlations (e.g., across odd versus even weeks), ( b ) cross-situational stability (e.g., across indoor and outdoor play); and ( c ) test-retest (temporal) stability (whether sex segregation scores are correlated over some period of time).

The findings have been mixed, both across studies and across measures, and most studies have involved small samples and relatively short time periods (six months or less). To illustrate, Maccoby & Jacklin (1987) reported nonsignificant test-retest reliability over a one-week period among 4½-year-olds (0.39) and among 6½-year-olds (0.17). They did find cross-situational (indoor-outdoor) stability in preschoolers, but for girls only (0.44). Powlishta et al. (1993) used a split-half reliability procedure across odd and even days over a four- to six-month period and found that sex segregation showed significant stability for preschool boys (0.73) but not for girls (0.20). Lloyd & Duveen (1992) found significant temporal stability (0.40) in children ranging in age from about 4 to 7 years when they correlated the proportion of same-sex play from one term to the next. Turner et al. (1993) also examined temporal stability in a large sample (n = 161) of 4- to 4½-year-old children from two countries across eight sessions. Sex segregation scores in sessions one to four were correlated with sessions five to eight at significant or marginal levels (0.3 to 0.7).

As a final example of studies examining relatively short-term stability, Martin & Fabes (2001) assessed sex segregation over two consecutive academic terms for preschool and kindergarten children. Observations took place inside and outside every weekday for six months. This study is unusual because of the large number of observations (about 300 per child) and because of the use of multiple forms of stability assessment. First, split-half procedures (odd and even weeks) showed high and significant correlations for both sexes and for younger and older children (0.69–0.84). Second, as suggested by Epstein (1980) , they calculated stability coefficients with data aggregated over differing lengths of time, a procedure that reduces error of measurement. The one-week coefficients were low (below 0.3), but as the number of weeks of aggregated data increased, the stability coefficients showed large increases, such that when data were aggregated over eight-week periods, stability coefficients rose to the 0.5 to 0.6 range and continued to rise across larger units of time. Finally, they found considerable temporal stability (>0.7) across the two academic terms. These findings suggest that a relatively large number of observations, spread over time, may be needed to observe stability in sex segregation. Thus, prior conclusions about a lack of individual stability in same-sex peer preferences may be misleading.

In short, some longitudinal studies show reasonably impressive stability of individual differences in sex segregation. One problem with these studies, however, is that stability is examined within a group context that does not change. That is, stability may be found not because of individual differences in same-sex preferences, but rather because groups are formed early in the class year, and these structures are maintained ( Maccoby & Jacklin 1987 ). Thus, the results of longitudinal studies involving longer periods of time are of considerable interest.

Unfortunately, few studies have examined temporal stability for longer than six months, and, as with short-duration research, the findings are mixed. For example, Maccoby & Jacklin (1987) examined stability in sex segregation in children across a two-year period (4½ to 6½ years). Given the low level of short-term stability found in this study, as described above, the authors did not expect to find, and did not find, much evidence of temporal stability, except for a significant correlation (0.31) over time for boys, but only for outdoor play. In contrast, Serbin et al. (1993) did find long-term temporal stability from one year to the next using a peer-nomination procedure (e.g., participants selecting photos of the children with whom they most like to play) in 5- to 12-year-olds. It is not clear exactly why this paper-and-pencil measure might yield more stable estimates, but it may be that the situational variation in observations was eliminated and that only the strongest relationships were assessed this way. Regardless, it is impressive that temporal stability was found across a time period when classrooms had changed.

Taken together, despite some nonsignificant findings, it seems fair to conclude that individual differences in sex segregation do show both internal consistency (split-half reliability) and temporal stability, given sufficient power and numbers of observations. Although observational data suggest that a child may vary in same-sex play from week to week, when observations are aggregated across multiple weeks, stability is seen. It would be helpful in future research to use data-aggregation procedures to see how many weeks of observations are needed to show temporal stability across one year or more. It would also be worthwhile to examine how long individual differences in segregation are maintained. For example, do preschool preferences predict preferences in middle-elementary school?

Longitudinal studies of the stability of interests and activity preferences

Studies of other indices of gender typing have been somewhat more consistent in finding temporal stability. Some observational studies of preschoolers and/or kindergartners have shown short-term, test-retest temporal stability in stereotyped toy and activity choices during free play (e.g., Maccoby & Jacklin, 1987 , Martin & Fabes 2001 ). Other observational studies have shown significant stability in terms of split-half consistency (e.g., Connor & Serbin 1977 , Powlishta et al. 1993 ). In addition, gender-stereotyped activity preferences have shown moderate to high stability over varying periods of time, as assessed with test-retest reliability involving pencil-and-paper measures completed either by the children themselves (e.g., Edelbrock & Sugawara 1978 , Golombok & Rust 1993 ) or by parents about their children (e.g., Golombok & Rust 1993 ).

One recent, impressive study examined the stability of gender typing using pencil-and-paper measures ( Golombok et al. 2008 ). This study warrants a more detailed look because it involved a much longer time period (from age 2½ to 8 years) and a much larger sample (more than 2700 girls and 2700 boys) than has been typical. When the children were ages 2½, 3½, and 5 years old, parents completed a toy and activity questionnaire (Pre-School Activities Inventory, or PSAI; Golombok & Rust 1993 ) about their child's preferences; at age 8, the children completed an age-appropriate modified version, the Children's Activities Inventory (CAI). To examine temporal stability during the preschool years (test-retest reliability), intercorrelations in PSAI scores were examined among all three time points (ages 2½, 3½, and 5 years). Stability coefficients for the PSAI were high: 0.6–0.7 for adjacent time points and 0.5 from 2½ to 5 years. These levels are comparable to or even higher than those reported in earlier studies and thus demonstrate moderate to high stability in gender-typed interests and activities over time periods ranging from 1 to 2½ years.

Golombok et al. (2008) also examined stability between the preschool years and age 8, though not with test-retest correlations. Instead, at age 3½, boys and girls separately were divided into nine categories of gender typing based on PSAI scores; children who varied in their categories were compared on CAI scores. For both sexes, the children who were most gender typed at age 3½ continued to be so at age 8. A similar analysis compared CAI scores at age 8 with scores indicating the trajectory (acceleration in gender-typed interests) from ages 2½ to 5 years. As predicted, children showing the greatest increase in gender typing at a young age were those with higher levels of gender-typical behavior at age 8.

These findings are interesting in part because the trends run counter to what would be expected from regression to the mean, in that the children who were most gender typed to start with became relatively more so over time. Moreover, the findings suggested the possibility that individual differences in gender typing may be more stable in children who are relatively high or low in gender typing when young, a pattern that was particularly marked for the least gender-typed girls. It would be of great interest in future research to examine the stability and trajectory of gender typing among children at the extremes, such as tomboys or girly girls.

Taken together, longitudinal studies of gender-typed interests and activities show fairly compelling evidence of stability of individual differences. Future research needs to examine stability across one year or more using observations rather than paper-and-pencil measures to be certain that the apparent stability of gender typing reflects actual behaviors rather than stability in self- or parent perceptions.

Interpretations and Conclusions About the Evidence from Longitudinal Studies

As we discussed in the introduction to this section, Maccoby (2002) suggested that the study of individual differences in gender typing was no longer productive on the basis of various types of evidence, most notably: ( a ) the idea that sex typing is multidimensional and lacks coherence, and ( b ) the situational variability of gender typing. In our review of the longitudinal data, we identified some reasons why prior findings might have led to Maccoby's conclusions. Most importantly, the longitudinal studies suggest that a lack of power and insufficient reliability may have made it difficult to observe temporal stability within domains or coherence across domains. The case is particularly clear for studies of sex segregation. The studies of very short-term stability suggest that children do vary from day-to-day and week-to-week in the proportion of time spent with same- versus other-sex peers. Over greater numbers of data points and amounts of time, however, relative consistency of individual children can be seen (e.g., Martin & Fabes 2001 ). This observation also speaks to the apparent lack of coherence seen across different indices of gender typing. Indeed, when stable, reliable measures are used, coherence across indices is often observed (e.g., Martin & Fabes 2001 , Serbin et al. 1993 ). In short, based on the findings reviewed, we conclude that the study of individual differences in gender typing may be more productive than has recently been thought. Nevertheless, we also urge caution: It would be unreasonable to conclude that gender typing is strong and stable throughout life, because the database is limited in a number of ways.

First, it is not clear how long such differences remain stable. For example, gender-typed behavior is perhaps most visible in young children, when rigid distinctions appear in children's appearance and play. Many if not most preschool girls show some manifestation of extreme “girliness,” refusing to wear anything but a dress, often pink and frilly, whereas boys are draped with superman capes or are holding swords and acting as superheroes ( Dunn & Hughes 2001 , Halim et al. 2009 , Maccoby 1998 , Ruble et al. 2007a ). We know almost nothing about the stability of such behaviors after preschool, however. It may be necessary to examine how one kind of gender typing at one age relates to a different kind at a later age ( McHale et al. 2004 ). Does a lack of interest in dresses predict later interest in sports or playing with boys? Future research using both longitudinal and retrospective methods may provide answers to such questions.

Second, it is not clear which forms of gender typing may be most stable and best characterize the essence of individual differences. The review of longitudinal studies focused on two frequently examined elements of gender typing (sex segregation and interests/activity preferences). Other aspects of gender development may turn out to be more fundamental, however, at least at some ages. One such candidate is a sense of oneself in relation to males and females. How important or central is gender to self-concept? How typical does one feel as a male or female? Multidimensional theories of social identity demonstrate the significance of such distinctions after the early elementary school years ( Ashmore et al. 2004 , Egan & Perry 2001 ). Moreover, perhaps stable individual differences are characterized not only by general feelings of typicality and centrality but also by the specific nature of one's fit with gender ( Tobin et al. 2009 ). For example, one preadolescent girl may recognize that she is not a typical female in the sense of having more interest than other females have in sports and less interest in room decoration or make-up, but she may feel part of girls as a group and want to look and act feminine in manner. Other children's sense of gender may emphasize avoiding gender-typical characteristics that they dislike: a girl may eschew the giggly, girly stuff; a boy may try to distance himself from macho elements of maleness.

Finally, future research might examine whether stable individual differences in certain gender-related cognitions emerge after preschool. Most children pass through a phase of believing that it is morally wrong for a boy to wear nail polish or for a girl to play football, but this typically ends by early elementary school ( Ruble et al. 2006 ). Thus, individual differences in tolerance of gender atypical behaviors may be found later. Indeed, recent research has shown quite high levels of stability (0.5–0.6) in gender role attitudes over a two-year period in 10- to 12-year-olds ( McHale et al. 2004 ). Also, a recent study provided direct support for the idea that once the period of rigidity has passed, individual differences may emerge. Stable individual differences in reactions to gender role violations were found across two time points and related to self-esteem only for children 5 years or older, past peak rigidity ( Lurye et al. 2008 ).

In short, our analysis of longitudinal research suggests that conclusions about the lack of evidence for stable individual differences in gender typing may have been limited by looking too hard and with too few data points for some unified construct. Although gender typing is clearly multidimensional, there may be stable elements in some components (e.g., behavior/interests) but not in others (e.g., attitudes/stereotypes), at least at particular ages. Perhaps, then, it would be productive to examine individual differences in gender typing as a developmentally malleable construct. Developmental factors may limit the extent to which biological predispositions can be expressed, change the way children are cognitively capable of thinking about gender, and expose them to varying social influences. Thus, the form of gender typing that is paramount may vary at different phases of life, and different combinations of biological, cognitive, and socialization processes could contribute to indi vidual differences in gender typing at different times.

HOW DOES THE STUDY OF GENDER DEVELOPMENT BENEFIT FROM DYNAMIC ANALYSES?

Gender development research has been guided by theories that offer differing explanations about the origins of gender typing and sex differences. These theories emphasize a variety of different processes, including cognitive developmental changes (e.g., Bigler & Liben 2007 , Kohlberg 1966 , Martin & Halverson 1981 ), socialization ( Bussey & Bandura 1999 , Mischel 1966 ), and proximal ( McCarthy & Arnold 2008 ) and distal biological influences (e.g., evolutionary pressures) (see Ruble et al. 2006 for a review of these theories as well as the multiple distinctions currently being made for each type of process). Despite differences, a common element among these theories is reliance on data collected at one or few time points, and in rare cases, multiple assessments are made over time and then are aggregated. Aggregation and limited assessment methods provide information about concurrent relations and long-term patterns; however, these methods sacrifice important information about variability over time, and are not focused on assessing short-term, moment-to-moment changes.

By applying methods and concepts used in the physical and biological sciences, the variation that most psychologists have considered error or background noise may be found to contain “the dynamic signature of purposive behavior” ( Van Orden et al. 2003 , p. 331). Dynamic studies of this background noise in behavior are beginning to reveal new and potentially important insights about a range of psychological and social processes, including motor development (e.g., Adolph et al. 2003 , Kelso 1995 ), emotional development ( Lewis & Granic 2000 ), dyadic play ( Steenbeek & van Geert 2008 ), structure of the self ( Nowak et al. 2000 ), cognitive development ( van Geert 2003 ), and stereotyping (e.g., Correll 2008 ). This revolutionary approach to describing and understanding patterns, based on complexity theory ( Waldrop 1992 ) or commonly labeled “dynamic systems approach” or “dynamic systems theory” ( Thelen & Smith 1998 ), has been gaining ground across fields.

Dynamic systems (DS) approaches have potential for illuminating processes involved in gender development by providing both conceptual and methodological advances that enable researchers to assess fine-grained as well as larger-grained developmental temporal variations ( Lichtwarck-Aschoff et al. 2008 ) and, especially important for developmental research, to delineate relationships between different timescales (e.g., Lewis 2002 ). A comprehensive theory of gender development needs to describe and explain long-term developmental changes but must also describe how gender is experienced and plays out in short-term interactions with objects and people. DS approaches provide conceptual underpinnings and methods for identifying patterns of behavior change over time, and in some cases, how these patterns may relate to one another.

The DS approach is appealing for a number of other reasons. Gender-related topics (e.g., work and family issues) have taken center stage in heated discussions about the roles of nature versus nurture, mainly concerning the origins and nature of sex differences. Because the DS approach advocates no distinctions between the sources of influence on a system ( Oyama 2000 ), they offer a rapprochement for debates about nature versus nurture. Furthermore, the DS approach has potential to provide a theoretical umbrella that would incorporate aspects of many gender development theories. Specifically, adopting a DS approach suggests new ways to collect, analyze, and describe data but provides limited guidance on which parameters to study; existing theories help to fill that gap.

Thus far, DS analysis of gender development has been limited to a few topics: sexual orientation (e.g., Diamond 2007 ), children's sex segregation ( Martin 2008 , Martin et al. 2005 ), and mother-infant interactions ( Fausto-Sterling et al. 2008 ). Below, we provide a description of basic concepts of DS approaches and then employ topics on gender development and review empirical studies to illustrate some of the major features of dynamic approaches (see Thelen & Smith 1994 , 1998 , 2006 ).

Dynamics and Complex Systems: Basic Concepts

Dynamic analyses are applied to complex systems, which are systems characterized by simple, interrelated interacting elements, where the interactions of these elements give rise to higher-order global patterns (e.g., Waldrop 1992 ). This process, called self-organization, does not require a higher-order agent and is not preprogrammed. Structures arise as the elements spontaneously organize and reorganize into emergent systems that are larger and more complex (e.g., Williams 1997 ). Examples of complex systems abound: heart-rate variability, army ant swarms, termite nest building, and the formation of hurricanes.

Scientists interested in applying dynamic systems must first identify and define the variable that represents the system of interest, called the collective variable ( Thelen & Smith 2006 ). The collective variable should be clearly defined and observable, and understanding how it behaves over different conditions is important. In developmental psychology, some classic examples of collective variables that have been studied include walking, reaching, and word learning.

Dynamic systems are marked by fluctuations from factors internal and external to the system, and this inherent activity provides potential for changes to occur in the system. In some cases, the system dampens down the fluctuations, allowing stability; in other cases, the system is “perturbed,” that is, it loses coherence, exhibits high degrees of variability, and may experience a qualitative change (i.e., phase shift) to a new coordinated state. As dynamic systems experience fluctuations, they have certain preferred states that occur with a high probability under certain conditions (called attractors). When displaced from these preferred states, the system tends to return there ( Thelen & Smith 2006 ). Some of these attractors are strong; others are weaker and have less “pull” on behavior. Other states act as repellors because behavior never or seldom settles there.

A goal for researchers is to understand and map both the immediate and longer-term stability/variability of complex systems. Researchers strive to identify the shifts among states because this is when the agents of change are most easily identified. These change agents (called control parameters) may be obvious (e.g., practice facilitating learning), but they also may appear incidental or minor ( Thelen & Smith 2006 ). For instance, in a classic study, King & West (1988) found that male cowbird song development was influenced by a seemingly unimportant factor—the patterning of brief wing flickering in female cowbirds. In developmental research, an aspect of language development that may appear unrelated to another domain of language development has been identified as an agent of change: Children who show a fast rate of word learning are limited in their ability to access well-known words ( Gershkoff-Stowe & Smith 1997 ). Regardless of their salience, such agents of change are more easily identified at transition points because they vary with changes in the collective variable.

Children's Play Choices: Sex Segregation as a Dynamic System

Children's tendency to assort by sex is an example of a complex system. Sex segregation is a pervasive, early-developing pattern that increases over childhood until interactions are so segregated that boys and girls have been described as growing up in separate cultures ( Maccoby & Jacklin 1987 ). A DS analysis of sex segregation may focus on the patterns that emerge over time in a child's choice of play partners and examine how these choices vary over the school year. Important variables to examine when children first begin congregating with peers (e.g., in a new class) might include social factors (e.g., each child's prior experiences with peers) as well as biological factors (e.g., hormone levels) or biosocial influences, such as the child's temperament (e.g., being inhibited). Children's choices are interdependent with others in the class: Choices are constrained by who is available to play on a given day, at a given time, and depend upon the choices made by others in the class immediately before the child decides to find a partner. Degrees of freedom for choosing a partner are lost the more other children have already claimed a partner.

Through repeated interactions and reshuffling, patterns of play may change as interactions become increasingly governed by children's experiences with classmates; their responsiveness to bids, play styles, and shared interests. Individual children may settle into particular patterns of play with particular partners. For instance, from individual children's experiences, more and longer-playing same-sex dyads may emerge in the system. As these processes play out over longer time intervals, a child's dyadic play may grow into larger groups of same-sex children, and these groupings may be formed and maintained depending upon the interests of children or the desires or openness of the initial dyad to including other children. Interestingly, simulations have demonstrated that even when individuals show only very slight preferences for similar others, segregation emerges ( Schelling 1971 , Wilensky 1997 ).

Play patterns can also be viewed from the perspective of the entire class. A series of bird'seye snapshots of a playground would show that the number of children in class who are involved in sex-segregated play varies as pairings and groupings of children form and break up, with groupings shifting over time. With more children involved in same-sex groupings, these groups may have enhanced appeal, and so other children will be drawn into the groups, thus illustrating how the higher-order structure of same-sex groups may also influence patterning of interactions. Sex segregation as an emergent structure of the system may become increasingly evident at both the individual-child and classroom levels. Although no one person directed the class or an individual child to choose same-sex partners for play, sex-segregation can emerge, suggesting a self-organizing system.

Variability in Systems: Sex Segregation, Gender-Typed Activities, and Gender Identity

Dynamic systems analyses involve studying temporal patterning—how a system transforms from one state to another over time. Scientists studying a system need to understand the short- and long-term stability and change in the system so the regular variability is distinguishable from extreme variability. Extreme variability holds particular fascination as it may signal a shift of a system from one kind of attractor to a new kind of attractor, or to a more highly organized state. For this reason, scientists using dynamic analyses may use cross-sectional data to narrow their focus to the time frames of most interest and then collect intensive data about variations in the primary variables of interest as well as about potential agents of change.

A gender application to illustrate this point would be the theoretically important issue of how gender-typed toy choices emerge. Since cross-sectional research suggests that boys begin to show gender-typed toy choices (e.g., playing with trucks) around the age of two ( Berenbaum et al. 2008 , Ruble et al. 2006 ), bracketing this time with intensive data collection about toy choices would be particularly interesting. Also, to better understand factors influencing such choices, other information about the play situation (e.g., other available toys, presence of peers), parents (e.g., stereotypic beliefs), and children (e.g., gender knowledge, activity level) should be collected. Developmental changes in any of these may influence boys' sense of control or feelings of pressure concerning toy selection. Studies of fine-grained changes from day-to-day or moment-to-moment gain import, and multiple data points are needed to detect these patterns.

When children enter preschool, qualitative changes may occur in their toy and activity choices. Preschool is a dramatically different setting from that at home; more peers of both sexes are available as play partners, and adult supervision may be low. Dynamic analyses involving longitudinal data about toy choices at home and school would shed light on this transition. Analysis of the activities children engage in at home versus at preschool, and the presence and reactions of peers, would provide insights into whether children's preferences change dynamically in preschool, where many toys are available, peers may tease them for “gender-inappropriate” play, and adults may react differently than their parents.

Fine-grained data have been collected on young children's peer choices, making this topic suitable for illustrating both stability and variability in dynamic systems. Controversy has arisen about the stability of sex segregation (see How Stable Are Individual Differences in Gender Typing section, above), but it appears that as more snapshots of behavior are aggregated, sex segregation becomes more stable until it reaches a moderately high level ( Martin & Fabes 2001 ). The stability of sex segregation may be questioned in part because of the variability in this behavior from day-to-day. To illustrate this more clearly, notice the day-to-day variation in children's play partners, based on observations conducted during the fall term for four children depicted in Figure 1 . Variability is apparent, although two children also show strong same-sex preferences day-to-day, but the other two children do not. There also is stability over time; children's patterns remain similar into the spring term of data collection. Extending this type of analysis to explore when and how variations occur would be fascinating.

Day-to-day variations in children's play partner choices as a function of sex of child and long-term patterning. Observed play partner choices were summed and averaged per day of observation using the following: Each boy play partner was given a +1; each girl was given a −1. Children with ID numbers 1032 and 1022 were girls; children with ID numbers 1041 and 1045 were boys. For girls, data below the 0 point represent same-sex peer play; for boys, data above the 0 point represent same-sex play. The graphs at the top of the page (1032 and 1041) represent patterns of children who tend to show long-term preferences for same-sex play; the graphs at the bottom of the page represent patterns of children who tend to show long-term preferences for playing with both sexes. Variability is apparent in all the graphs ( DiDonato & Martin 2009 ).

Another approach for applying dynamic analysis is to focus on the potential instability of constructs believed to be stable. Walking is a stable feature of most humans' behavior, but the exact form of walking at any given time depends on many different factors, including the type of surface being walked upon (e.g., thick rug versus tiled floor, slope of surface). Most researchers think of gender identity as being a stable feature, but if we consider when variations in gender identity might occur, it broadens the perspective on gender identity. An interesting analysis would be to explore variations in feelings (e.g., gender typicality, comfort) and displays of gender identity (e.g., style of dressing, voice, gestures) over different types of social “surfaces” (e.g., being in a sports bar, holding a baby) ( Martin 2000 ). Analysis of moment-to-moment changes in the patterning of gender identity may reveal surprising insights about gender development (a similar point is made about identity formation in Lichtwarck-Aschoff et al. 2008 ). For instance, collecting intensive time-series data about feelings of gender typicality (e.g., “How similar do you feel to your own sex right now?”) over a range of situations may illustrate that feelings of gender typicality are strong and show little variability in situations where one is a minority member, but that gender typicality is low but more variable when one is in a same-sex situation.

Dynamic Contexts: Gender Cognitions and Socialization

An important feature of dynamic analysis is how “context” is viewed. Although context is considered important in gender theories, it is often conceptualized as being distal (i.e., cultural contexts). In contrast, DS theorists view context as a dynamic characteristic of interactions, one that is temporally and spatially close and is an aspect of the interaction process itself ( Steenbeek & van Geert 2008 ). Even influences typically considered distal, stable, or abstract are represented and carried forward in time by their embodiment within everyday interactions. For instance, gender stereotypes and gender identity become embodied as children dynamically engage in “gendering”—remembering gender and acting on gender—incorporating the immediate contextual factors, and this being carried forward to the next moment of knowing and acting on gender.

Developmental processes that occur in real time then carry over and become consolidated and generalized across different contexts ( Fischer & Bidell 1998 ), and these then influence and constrain behavior (e.g., Lewis 2000 ) (although there is controversy about the extent to which this happens) (for review of the issue, see Witherington 2007 ). For instance, as toddlers come to understand their sex, become motivated by same-sex expectations, and begin to develop stereotypes, these features can be carried into interactions with others. The patterning and display of the gendered self may evolve into new forms (e.g., styles of dress, play partners, activities), which vary from moment-to-moment and over longer time periods. Thinking of gender as being enacted in each interaction is similar to proposals from sociological research traditions focusing on the social construction of gender ( West & Zimmerman 1991 ).

Gender socialization provides a good example of how both the child's and parents' cognitions are enacted in moment-to-moment interactions through the dynamic embodiment of gender. Parental expectations about what it means to have a child who is either a boy or girl (expectations colored by cultural values, etc.) become displayed as actions with the child (e.g., glances, touching, toy offering), and these embodied expectations interact with the child's phenotypic and early behavioral features. Thus, gender socialization involves parents and siblings, peers, other socialization agents, and the individual child, who all act and interact in varied contexts.

Methods and Analyses of Dynamic Systems

Studying complex systems involves identifying the collective variables that capture the behavior of interest and then collecting a long time series of data to watch the emergence of behaviors. Social scientists may avoid dynamic analyses because they expect that they will have to collect thousands of observations to identify complex patterns of behavior. However, even shorter time frames and smaller sets of time-series data may reveal important features that traditional methods may not disclose ( Williams 1997 ), especially when investigators use some of the newly proposed analytic techniques (e.g., Finan et al. 2008).

The recognition and study of complex systems have promoted development of an array of techniques designed to understand these systems, including techniques for nonlinear dynamics, time-series analyses, data visualization (e.g., Lamey et al. 2004 ), and computer simulations to model the behavior of systems (e.g., Griffin et al. 2004 , Schafer et al. 2009 ). This new and expanded toolbox provides better ways of describing, analyzing, and interpreting temporal data of all types ( Ward 2002 ). The mathematics involved in describing systems can be complex and unfamiliar to psychologists (e.g., May 1976 ); thus, DS ideas often are applied heuristically for thinking about patterns and for directing the kinds of data that are obtained rather than using the toolkit of analyses that describe obtained time-series data. However, psychologists have become increasingly interested in developing and applying these analytic tools (see Boker & Wenger 2007 , van Geert 2003 ). For instance, Thelen and colleagues (2001) conducted rigorous modeling of a developmental phenomenon involving touching patterns of infants (the A-not-B effect), which was originally identified by Piaget. Others are refining and expanding upon DS approaches to better integrate these ideas with connectionist models (e.g., Spencer & Schoner 2003 ) and neurobiology ( Lewis 2005 ). Regardless of how it is employed, DS perspectives hold promise for revealing patterns of gender development previously unrecognized.

Dynamic Analyses of Gendered Play Partners and Activities

Not all the applications of DS to gender development are as abstract as we have presented above. In this section, we outline specific examples of studies that have been conducted to apply a dynamic systems approach to gender development.

Data visualization, attractors, and repellors in children's sex segregation

In a dynamic view of sex segregation, children are seen to settle into certain behavioral patterns. This illustrates a characteristic of a dynamic system: Despite a large number of possible patterns among system elements, only a few ever stabilize. Dynamic analyses have been used to study the patterns of children's play partners in preschool classes and the role of gender in these interactions. Martin and colleagues (2005) used a new data-visualization tool, called state space grids (SSGs), to explore the extent to which preschool children showed attraction for same-sex and behaviorally similar children. Developmental scientists interested in applying DS methods (e.g., Granic & Lamey 2002 , Hollenstein et al. 2004 ) recognized the need for a methodology to visualize system dynamics; thus, they developed the SSG technique (e.g., Lewis et al. 1999 ).

SSGs involve mapping of dimensions onto a state space to determine the regularity or stability of the patterns (for a description of how to use GridWare, see Hollenstein 2007 ). In Martin et al. (2005) , SSGs were constructed based on children's choices of play partners derived from scan observations of three classes of preschool children over several months in order to examine whether sex of peers and behavioral tendencies act as attractors. Children were divided into types using cluster analysis: externalizing, internalizing, and socially competent children; play patterns of target children with types of peers (rather than one other child) were analyzed using SSGs. If children's play partner choices related strongly to behavioral similarity, then competent children should choose other competent children regardless of sex; if their selections relate to sex, then children should choose on the basis of similar sex regardless of behavior.

Attractors were characterized in three ways. First, a high number of individual interactions in the state space regions representing play with same-sex peers or particular peer qualities (e.g., externalizing) would indicate that those spaces are attractors. If same-sex peers act as attractors, then we would expect, for instance, that girls would have more interactions in the “girl peer” region than in the “boy peer” region. Second, when a region is an attractor, children should enter it quickly; for instance, early in the time series, girls would be expected to play with girls and would have few (or no) interactions with boys before they move into the “girl peer” region. Third, if a region is an attractor, children should return to the region quickly. Whenever girls leave the “girl peer” region, they would be expected to have relatively few interactions with boys before moving back to playing with girls.

The results supported these ideas. Same-sex peers were strong attractors for children: Both sexes had more than twice as many interactions with same-sex than with other-sex peers, were faster to return to same-sex peers, and started playing with them more quickly. Interestingly, these patterns were apparent even in the first 20 observations obtained on children after only several weeks of preschool. Figure 2 illustrates a typical pattern for a girl's first 20 interactions. The SSG shows data from a competent girl, whose first coded play bout is with a girl (open circle), and the pattern shows that she plays with girls more than with boys. Externalizing and social competence also contributed to behavioral states, but patterns varied by sex of child and peer (e.g., boys were more attracted to externalizing boys than to externalizing girls). As Figure 2 illustrates, the competent girl played much more with competent girls than with other girls, but she did not play with competent boys at all. Overall, the findings suggest that both the sex of peers and their behavioral qualities help fashion the social organization in the classroom.

A socially competent girl's state space grid, illustrating her patterns of play with peers of different sexes and different behavioral qualities over the first 20 observed interactions. The x -axis represents the sex of the peer with whom the target girl interacts; the y -axis represents the behavioral quality of the peers as determined by clustering teacher ratings of children's behavior. Each solid circle represents a single observed interaction, and the open circle represents the first observed interaction (with a socially competent girl). Lines between circles represent the ordering of observations. This girl showed strong sex selection: 16 of her first 20 interactions were with girls. She also showed a preference for interacting with socially competent girls but not boys ( Martin 2008 ).

In a similar study, Martin (2008) compared patterns of children who were highly gender typed in play to those with less gender-typed play patterns in order to examine whether children who differed in their overall patterns showed differences early in the time series of observations. Interestingly, within the first 20 observed interactions, highly gender-typed children experienced more positive emotions with same-sex than with other-sex peers; less gender-typed children showed no difference. These findings suggest that children who have early positive emotional experiences with same-sex peers but not with other-sex peers incorporate these experiences into their play, such that same-sex peers have increasing appeal, whereas other-sex peers lose their appeal. In this way, emotional experiences with peers appear to contribute to the overall patterning of children's play and to sex segregation in the class.

These studies use data-visualization techniques to illustrate a new approach to examining peer interaction patterns and suggest that both the sex of peers and peers' behavior act as attractors. Additional research involving moment-to-moment coding of behavior and new techniques for analyzing group patterns will allow for an even more detailed dynamic analyses of children's behavior with peers.

Self-organized criticality in the temporal patterning of children's gendered behavior

Many complex systems show a particularly intriguing pattern of organization, called self-organization near a critical state. These systems are balanced between enough stability to maintain order and enough instability or variation to be adaptive to change ( Bak et al. 1989 ). Adaptability is enhanced because new alternatives can be generated as needed in response to varying circumstances (e.g., Van Orden et al. 2003 ). In physiological systems, self-organized criticality is associated with well-being and health, and its loss or deterioration is related to disease, depression, and aging ( Goldberger 1996 , Linkenkaer-Hansen et al. 2005 , Sosnoff & Newell 2008 ).

Self-organization near a critical state involves “self-similarity” across time-scales; in other words, if one small portion of the time series is magnified, its appearance is similar to the larger time series in which it is embedded. That is, small-scale patterns reflect the patterns that would be expected at larger scales, such that identifying a regularity in a 2-minute window of time may share similarity to a pattern found in a 16-minute window, and both may share similarity to a pattern found on a much longer timescale (e.g., developmental changes that occur from early to later childhood). This self-organization near a critical state is represented by the presence of long-term, positively correlated variability in a time series ( Treffner & Kelso 1999 , Van Orden et al. 2003 ). Time series with completely independent data do not exhibit self-similarity. Given the implications for understanding different timescales and how they relate to one another, the implications of finding self-similarity in systems are far-ranging, especially for developmental scientists.

DiDonato (2008) applied both dynamic and traditional analyses to explore whether children's gendered behavior shows self-organized criticality and whether temporal patterns relate to children's adjustment. Brief observations of preschool children's activities and play partners were conducted daily over several months. By combining gender typing of activities and play partners across observations each day, DiDonato derived a single indicator of gendered behavior. Each child's time series was plotted and analyzed for self-organized criticality (e.g., Hurst 1951 ), and the results indicated this pattern, suggesting that children exhibited flexibility in their gendered behavior. For example, the implication of the findings is that a girl who normally plays with girls may adapt her behavior by playing with a boy if he is playing with her favorite toy. Furthermore, flexibility in gendered behavior was positively related to adjustment in girls but not in boys. Boys' restricted gender roles may constrain the relation between flexible behavior and adjustment.

These findings have implications for debates about how gender roles relate to adjustment and provide a compelling example of how both traditional and dynamic approaches can be combined to yield more information than would either approach alone. In this case, the short-term patterning of activities and partners related to adjustment, and it suggests that further explorations of changes in children's gendered behavior at different timescales are warranted.

In sum, DS approaches have potential for providing a new lens for viewing gender development. DS approaches adopt unique views of context, focus on describing variability, provide information about patterning of behavior over both short and longer developmental time frames, and suggest new techniques and different methods of data analyses and collection. Adopting a DS approach also has the potential to provide an all-encompassing theoretical umbrella and deflates controversy surrounding the roles of nature and nurture in gender development. At a broader level, DS approaches crosscut disciplinary boundaries, bridging methods and concepts across disciplines. Highlights of the appeal of exploring DS approaches include discovering new answers to old problems, recognizing new types of questions, and ultimately advancing alternative accounts of gender development.

CONCLUSIONS

Children's gender development unfolds over long time frames of average or normative change, over shorter time frames such as the emergence of relatively stable individual preferences in with whom or with what to play during the early school years, and over much shorter time frames—micro timescales—such as when an individual child selects an outfit to wear or carries on an interaction with a peer over a toy. In the present review, we illustrated each of these time frames in terms of a few specific current, and sometimes controversial, topics in the field of gender development.

First, we took the long view, examining normative changes from infancy through middle adolescence in key aspects of children's beliefs and behaviors regarding gender distinctions. In this way, we were able to speak to the question of temporal ordering of different elements of gender development and, thereby, analyze certain controversies within the field about how early children understand gender distinctions and how that understanding relates to behavior. Moreover, the analysis of temporal ordering helps generate hypotheses for future research about what indications of gender prejudice, such as ingroup favoritism, might represent for young children who can understand gender stereotypes but not necessarily status inequities between the sexes.

Normative trends involve only averages across individuals; they do not, however, inform us about whether there are stable individual differences in expressions of gender typing. Whether there are continuities in individual gender typing over time has been another important but controversial topic in gender development. For instance, identifying stability in sex segregation would suggest that individual children vary in their preferences and that sex segregation is not simply due to situational variability or normative constraints as had previously been assumed. Thus, in the second section, we reviewed studies of longitudinal change within individuals over shorter periods of time. We discovered that there is more stability in sex segregation and gender-typed activities and preferences than previously thought. However, future research must determine how long stability exists and over which periods of development.

Another advantage of normative trends is that they indicate at what points developmentally it would be useful to search for stable individual differences, such as after periods of rapid change, as when children first enter preschool. In the third section, we described a new tool for taking advantage of such opportunities. Dynamic systems theory provides a coherent set of principles and methods for examining change over differing time frames. Socialization, cognitive, and biological processes can be explored over multiple time frames using techniques that focus on temporal patterning of behavior. Dynamic systems theory complements existing theories by providing more nuanced views of gender at different timescales. For instance, sex segregation exhibits both variability and stability from a dynamic perspective. Particularly intriguing is the potential for small-scale patterns to provide insights into large-scale patterns. For systems that exhibit self-similarity, a pattern that appears at a microlevel time frame mimics the pattern found at a more macrolevel time frame. Considering similarity across timescales is an idea that, in our view, has no counterpart in developmental research or theorizing.

Developmental research on gender has primarily focused attention on the longer timescales to assess normative developmental patterning. Less attention has been focused on shorter timescales to explore individual patterns and stability of behavior, and very little has been done to explore gender development in terms of micro timescales. We hope our review has made it clear that comprehensive explanations of gender need to consider each of these timescale perspectives.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This review was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (1 R01 HD45816) and a grant from the T. Denny Sanford Foundation awarded to Carol Lynn Martin; a National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Research Grant (1 R01 HD04994) to Diane N. Ruble; and a National Science Foundation IRADS grant (0721383). We are very grateful to Faith Greulich for assistance in preparing the manuscript and to Nia Amazeen, Matt DiDonato, May Ling Halim, Tom Hollenstein, and Kristina Zosuls for comments on an earlier draft.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT The authors are not aware of any biases that might be perceived as affecting the objectivity of this review.

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Social norms, gender and development: A review of research and practice

Publication year: 2023.

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This discussion paper provides a “state of the evidence” on social norms change within the field of gender and development. The paper presents findings from a scoping review of studies and evaluations of programmatic interventions to shift social norms, as well as insights from a broader body of evidence tracing how social change happens. It answers four questions:

• What are social norms?
• How do social norms change?
• How are social norms measured?
• What role (if any) should global development organizations play in shifting social norms?

In doing so, the paper traverses a divided evidence base that, on the one hand, does not adequately reflect the varied social, political, and economic drivers behind historical changes in social norms, including the role of women’s and feminist movements, and on the other, grasps the complexity of social norms but does not lend itself to clearly defined theories of action.

Key lessons include:

• Social norms should be approached as one lever in a broader toolbox of programmatic options.
• Feminist and women’s rights movements are key agents of social norms change.
• Sustainable investments in social norms programming requires shifts within development practice itself, including how change is measured.

This paper is part of the  “UN Women discussion paper series” .

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The Latest Evidence on Gender and Development

David evans.

Senior Fellow, Center for Global Development

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Gender and Development

• First Online: 22 February 2022

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• Shelley Feldman 4  

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This chapter offers a brief historical overview of research focused on gender relations and practices within nongovernmental organizations (NGO) and state institutions, as well as national policies that have unfolded in Bangladesh. Research in the early years of Bangladesh’s independence focused on rural relations, household and reproductive labor, and the norms of purdah that guided programs and projects that sought to improve women’s lives and livelihoods. With the rise of the garment manufacturing sector in the 1980s, women’s entry into the urban labor market shifted attention to new issues related to the transformation of women’s work within the changing urban landscape and labor market. This new opportunity for women also drew attention to changing household and family relations and women’s increased mobility. Significantly, the garment sector is credited with helping to realize economic growth in the country, where Bangladesh is now positioned as a lower middle-income country, even as women’s central contribution to this effort often goes unremarked.

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This is, arguably, a narrow focus, limited to research that is directly tied to development issues. It does not include the rich and growing literature that offers gender and feminist analyses of, for example, nationalism, international relations, or religion.

UN Development Programme. 2010 Human Development Report: Asian countries lead development progress over 40 years. http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/PR6-HDR10-RegRBAP-E-rev5-sm.pdf

In 1977, the World Bank appointed a Women in Development Adviser and in 1984 mandated that its programs consider women’s issues. Reflecting the shift from WID to GAD, a 1994 policy paper sought to question policy and institutional constraints that maintained gender disparities and limited the effectiveness of development programs.

WID scholars and practitioners, for example, pressured US policy makers to include women in their activities, which resulted in the 1973 Percy Amendment to the US Foreign Assistance Act, requiring USAID’s programs to support efforts to integrate women into their respective national economies. To be clear, this presumed that integration meant, first, recognizing women as members of the body politic, and, second, neither understanding their exclusion nor challenging the development approach that excluded them.

During this period, academic women formed Women for Women , a research and advocacy group that examined women’s education (Islam, 1982 ), health and medical practices (Islam, 1980 , 1985 ), gender violence (Jahan, 1983 , 1988a , 1988b ), and women’s economic position (Huq et al., 1983 ; Jahan, 1975 ).

This was written for Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN).

In moral regulation and rule I include critical engagements with the symbolic and practical work that purdah or credit, among other practices, produce, enable, and constrain.

This historicization of gender and development highlights the long-term process of women’s engagement in in-kind and wage work, a concern elided in most research on women yet central to critiques of the assumptions of the WID/WAD/GAD approaches to understanding gender relations. It is also noteworthy that these studies were supported by the Ministries of Agricultural and Local Government and Rural Development and funded with external financial support.

There is a vast literature on micro-credit and finance, far too broad to elaborate here, taking multiple sides in the debate on its value for empowering women or indebting women, focusing on credit or on patriarchy, and examining whether credit decreases or increases domestic violence against women. See, for example, Kabeer ( 1998 ), Karim ( 2008 , 2011 , 2014 ), Nijera Kori ( 1990 ), Goetz and Gupta ( 1996 ), Hashemi et al. ( 1996 ) and Rozario ( 2007 ).

Other NGOs also advocate for such freedoms but do not work as women’s or feminist institutions (see, e.g., Odhikar, Bangladesh).

Two excellent collections responding to Rana Plaza are Saxena ( 2020 ) and a special issue of Development and Change , Volume 50, Issue 5.

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Acknowledgment

This chapter is part of a project that has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 665958.

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Feldman, S. (2022). Gender and Development. In: Khondker, H., Muurlink, O., Bin Ali, A. (eds) The Emergence of Bangladesh. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5521-0_12

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World Bank Group Gender Equality Strategy (FY16-23)

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Gender Development

Learning Objectives: Gender Development

• What is the difference between “sex” and “gender”?
• Be able to define multiple facets of a society’s “gender curriculum,” including gender roles and gender stereotyping.
• What is “psychological androgyny” and how is it connected to adjustment, flexibility, and well-being?
• What meta-theory underlies each theory?
• How does a dynamic systems approach incorporate all four of these theories?
• What are the six major age-graded milestones in gender development?
• Name the six areas in which gender differences in psychological functioning have typically been found. How big are these differences?

The task of gender development is a complex biopsychosocial process that takes place in concert with societal stereotypes and the local social contexts they shape. The empirical picture is not complete, but it seems that gender identities are complex internalized cognitive and emotional representations that children and youth construct for themselves over time, based on the biological and temperamental givens that each one comes with and their cumulative interactions with the social worlds of family, school, peers, and society. Much of gender development seems to reflect cognitive changes that allow children to successively realize and try to make sense of different aspects of gender identity, but the whole kit-n-caboodle seems to be built on a foundation created by biological or neurophysiological givens. We will trace the main age-graded milestones that children experience in constructing their own gender identities, in order to suggest ways in which parents (and other adults) can support children’s and adolescents’ healthy development.

Gender development is a fascinating process because it is deeply rooted in biology, profoundly shaped by societal expectations, and actively constructed by individuals over and over again at different developmental levels. All theories of gender identity posit that the processes shaping its development are both biological and societal, so it is important to get straight on those biological and social processes before we turn to development. This is also a fascinating historical moment to study gender development because science is revealing more and more about its biological and psychological complexity, just as society is undergoing a gender revolution in which people are questioning, exploring, and recognizing a much broader spectrum of gender and sexual identities.

Biopsychosocial Processes of Gender

The terms sex and gender are often used interchangeably, although they have different meanings. In this context, sex refers to biological categories (traditionally, either male or female) as defined by physical differences in genetic composition and in reproductive anatomy and function . On the other hand, gender refers to the cultural, social, and psychological meanings that are associated with particular biopsychosocial categories, like masculinity and femininity ( Wood & Eagly, 2002 ), which vary depending on other intersectional factors, like race, ethnicity, and culture.

Historically, the terms gender and sex have been used interchangeably. Because of this, gender is often viewed as a binary – a person is either male or female – and it is assumed that a person’s gender matches their biological sex. However, recent research challenges both of those assumptions. Although most people identify with the gender that matches their natal sex (cisgender), some of the population (estimates range from 0.6 to 3 percent) identify with a gender that does not match the sex they were assigned at birth (transgender; Flores, Herman, Gates, & Brown, 2016; see box). For example, an individual assigned as male based on biological characteristics may identify as female, or vice versa. Researchers have also been increasingly examining the long-held assumption that biological sex is binary (e.g., Carothers & Reis, 2013; Hyde, Bigler, Joel, Tate, & van Anders, 2019). Although it has always been clear that there are more than two biological sexes, for example individuals who are intersex (see box), more recently scientists have identified dozens of markers of sexuality outside of the reproductive system (e.g., genetic, epigenetic, hormonal, endocrine, neurophysiological, psychological, social). People have a range of different combinations of these characteristics, suggesting that biological sex is more complex and multifaceted than a binary category.

Beyond the Binary in Biological Sex Some individuals are intersex or sex diverse ; that is born with either an absence or some combination of male and female reproductive organs, sex hormones, or sex chromosomes (Jarne & Auld, 2006). In humans, intersex individuals make up a small but significant proportion of world’s population; with recent estimates ranging between .05 and 2 percent (Blackless et al., 2000). There are dozens of intersex conditions, and intersex individuals demonstrate some of the diverse variations of biological sex. Some examples of intersex conditions include:

• Turner syndrome or the absence of, or an imperfect, second X chromosome

• Congenital adrenal hyperplasia or a genetic disorder caused by an increased production of androgens

• Androgen insensitivity syndrome or when a person has one X and one Y chromosome, but is resistant to the male hormones or androgens

Greater attention to the rights of children born intersex is occurring in the medical field, and intersex children and their parents should work closely with specialists to ensure these children develop positive gender identities.

Research has also begun to conceptualize gender in ways beyond the gender binary. Genderqueer or gender nonbinary are umbrella terms used to describe a wide range of individuals who do not identify with and/or conform to the gender binary. These terms encompass a variety of more specific terms that individuals may use to describe themselves. Some common terms are genderfluid, agender, and bigender. An individual who is genderfluid may identify as male, female, both, or neither at different times and in different circumstances. An individual who is agender may have no gender or describe themselves as having a neutral gender, while bigender individuals identify as two genders.

It is important to remember that sex and gender do not always match and that gender is not always binary; however, a large majority of prior research examining gender has not made these distinctions. As such, many of the following sections will discuss gender as a binary. Throughout, we will consider the development of “gender-nonconforming” children. This is a broad and heterogeneous group of children and adults whose gender development does not fit within societal dictates. Because societal expectations are so narrow, there are many ways not to conform, and we mention a few here, just to give a flavor of these alternative pathways. All of them are healthy and positive, but children and adolescents who follow these pathways need social validation and protection from gender discrimination and bullying. Activists are leading global movements that will push society to reinvent its views of the wide variety of sexualities and gender identities that have always been with us.

Transgender Children

Many young children do not conform to the gender roles modeled by the culture and push back against assigned roles. However, a small percentage of children actively reject the toys, clothing, and anatomy of their assigned sex and state they prefer the toys, clothing, and anatomy of the opposite sex. A recent study suggests that approximately three  percent of youth identify as transgender or identifying with a gender different from their natal sex (Rider, McMorris, Gower, Coleman, & Eisenberg, 2018). Many transgender adults report that they identified with the opposite gender as soon as they began talking (Russo, 2016). Some of these children may experience gender dysphoria , or distress accompanying a mismatch between one’s gender identity and biological sex (APA, 2013), while other children do not experience discomfort regarding their gender identity.

As they grow up, some transgender individuals alter their bodies through medical interventions, such as surgery and hormonal therapy, so that their physical being is better aligned with their gender identity. However, not all transgender individuals choose to alter their bodies or physically transition. Many maintain their original anatomy but present themselves to society as a different gender, often by adopting the dress, hairstyle, mannerisms, or other characteristics typically assigned to a certain gender. It is important to note that people who cross-dress, or wear clothing that is traditionally assigned to the opposite gender, such as transvestites, drag kings, and drag queens, do not necessarily identify as transgender (although some do). People often confuse the term transvestite , which is the practice of dressing and acting in a style or manner traditionally associated with another sex (APA, 2013) with transgender. Cross-dressing is typically a form of self-expression, entertainment, or personal style, and not necessarily an expression of one’s gender identity.

Sexual Orientation

A person’s sexual orientation is their emotional and sexual attraction to a particular gender. It is a personal quality that inclines people to feel romantic or sexual attraction (or a combination of these) to persons of a given sex or gender. According to the American Psychological Association (APA) (2016), sexual orientation also refers to a person’s sense of identity based on those attractions, related behaviors, and membership in a community of others who share those attractions. Sexual orientation is independent of gender; for example, a transgender person may identify as heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, pansexual, polysexual, asexual, or any other kind of sexuality, just like a cisgender person.

Sexual Orientation on a Continuum.  Sexuality researcher Alfred Kinsey was among the first to conceptualize sexuality as a continuum rather than a strict dichotomy of gay or straight. To classify this continuum of heterosexuality and homosexuality, Kinsey et al. (1948) created a seven-point rating scale that ranged from exclusively heterosexual to exclusively homosexual. Research conducted over several decades has supported this idea that sexual orientation ranges along a continuum, from exclusive attraction to the opposite sex/gender to exclusive attraction to the same sex/gender (Carroll, 2016).

However, sexual orientation can be defined in many ways. Heterosexuality , which is often referred to as being straight, is attraction to individuals of the opposite sex/gender , while homosexuality , being gay or lesbian, is attraction to individuals of one’s own sex/gender. Bisexuality was a term traditionally used to refer to attraction to individuals of either male or female sex, but it has recently been used in nonbinary models of sex and gender (i.e., models that do not assume there are only two sexes or two genders) to refer to attraction to any sex or gender. Alternative terms such as pansexuality and polysexuality have also been developed, referring to attraction to all sexes/genders and attraction to multiple sexes/genders, respectively (Carroll, 2016).

Asexuality refers to having no sexual attraction to any sex/gender . According to Bogaert (2015) about one percent of the population is asexual. Being asexual is not due to any physical problems, and the lack of interest in sex does not necessarily cause the individual any distress. Asexuality is being researched as a distinct sexual orientation.

Societal Expectations about Gender: Gender Roles and Stereotypes

Children develop within cultures that have a “gender curriculum” that prescribes what it means to be male and female. These include gender roles and gender stereotypes. Gender roles are the expectations associated with being male or female . Children learn at a young age that there are distinct behaviors and activities deemed to be appropriate for boys and for girls. These roles are acquired through socialization, a process through which children learn to behave in a particular way as dictated by societal values, beliefs, and attitudes. Gender stereotyping goes one step further: it involves overgeneralizing about the attitudes, traits, or behavior patterns of women or men . For boys and men, expectations and stereotypes include characteristics like “tough” or “brave” or “assertive”, and for girls and women characteristics like “nice” and “nurturing” and “affectionate.”  You might be saying to yourself, “but I can be most of those things, sometimes”—and you are right. People of all genders frequently enact roles that are stereotypically assigned to only men or women.

Psychological androgyny . One area of research on gender expectations has examined differences between people who identify with typically masculine or feminine gender roles. Researchers gave men and women lists of positive masculine traits (emphasizing agency and assertiveness) and feminine traits (emphasizing gentleness, compassion, and awareness of others’ feelings), and asked them to rate the extent to which those traits applied to them. Some people reported identifying highly with mostly masculine traits or identifying highly with mostly feminine traits, but some people did not identify strongly with either (this group was called “undifferentiated”), and a final group identified strongly with both masculine and feminine traits; this last group was called “androgynous” (Bem, 1977).   Psychological androgyny is when people display both traditionally male and female gender role characteristics – people who are both strong and emotionally expressive, both caring and confident.

Which group reported the best psychological functioning? On the one hand, those with more “masculine” traits (the masculine and androgynous groups) tend to have higher self-esteem and lower internalizing symptoms (Boldizar, 1991; DiDonato & Berenbaum 2011). (This may be because “masculine” traits like being self-reliant, self-assured, and assertive are closely related to these outcomes.)  On the other hand, there is a cost to missing out on “feminine” traits as well, since things like relationships, emotions, and communication are central to human well-being. In general, studies find that psychologically androgynous people, who report high levels of both male and female characteristics are more adaptable and flexible (Huyck, 1996; Taylor & Hall, 1982), and seem to fare better in general, when considering many areas of adjustment (compared to those with masculine or feminine traits alone; Pauletti, et al. 2017).  It may be no surprise that, in general, it is most adaptive to be able to draw on the whole spectrum of human traits (Berk, 2014).

Processes of Gender Development

Four major psychological theories highlight multiple explanatory processes through which children develop gender identities. Most of these theories focus on gender typing , which depicts the processes through which children become aware of their gender , and adopt the values, attributes, objects, and activities of members of the gender they identify as their own .

• A primary perspective on gender development is provided by social learning theory . Consistent with mechanistic meta-theories, this theory argues that behavior is learned through observation, modeling, reinforcement, and punishment (Bandura, 1997). Each society has its own “gender curriculum,” which leads to differential expectations and treatment starting at birth. Children are rewarded and reinforced for behaving in concordance with gender roles and punished for breaking gender roles. Social learning theory also posits that children learn many of their gender roles by observing and modeling the behavior of older children and adults, and in doing so, learn the behaviors that are appropriate for each gender. In this process, fathers seem to play a particularly important role.
• A second perspective, consistent with maturational meta-theories, focuses on biological and neurophysiological factors that are present at birth. This theory underscores the idea, present in research on gender expression, sexual orientation, and gender identity, that children come with a firm biological foundation for their gender and sexual preferences; these include genes, chromosomes, and hormones (Roselli, 2018). Like temperament, infants seem to come with “gender stuff” that, depending how well it matches current social categories, can influence how they respond to expectations and pressures for conformity.
• A third perspective, consistent with organismic meta-theories, focuses on cognitive developmental theory. This approach holds that children’s understanding about gender and its meaning depend completely on their current stage of cognitive development. At birth, children have no idea that gender as a category even exists or that they may belong to one of them. As their developmental capacities grow, toddlers and then young children can successively represent and understand more and more complex aspects of gender-related identity. These cognitive stages provide some of the clearest age-graded milestones in the development of gender identity, such as the emergence of gender awareness (i.e., t he recognition of one’s own gender ) and gender constancy (i.e., the belief that gender is a fixed characteristic ), which are described in more detail below.
• A fourth major theory, which emphasizes the active role of the child in constructing a gender identity, is called gender schema theory . Consistent with contextualist meta-theories, gender schema theory argues that children are active learners who essentially socialize themselves. In this case, children actively organize the behavior, activities, and attributes they observe into gender categories, which are known as schemas . These schemas then affect what children notice and remember later. People of all ages are more likely to remember schema-consistent behaviors and attributes than those that are schema-inconsistent. So, when they think of firefighters, people are more likely to remember men, and forget women. They also misremember schema-inconsistent information. If research participants are shown pictures of someone standing at the stove, they are more likely to remember the person to be cooking if depicted as a woman, and the person to be repairing the stove if depicted as a man. By remembering only schema-consistent information, gender schemas are strengthened over time.

All four processes highlighted in these theories play a role in gender development, which can be considered a biopsychosocial process: (1) as depicted by social learning theory, it is shaped by the society’s gender curriculum, through processes of observation, modeling, reinforcement, and punishment; (2) as depicted by biological theories, it is built on a strong neurophysiological foundation of preferences in gender expression, sexual orientation, and gender identity; (3) as explained by cognitive developmental theory, children’s understanding of gender shifts regularly as the complexity of their cognition grows; and (4) as explained by gender schema theory, a child’s gender identity is a work in progress, actively constructed through their own efforts and engagement with their social worlds.

Most recently, researchers have drawn on broader more integrative dynamic systems approaches to understand the development of gender identity (e.g., Fausto-Sterling, 2012; Martin & Ruble, 2010). These approaches attempt to explain how complex patterns of gender-related thought, behavior, and experience undergo qualitative shifts , including disruption, transformation, and reorganization, during different developmental windows. Researchers argue that “children’s ongoing physical interactions and psychological experiences with parents, peers, and culture fundamentally shape and reshape their experience of gender developmentally, as different brain and body systems couple and uncouple over time… In the end, gender is not a stable achievement, but rather ‘a pattern in time’ (Fausto-Sterling, 2012, p. 405) continually building on prior dynamics and adapting to current environments” (Diamond, p. 113).

Age-graded Milestones in Gender Development

1. Intrinsic gender and temperament. Research seems to suggest that newborns come with a neurophysiological package of “gender stuff” that provides an internal anchor for their preferences—including (at least) gender identity and sexual orientation, and perhaps temperamental characteristics, such as activity level, aggression, effortful control, and emotional reactivity. These internal anchors and expressive preferences seem to be part of an individual’s core identity . Scientists are not exactly sure what determines these intrinsic anchors; so far evidence suggests both genetic influences (e.g., as seen in twin studies, which find that sexual orientation and sexual non-conformity run in families; Van Beijsterveldt, Hudziak, & Boomsma, 2006) and the influence of the prenatal environment (e.g., maternal levels of androgens, antibodies to male hormones; Cohen-Bendahan, van de Beek, & Berenbaum, 2005).

Although each individual’s core identity likely exhibits some degree of malleability, which may make it easier for children to conform to society’s dictates, LGBTQ+ advocates and parents of gender-expansive children are rock-solid on one thing: These core identities are often clear to children and they cannot be ignored, subverted, or transformed through external pressures (Besser et al., 2006). Moreover, it violates children’s rights as humans , when parents or other members of society attempt to do so.

Development of Sexual Orientation

According to current scientific understanding, individuals are usually aware of their sexual orientation between middle childhood and early adolescence. However, this is not always the case, and some do not become aware of their sexual orientation until much later in life. It is not necessary to participate in sexual activity to be aware of these emotional, romantic, and physical attractions; people can be celibate and still recognize their sexual orientation. Some researchers argue that sexual orientation is not static and inborn but is instead fluid and changeable throughout the lifespan.

There is no scientific consensus regarding the exact reasons why an individual holds a particular sexual orientation. Research has examined possible biological, developmental, social, and cultural influences on sexual orientation, but there has been no evidence that links sexual orientation to only one factor (APA, 2016). However, evidence for biological explanations, including genetics, birth order, and hormones, will be summarized since many scientists argue that biological processes occurring during the embryonic and and early postnatal life play the central organizing role in sexual orientation (Balthazart, 2018).

Genetics.  Using both twin and familial studies, heredity provides one biological explanation for same-sex orientation. Bailey and Pillard (1991) studied pairs of male twins and found that the concordance rate for identical twins was 52%, while the rate for fraternal twins was only 22%. Bailey, Pillard, Neale, and Agyei (1993) studied female twins and found a similar difference with a concordance rate of 48% for identical twins and 16% for fraternal twins. Schwartz, Kim, Kolundzija, Rieger, & Sanders (2010) found that gay men had more gay male relatives than straight men, and sisters of gay men were more likely to be lesbians than sisters of straight men.

Fraternal Birth Order.  The fraternal birth order effect indicates that the probability of a boy identifying as gay increases for each older brother born to the same mother (Balthazart, 2018; Blanchard, 2001). According to Bogaret et al. “the increased incidence of homosexuality in males with older brothers results from a progressive immunization of the mother against a male specific cell-adhesion protein that plays a key role in cell-cell interactions, specifically in the process of synapse formation,” (as cited in Balthazart, 2018, p. 234). A meta-analysis indicated that the fraternal birth order effect explains the sexual orientation of between 15% and 29% of gay men.

Hormones.  Excess or deficient exposure to hormones during prenatal development has also been theorized as an explanation for sexual orientation. One-third of females exposed to abnormal amounts of prenatal androgens, a condition called congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), identify as bisexual or lesbian (Cohen-Bendahan, van de Beek, & Berenbaum, 2005). In contrast, too little exposure to prenatal androgens may affect male sexual orientation by not masculinizing the male brain (Carlson, 2011).

2. Gender awareness . At about age 2-3, toddlers’ cognitive development allows them to begin to create representational categories to organize their conceptual thinking about the world. Gender is one of these categories. The ability to classify oneself as male or female is called “ gender awareness .” Children’s biological and sexual profiles are built during conception and prenatal development, so they are typically assigned a biological sex at birth, but before toddlers develop the cognitive capacity to categorize, they are blissfully unaware of their gender. Although they have likely been receiving differential treatment from family members since they were born, it is not until they are able to recognize this category and apply it to themselves, that gender becomes psychologically real. Once small children become aware of gender categories, they begin taking notes about the differences between people in these two categories: names, colors, toys, jewelry, clothes, hair length, voices, behavior, and so on.

Baby X. It is important to note that, in a world without a gender curriculum, the list children would make of the differences between males and females would be very short: It would include only secondary sexual characteristics of adults and adolescents who are post-puberty. Babies and pre-pubescent children would not be distinguishable by gender– because they have no secondary sexual characteristics. We can imagine a thought experiment in which no one is subject to a gender curriculum. Imagine that each of us receives an envelope at birth with information about our biologically assigned sex inside, but we are not allowed to open it until it becomes relevant, that is, until we reach puberty. In this thought experiment, our parents and society would have to raise us so we would be ready to take on either gender role. They would have to select gender-neutral names, colors for the nursery and our clothes, toys, and so on. Many students find this idea intriguing but also a bit unsettling.

A similar thought experiment was described in an article in 1972 in Ms. Magazine entitled “The Story of X,” which describes parents who decided to raise their child without revealing its gender to the world (Gould, 1972). Several real parents, in Europe and the US, have also decided to raise their children without revealing their gender. It is fascinating to see how this kind of decision has been received by the media and by other parents. In each case, the firestorm of media attention was so dramatic that parents decided to withdraw their stories (and their children) from scrutiny by the press. Although developmentalists (and parents) can argue about the decision to shield children from society’s stereotypes as opposed to helping them recognize, counter, and transcend these stereotypes, the hysteria surrounding decisions to conceal a child’s gender are very telling about society’s view of the centrality of gender to every child’s identity, and society’s “right to know.”

Gender malleability . When “gender awareness” emerges during early childhood, a key part of the gender schema young children construct includes the notion that any gender categories that they observe are malleable . Because small children in the preoperational stage of cognitive development are not capable of inferring the essential underlying characteristics of gender (just as they cannot infer the defining characteristics of other categories, like animate objects), they see gender assignments as temporary and changeable . Most young children believe that a person can change from female to male (or vice versa) by cutting their hair or changing their clothes. Little boys often report that they will grow up to be Moms with babies in their tummies; little girls that they will grow up to be Dads. Many adults can remember this state of awareness. For example, one of our students told us about her preschool class in which all the 4-year-olds were boys; she thought that when she turned 4, she would also become a boy. She was looking forward to the transformation, the same way children look forward to getting taller or older or better at riding a bike.

Because many children discuss their desires (and plans) to cross gender lines, parents of gender-non-conforming or transgender children often see these kinds of declarations as a “phase” that children will get over. Parents cannot easily tell when children’s statements reflect real underlying convictions that they do not internally identify with the gender roles or expressions that have been assigned to them. However, some gender variant or transgender adults report that their real gender identity was already very clear to them at this age, and parents of such children also confirm that their children were letting them know through word and deed. In fact, the clarity and insistence on a gender variant identity at such a young age (and in the face of such enormous pressure to conform) provides some of the most convincing evidence that children come pre-loaded with their own gender and sexual orientation. At the same time, this narrative does not describe the only pathway. Some gender variant adults report that it was not until they were much older (and sometimes with the aid of therapeutic support) that they were able to understand what was/is happening to them in terms of gender identity and development.

Gender expression. The specific gender differences that show up in a child’s gender schema at this age depend on the local social context that the child experiences, which is why many parents decide to minimize young children’s exposure to gender-stereotypes . At the same time, for parents who do expect their children to conform to cultural prescriptions for gender-typical dress, toys, and activities, this is the age at which some parents of gender non-conforming or gender-variant children may begin to notice that their child has not gotten the cultural memo. Parents report unease about their boys’ exploration of female-stereotyped clothes (such as dresses, tutus, tiaras), accessories (such as high heels, purses, barrettes), toys (especially dolls and doll clothes), and colors—which is why these children have sometimes been dubbed “pink boys.”

Note that there has been no parallel study of “blue girls,” because tomboys do not as frequently alarm their parents at this age. Girls who play with masculine toys often do not face the same ridicule from adults or peers that boys face when they want to play with feminine toys (Leaper, 2015). Girls also face less ridicule when playing a masculine role (like doctor) as opposed to a boy who wants to take a feminine role (like caregiver). For an interesting segment on CNN, see “ Why girls can be boyish but boys can’t be girlish .” As explained by Padawer (2012), “That’s because girls gain status by moving into “boy” space, while boys are tainted by the slightest whiff of femininity. ‘There’s a lot more privilege to being a man in our society,’ says Diane Ehrensaft, a psychologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who supports allowing children to be what she calls gender creative. ‘When a boy wants to act like a girl, it subconsciously shakes our foundation, because why would someone want to be the lesser gender?’ Boys are up to seven times as likely as girls to be referred to gender clinics for psychological evaluations. Sometimes the boys’ violation is as mild as wanting a Barbie for Christmas. By comparison, most girls referred to gender clinics are far more extreme in their atypicality: they want boy names, boy pronouns and, sometimes, boy bodies.”

Creation of a “middle space .” One surprisingly simple rule for parents who wish to encourage gender exploration and expansion is that “Colors are just colors, clothes are just clothes, and toys are just toys,” meaning that these societal prescriptions are not developmentally real or meaningful. Researchers refer to the overlap between male and female expectations and stereotypes as “the middle space,” and suggest that an important role for adults to take on is the expansion of this “middle space.” With the sanctioning of the “tomboy” identity, society has begun to allow girls to take up residence in this middle space. Its expansion for girls and its creation for boys are next steps for all of us. In general, the wider the gender expression enjoyed by children of all genders (e.g., girls in sports, boys in cooking, and so on), the healthier everyone’s gender identity development is likely to be.

3. Gender constancy. When children reach the concrete operational stage of cognitive development (between ages 5 and 7), they are able to infer that, according to societal dictates, the essential defining feature of maleness and femaleness is, traditionally, based on genitalia. This is also the age at which children are able to infer the inverse principle: If genitalia dictate gender, then all males by necessity have penises and all females have vaginas–which they are often happy to announce at Kindergarten or in other public places. Following from this discovery, children also begin to grasp the fact that their assignment into gender categories is permanent, unchangeable, or constant.

The realization that one is a life-time member of the “boys club” or the “girls club” typically leads to greater interest and more focus on the membership requirements for their particular club. In stereotyped social contexts, children’s attitude toward conformity to “gender-appropriate” markers may shift from descriptive to prescriptive , in which children so highly identify with markers from their own club, that they begin to denigrate or become repelled by markers of the “wrong” club. These behaviors become visible in boy’s resistance to being asked to wear “girl colors” or play “girl games.” It is also noticeable in children’s attempts to enforce these categories on others—either directly through instructions (“you have to ride a girl’s bike”) and statements of fact (“this slide is only for boys,”), or indirectly through teasing, taunting, criticism, and ridicule towards any child who crosses the lines.

For gender-nonconforming children or transgender children, this is an age where the psychological costs of society’s gender boxes and lines can become apparent. At this age, children can start to sense (or clearly know) that they have been permanently assigned to a biological sex that comes with a narrow gender expression or an eventually gendered-body whose physicality is not consonant with their own internal needs or identity. If so, then confusion or (more or less strong) feelings of gender dissonance may emerge. In the clinical literature, these feelings are sometimes labeled “gender dysphoria” to indicate the sadness and desperation that children may feel when they realize that they have been permanently assigned to the “wrong” gender expression, gender identity, and/or biological sex.

The dangers of pushing children into boxes . LGBTQ advocates point out how crucial it is to create some space for children around these issues to allow them to figure out for themselves where they stand on the many dimensions of gender. For some children, exploring gender expression is just that—they need to spend time in the “middle space.” If we have to categorize, these children are gender non-conforming in expression, but gender-conforming in identity and sexual orientation. This can be seen in how annoyed some “pink boys” who wear dresses and long hair become when people mistake them for girls (Padawer, 2012). When asked why this was so annoying, one little guy named P.J. told the reporter about a boy in his third-grade class who is a soccer fanatic. “He comes to school every day in a soccer jersey and sweat pants,” P. J. said, “but that doesn’t make him a professional soccer player.” It’s as if these children need to remind adults about the essential defining features of male and female biological sex. P.J. could say, “Duh—I still have a penis, so I am still a boy.”

For other children, exploring gender expression is the beginning of the realization that their sexual orientation may not be heterosexual, that they may be gay, lesbian, and/or bisexual. Some writers have tried to quantify the numbers of gender-nonconforming boys, suggesting that 2-7% of boys display nonconforming gender behavior, and of these 60-80% grow up to be gay men (Padawer, 2012). The same tendency is suggested for lesbian women, most of whom identified as “tomboys.” It seems that these numbers would be very difficult to confirm, given that more than 75% of women identify as “tomboys” and most of them are heterosexual, and given the stringent attempts to shove gender nonconforming boys back into their boxes which means that we are only observing the most determined and tenacious nonconforming boys.

For some children, gender non-conforming behavior is the beginning of the realization that they are transgender. Some children are very clear on this early on, and insist on names, pronouns, and gender expressions that are consonant with their own internal convictions about their actual gender. Other children need the opportunity to explore and question, and they may not become clear on their sexual orientation or transgender status until they reach puberty or later.

Parents of gender non-conforming children . Gender non-conforming children may be more or less clear about why they need to explore the “middle space,” but some parents are just confused. Most of us have been fully socialized in the current gender curriculum and so any activity outside those lines and boxes may seem deeply “wrong” or even “unnatural.” That is always the way with strong societal norms. In the 1800s, if a woman showed a glimpse of ankle, she was considered to be immoral; in the 1920s, women wearing pants and short hair were seen as “unnatural;” in the 1960s, boys whose hair touched their collars were suspended from school.

  “It’s not their job to make sure we’re all comfortable.” — Parent of a gender non-conforming child.

Gender non-conforming children provide their adults with the opportunity and motivation to improve society in ways that are more positive for everyone. The need that all children have for their parents’ full love and support encourages adults to grow outside of their comfort zones, and to develop into better parents. As Brill and Pepper (2008) point out, “It takes courage to follow the path of love.” They provide many good strategies and resources for parents who are trying to follow this path. They point out that some of parents’ reluctance can be based on their fear of others looking down on them and criticizing their parenting. We think that many parents can relate to this fear—even in little ways, such as when a child throws a fit in the store or we are called into school for a child’s infraction. We are worried that our parenting is inadequate or that others will think we are inferior parents. That is one important reason why Brill and Pepper (2008) insist that parents get support for themselves (from therapists or groups of like-minded parents) so the they will be able in turn  to provide acceptance and support for their children.

Some of the reluctance of parents of transgender children can be based in grief over the loss of their previous child. We think that many parents can also relate to this feeling—when we look at photos of our children as babies and young children, we miss those darling little versions of our children. At the same time, we know that they are still there in the core identity of our older children. And parents of gender variant children can be comforted with the idea that the essence of their child, their child’s core, is still there, and still intact. Most parents also feel vindicated when they see their child’s distress and depression lift (some children are actually suicidal), and watch them bloom in their new affirmed identity, showing joy and delight in the free expression of their authentic selves.

Dealing with discrimination and bullying . An important part of parents’ reluctance to support gender variant children can be based on fears about the reactions their children may encounter in school, church, or other public places. Parents are not wrong about these reactions, and their desire to protect their children is understandable. These same issues have been faced by parents of children who belong to racial, ethnic, and cultural minorities—who also have to face messages of hate, discrimination, and oppression. One difference may be that some parents feel that their gender variant child could avoid all these upsetting experiences if only they would conform, whereas most Black parents do not see the solution to racism as encouraging their children to “pass” as white. Research on parenting children from racial and ethnic minority backgrounds suggests that the most helpful approach involves proud support for a child’s minority status and engaged participation with minority communities, combined with realistic training about how to deal constructively with incidents of intolerance. Some parenting guides suggest strategies organized around the notions of: (1) Talk: speak up for what you believe; (2) Walk: find a safe space; and (3) Squawk: find someone who will support you.

At the same time, many parents may surprise themselves by becoming staunch advocates for their children’s rights and activists in the larger societal movement for gender respect and equality. Luckily, as parents work hard to see that their children are treated fairly everywhere they go, there are good programs that can be used to improve schools. These programs train teachers, administrators, and staff how to celebrate and support gender diversity. The good news is that such trainings can have positive effects for everyone involved.

4. Gender latency. A fourth major developmental milestone takes place during middle childhood, sometimes referred to as the “latency” stage or phase, and loosely modeled after Freud’s description of children’s psychosexual stages. During this period (about ages 8 or 9 until puberty), children seem to be less active in working out issues explicitly connected to gender or sexual identity. In general, children seem to be more mellow or laid back about the whole “gender thing,” largely recognizing that scripts about gender-appropriate signifiers (like colors, behaviors, or activities) are societal conventions and not true moral issues. At this age, children seem to relax their enforcement of gender rules and the “yuckiness” of the opposite sex begins to fade. Many gender variant children, during this period, also seem to relax, maybe deciding that non-conformity is more trouble than it is worth, and so (at least temporarily) adopting conventional signifiers that are more aligned with their biological sex.

For parents who are worried about the effects of hetero-normative gender stereotypes, it can feel like your child has made it safely through the gender curriculum and come out whole on the other side. For parents who are worried about their gender-nonconforming children, it can also feel like the “problem” has been solved and it was (after all) just a phase.

5. Puberty and the gender police. A fifth major milestone in gender development is ushered in by puberty, which usually starts between ages 10-12 for girls and between ages 12-14 for boys. The reality of biological changes in both primary and secondary sexual characteristics seems to trigger a major shift, not only in children’s neurophysiology, but also in their psychological systems and social relationships. When puberty strikes, the issue of what it means to be male and female in this historical moment seems to come to center stage, and teenagers in middle school and early high school seem to be trying to enact and rigidly enforce all of society’s current stereotypes about gender . This process is labeled “ gender intensification ” and it will be more or less “intense” depending on the local culture, their stereotypes, and the rigidity with which they are viewed.

Gender intensification. This is the moment at which adolescents seem to want to wring any gender variation out of themselves and their peers, and this goes for kids who vary on expression, identity, sexual orientation, and transgender status—which basically includes everyone. So pressure is exerted on girls to look and act more like girls—and we see girls try to bring themselves into line with cultural stereotypes about the value of beauty through increased use of make-up, clothes, and hairstyles as well as through a focus on diet, exercise, and eating disorders; we also see normative losses in self-esteem as girls find themselves unable to reach these idealized female appearances and increasingly internalize a negative body image. The pressure that is exerted on boys to look and act like boys can be observed as boys try to bring themselves into line with cultural stereotypes about the value of power, through adolescents’ increased use of aggression and bullying, boys’ frequent lapses into silence, as well as increased focus on body building and the abuse of steroids. Both genders are at risk for commodifying the opposite sex—girls can regard “boyfriends” as status objects just as boys can regard girls as sexual targets. Perhaps surprisingly, the local external pressures to adhere to societal gender stereotypes seem to originate largely within gender, in that girls tighten the screws on other girls to conform whereas boys are the ones who are pressuring other boys. During early adolescence, some researchers refer to the phase of gender intensification as a period that is run by the “gender police.”

It is important to note that the gender harassment and bullying that is still so common in schools and neighborhoods is often aimed at heterosexual youth who do not conform to societal boxes and lines, such as late-maturing boys who are small, slight, and shy. Of course, the further that a child strays over gender lines, the more they are likely to become targets of harassment and bullying, not only by peers but also by parents, teachers, and societal institutions.

Gender contraction. In a way this phase could also be referred to as a period of “gender contraction,” in that some adolescents fall over themselves to jump back into the boxes and over the lines prescribed by society, especially in terms of gender expression. However, the onset of puberty also brings additional biological information to some adolescents, indicating (or verifying) that they may be (or definitely are) gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer, or transgender. This new information (or clarity) comes at exactly the same time that the external world brings increased pressure for them to conform. Such social pressures (and the internal pressures they can create) can collide with adolescents’ natural sexual urges to create confusion and internal gridlock. For some youth, when their internal states (biological urges, gender identity, and sexual orientation) are aligned, they may achieve internal clarity—“Ah-ha, I’m gay (or lesbian or bisexual)!” Some adults describe this process as “coming out to oneself.” But for many gender variant youth, external pressure and homophobia can make this process feel very confusing and dangerous. For these children, their adolescent peers (and often parents, siblings, and teachers) feel more like “gender Nazis.”

Pause on puberty . For some youth, the beginnings of puberty may trigger an awareness of (or verify) their transgender status—“My body is going the wrong direction here—wait!” In fact, one cutting edge strategy for children who may be transgender is to stop the transformation—literally using hormone blockers that halt the onset of puberty. This strategy creates a space that preserves children’s options. It is much easier physiologically to transition to another gender before puberty has been completed. This allows for a transition that is more complete and requires fewer surgeries. For parents of transgender children who want to give their child the opportunity to make an autonomous informed decision, the use of hormone blockers allows children to continue developing cognitively so that their decision can be made using all the capacities of formal operations. Families also benefit from the participation of experienced therapists and physicians, who can help guide them in the sequence and timing of each step.

LGBTQ advocates also insist that it is important to follow the child’s lead, and not to get ahead of them. Some families can be so confused by a child’s non-conforming gender expression that they pressure the child to change their biological sex in order to produce a child who is culturally “aligned” in expression, identity, and biology. In fact, as previously mentioned, many transgender individuals do not choose to make a physical transition at all.

In every case, children need full family support in order to negotiate the external pressures they will likely experience and otherwise internalize. If transgender teens decide to transition during high school, some experts recommend allowing the child to take a year off from school or be home-schooled for a year, so that they are sheltered from external scrutiny. Some families also decide that the child should then return with their new identity to a different school, but other transgender teens report that an important part of the process of self-acceptance is the experience of winning over support from their current peers. In their stories of transition (Kuklin, 2014), some teens seem remarkably understanding of the reluctance and flak they experience in forging a new identity, even though all of them make clear that such resistance (and in many cases overt hostility) causes real pain and suffering.

6. Identity development during college and the freedom to explore and expand. For many youth, the full development of an authentic gender identity doesn’t take place until after high school, which is why the college years are such a common time for gender confirming and non-conforming youth to be working on issues of gender identity and sexual orientation. Developmentally, these are good years for many reasons. In most strata of society, the “gender police” start to fade during mid-adolescence and, by emerging adulthood, most forms of gender expression are again viewed as conventions and not as moral prescriptions, so the previously intense external pressures are often more relaxed (again—depending on local geographical and religious perspectives).

Youth themselves have newly emerging meta-cognitive capacities to reflect on their own internalized stereotypes and shame, allowing them to be able to rework for themselves their own attitudes about gender and sexuality. Because many students are working on these issues, college is also a place where questioning youth can more easily find open and understanding social and sexual partners with whom they can safely explore these issues. Moreover, college campuses can be places that provide formal resources (e.g., Queer Resource Center, LGBTQ groups) and informal role models, that encourage youth to discover, liberate, and celebrate their authentic selves.

Exploration and commitment . During the years of emerging adulthood, many youth are figuring out that they can create their own narratives about what it means to be male and female in society. Many will affirm a positive appraisal of their assigned sex as an anchor of their gender identity, but at the same time accept and enjoy a wide-ranging set of expressions, activities, and roles that are vastly expanded compared to societal stereotypes. In fact, increasingly, many will come to view the “middle space” as occupying pretty much all the space depicting gender roles, so much so that for many young adults, the issues surrounding biological sex, that is, being male or female, begin to shrink until gender is a very small, almost incidental, part of their identity. Of course, young adults often return to these issues and what they mean as they approach the developmental task of “intimacy,” which is often worked on in the context of sexual relationships.

Some LGBTQ youth report that emerging adulthood was a good time for them to deal with these issues because they needed to wait until they had worked out other less-contested aspects of their identity so they could be strong and self-confident enough to face and explore issues of sexual orientation and gender identity in a society that is so openly hostile to gender expansion. For example, some youth reported feeling mixed up about gender identity and sexual orientation. Some transgender youth felt that they were not allowed to be sexually attracted to people who were of the sex opposite to their original biological sex. For example, if I am assigned a female biological sex at birth and later realize that I am an affirmed (transgender) male, what does it mean if I am attracted to biological males? Does that threaten my identity as an affirmed male? During early adulthood, transgender youth can come to accept what LGBTQ experts confirm—that transgender status and sexual orientation are separate issues. An affirmed male who is attracted to other men is a gay transgender male person. All combinations are possible.

Sex/Gender Differences

As part of the study of gender development, researchers are also interested in examining sex/gender differences in psychological characteristics and behaviors. Researchers who favor different meta-theoretical perspectives often assume that gender differences are due to underlying differences in biology (consistent with maturational metatheories) or differences in socialization (consistent with mechanistic meta-theories). However, consistent with contextualist meta-theories, to date most of the differences that have been found have turned out to be a complex combination of neurophysiological sex differences (e.g. the effects of sex hormones on behavior), gender roles (i.e., differences in how men and women are supposed to act), gender stereotypes (i.e., differences in how we think men and women are), and gender socialization.

What are these gender differences? Research suggests that they are concentrated in six areas.

• Activity level . In terms of temperament, boys show higher activity levels starting at birth, as seen in differences in muscle tone, muscle mass, and movement; as they get older, boys remain somewhat more active and have more difficulty in activities that require holding still. Some of the biggest differences involve the play styles of children. Boys frequently play organized rough-and-tumble games in large groups, while girls often play less-physical activities in much smaller groups (Maccoby, 1998).
• Verbal ability . Girls develop language skills earlier and know more words than boys. They show slightly higher verbal abilities, including reading and writing, all throughout school, and are somewhat more emotionally expressive (of fear and sadness, but not anger).
• Visuo-spatial ability . Boys perform slightly better than girls on tests of visuo-spatial ability (e.g., tests of mentally rotating 3-D objects), differences which can later be seen in activities like map reading or sports that require spatial orientation.
• Verbal and physical aggression . Starting at about the age of 2, boys exhibit higher rates of unprovoked physical aggression than girls, although no gender differences have been found in provoked aggression (Hyde, 2005). At every age, boys show higher levels of physical aggression, but starting in adolescence, girls show higher levels of relational aggression (e.g., social shunning, gossiping, power exertion).
• Self-regulation and prosocial behavior . At about the same age that gender differences in aggression emerge (approximately age 2), gender differences also emerge in levels of self-regulation, compliance, empathy, and prosocial behavior. Girls show better behavioral and emotional self-regulation, whereas boys have more trouble minding and following rules and routines. As they get older boys are also slightly less able to suppress inappropriate responses and slightly more likely to blurt things out than girls (Else-Quest, Hyde, Goldsmith, & Van Hulle, 2006). At the same time, girls are also more likely to offer praise, to agree with the person they’re talking to, and to elaborate on the other person’s comments; boys, in contrast, are more likely to assert their opinion and offer criticisms (Leaper & Smith, 2004). The combination of higher levels of aggression and lower levels of self-regulation is a primary reason why, compared to girls, boys at every age are more likely to be disciplined (as well as suspended and expelled) in school.
• Developmental vulnerability . One of the biggest and most consistent set of sex/gender differences between girls and boys is found in the area of developmental vulnerability. Boys are more likely than girls to show markers of a wide range of biological and psychological vulnerabilities, including prenatal and perinatal stress and disease (e.g., lower survival rates in premature birth, higher rates of infant mortality and death from SIDS), learning disabilities (e.g., dyslexia, speech defects, mental retardation), neurological conditions (e.g., autism, attention deficit disorder, hyperactivity), and mental health conditions (e.g., opposition/defiant disorder, schizophrenia). Starting in early adolescence, compared to girls, boys are more likely to be involved in acts of anti-social behavior, delinquency, and violent crime, and to be incarcerated. Unlike differences in psychological characteristics, which tend to be small and inconsistent, gender differences in these markers of vulnerability tend to be large and robust. For example,  rates of ADHD and autism are 3-5 times higher in boys, and over 90% of inmates are male. Differences in diagnosis may represent actual differences in incidence, or conditions may present differently in girls than in boys.

The only mental health conditions more prevalent in girls are internalizing disorders (i.e., depression and anxiety) but boys have higher rates of completed suicide at every age, with an increasing gap over adulthood, until by age 65 over 70% of suicides are committed by men. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190313-why-more-men-kill-themselves-than-women

Magnitude of gender differences . It is important to note that, with the exception of sex/gender differences in physical characteristics (e.g., height and muscle mass) and developmental vulnerability, sex/gender differences in psychological characteristics and behaviors tend to be quite small, inconsistent, and change over historical time. Even where sex/gender differences are found, there is a great deal of variation among females and among males, meaning that individual boys are very different from one another as are individual girls. As a result, knowing someone’s gender does not help much in predicting their actual attributes or behaviors. For example, in terms of activity level, boys are considered more active than girls. However, 42% of girls are more active than the average boy (but so are 50% of boys). Figure 1 depicts this phenomenon in a comparison of male and female self-esteem. The two bell-curves show the range in self-esteem scores within boys and within girls, and there is enormous overlap. The average gender difference, shown by the arrow at the top of the figure, is tiny compared to the variation within gender.

Furthermore, few gender differences reflect innate biological differences, but instead reflect complex mixtures of neurophysiological and social factors, with a special emphasis on the specific societal and familial gender curriculum that creates sets of differential opportunities, treatment, and experiences for girls and boys. For example, one small gender difference is that boys show better spatial abilities than girls. However, Tzuriel and Egozi (2010) gave girls the chance to practice their spatial skills (by imagining a line drawing was different shapes) and discovered that, with practice, this gender difference completely disappeared. Likewise, those differences also disappear in groups of girls who are involved in sports which require spatial practice. The fact that gender differences that previously were significant (e.g., boys performed better on math achievement tests during early adolescence) have disappeared over time suggests that they are largely a function of environmental differences (in this case, the number of math classes taken).

Some of the most interesting research on sex/gender differences today critiques this entire area of work and argues that many domains that we assume differ across genders, including some described here in your textbook, are really based on gender stereotypes and not actual differences. Researchers conducted large meta-analyses (statistical analyses that allow researchers to systematically combine findings across an entire body of studies) of thousands of studies across more than a million participants, and concluded that: Girls are not more fearful, shy, or scared of new things than boys; boys are not more angry than girls and girls are not more emotional than boys; boys do not perform better at math than girls; and girls are not more talkative than boys (Hyde, 2005). These meta-analyses have also been conducted on studies involving adults, with much the same conclusion (Carothers & Reis, 2013; Hyde, Bigler, Joel, Tate, & van Anders, 2019).

Liberating Society from Status Hierarchies of Gender and Sexuality

Societies play a crucial role in gender development by trying to dictate hierarchies of human worth based on gender and sexuality. Gender is multi-faceted and so status hierarchies cover biological sex, gender expression, sexual orientation, and identity. Hierarchies are apparent in the relative value placed on males versus females, on people who are heterosexual versus lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, and transgender, and on people who conform to the gender binary versus people who do not. Some of these hierarchies are enshrined in law, for example, when women were not allowed to vote, or homosexuality was illegal, or laws refuse to recognize the legitimacy of transgender sexual identities.

These status hierarchies are enforced in all the ways we discussed in previous readings on higher-order contexts of development, including implicit bias, prejudice, stereotypes, segregation, exclusion, and discrimination. Discrimination persists throughout the lifespan in the form of obstacles to education, or lack of access to political, financial, and social power. Status hierarchies also involve entrenched myths about subgroups who fall into different rungs of the societal ladders of these hierarchies, and cover stories that membership in some of these groups is voluntary and something youth should “get over.” The negative stories society tells are hurtful, especially if children and youth internalize them. At the same time, the development of people at the top of these hierarchies can also be adversely affected, as when narrow definitions of masculinity can impede the development of boys and men, and narrow definitions of heterosexuality can interfere with the sexual exploration of youth.

Societal myths about gender minorities are especially harmful when they infect parents and families who are supposed to be protecting children and promoting their development. For children from racial and ethnic minority backgrounds, their staunchest supporters typically are parents, extended family, and racial and ethnic communities, who counteract these myths and provide counter-narratives of positivity, pride, and cultural heritage. However, for children from gender minorities, parents and families may not serve this vital role. Because parents often do not share their child’s gender identity, and may sometimes even harbor entrenched myths of revulsion, children from gender minorities do not always have the layers of protection provided by extended family, that serve to buffer them from the worst of society’s prejudices. In fact, some of the most hurtful messages may come from family and friends. These status hierarchies and the entrenched myths used to enforce them create hazardous conditions for the development of children and youth. A growing realization of their extent and severity should create an even greater sense urgency for taking collective action to abolish them. In the meantime women’s groups and the LGBTQ+ community are creating safe spaces where their members can experience the support and validation they deserve and develop strategies for resistance and resilience.

These issues are of global concern (WHO, 2011). Although we are rightfully worried about status hierarchies in the US, many countries around the world have much worse (and sometimes life-threatening) conditions for women and girls, LGBTQ+ youth and adults, and gender minorities. For example, in some countries where gender preferences are pronounced, it is no longer legal to give parents information on the sex of their fetus because selective abortion of females has created a gender imbalance that is noticeable at the national level.  In many cultures, women do not have access to basic rights (e.g., to education, freedom of movement, choice of spouses and sexual partners, etc.), and sexual minorities who express their preferences openly do so at risk of imprisonment and death.

What are the impacts of enforcing gender stereotypes and valuing or devaluing particular gender identities?

Like all status hierarchies, these societal conditions exert a downward pressure on healthy development. In the United States, the stereotypes that boys should be strong, forceful, active, dominant, and rational, and that girls should be pretty, subordinate, unintelligent, emotional, and talkative are portrayed in children’s toys, books, commercials, video games, movies, television shows, and music. These messages dictate not only how people should act, but also the opportunities they are given, how they are treated, and the extent to which they can grow into their full potential. Even into college and professional school, women are less vocal in class and much more at risk for sexual harassment from teachers, coaches, classmates, and professors. These patterns are also found in social interactions and in media messages. In adulthood, these differences are reflected in income gaps between men and women (women working full-time earn about 74 percent the income of men), in higher rates of women targeted for rape and domestic violence, higher rates of eating disorders for females, and in higher rates of violent death for men in young adulthood.

The effects of discrimination and bullying can also be seen in disparities in physical and mental health for youth who belong to minority gender identities and sexual orientations (see boxes). Although researchers and other adults are rightfully concerned about these disparities, it is important not to buy into deficit assumptions , where researchers assume that children and youth at the bottom of these status hierarchies (i.e., females and those with minority gender identities and sexual orientations) are somehow “at risk,” “vulnerable,” or “less than.” We need to protect all children and youth from social contextual conditions that are dangerous for their development, but just like youth from ethnic and racial minorities, youth from sexual and gender minorities generally grow up whole, healthy, and resilient.

Optional Reading:

In this brief article, authors Leaper and Brown (2018) summarize findings on the impact that gender–and specifically gender roles, stereotypes, and discrimination–have on children’s development. In three sections (beginning on page 2), their paper reviews recent research on how these factors impact development in areas of gender identity and expression, academic achievement, and harassment, respectively.

Click here to read: Leaper, C., & Brown, C. S. (2018). Sexism in childhood and adolescence: Recent trends and advances in research. Child development perspectives , 12 (1), 10-15.

Note: There is some disagreement among researchers on the exact meaning of the term “sexism.” The authors of this paper use the term “sexism” to refer to gender roles, stereotypes, discrimination, biases (positive and negative), and gender differences, as well as general beliefs, cognitions, and expectations about gender. We prefer the more-common usage of “sexism” as referring to gender discrimination in line with the status hierarchy defined above (i.e. with women and LGBTQ individuals at the bottom), that gender discrimination refers to any discrimination on the basis of gender (e.g. against men or women), and although concepts such as gender roles and gender cognitions are related to sexism, they are distinct ideas and better referred to with more precise terms.

Discrimination based on Sexual Orientation.  The United States is heteronormative , meaning that society supports heterosexuality as the norm. Consider, for example, that homosexuals are often asked, “When did you know you were gay?” but heterosexuals are rarely asked, “When did you know you were straight?” (Ryle, 2011). Living in a culture that privileges heterosexuality has a significant impact on the ways in which non-heterosexual people are able to develop and express their sexuality.

Open identification of one’s sexual orientation may be hindered by homophobia which encompasses a range of negative attitudes and stereotypes toward homosexuality or people who are identified or perceived as being lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT). It can be expressed as antipathy, contempt, prejudice, aversion, or hatred; it may be based on irrational fear and is sometimes related to religious beliefs (Carroll, 2016). Homophobia is observable in critical and hostile behavior, such as discrimination and violence on the basis of sexual orientations that are non-heterosexual. Recognized types of homophobia include institutionalized homophobia, such as religious and state-sponsored homophobia , and internalized homophobia in which people with same-sex attractions internalize, or believe, society’s negative views and/or hatred of themselves.

Sexual minorities regularly experience stigma, harassment, discrimination, and violence based on their sexual orientation (Carroll, 2016). Research has shown that gay, lesbian, and bisexual teenagers are at a higher risk of depression and suicide due to exclusion from social groups, rejection from peers and family, and negative media portrayals of homosexuals (Bauermeister et al., 2010). Discrimination can occur in the workplace, in housing, at schools, and in numerous public settings. Major policies to prevent discrimination based on sexual orientation have only come into effect in the United States in the last few years.

The majority of empirical and clinical research on LGBT populations are done with largely white, middle-class, well-educated samples. This demographic limits our understanding of more marginalized sub-populations that are also affected by racism, classism, and other forms of oppression. In the United States, non-Caucasian LGBT individuals may find themselves in a double minority, in which they are not fully accepted or understood by Caucasian LGBT communities and are also not accepted by their own ethnic group (Tye, 2006). Many people experience racism in in the dominant LGBT community where racial stereotypes merge with gender stereotypes.

Discrimination based on Gender Minority status.  Gender nonconforming people are much more likely to experience harassment, bullying, and violence based on their gender identity; they also experience much higher rates of discrimination in housing, employment, healthcare, and education (Borgogna, McDermott, Aita, & Kridel, 2019; National Center for Transgender Equality, 2015). Transgender individuals of color face additional financial, social, and interpersonal challenges, in comparison to the transgender community as a whole, as a result of structural racism. Black transgender people reported the highest level of discrimination among all transgender individuals of color. As members of several intersecting minority groups, transgender people of color, and transgender women of color in particular, are especially vulnerable to employment discrimination, health disparities, harassment, and violence. Consequently, they face even greater obstacles than white transgender individuals and cisgender members of their own race.

Effects of Gender Minority Discrimination on Mental Health.  Using data from over 43,000 college students, Borgona et al. (2019) examined mental health disparities among several gender groups, including those identifying as cisgender, transgender, and gender nonconforming. Results indicated that participants who identified as transgender and gender nonconforming had significantly higher levels of anxiety and depression than those identifying as cisgender. Bargona et al. explained the higher rates of anxiety and depression using the minority stress model , which holds that an unaccepting social environment results in both external and internal stress which can take a toll on mental health . External stressors include discrimination, harassment, and prejudice, while internal stressors include negative thoughts, feelings and emotions resulting from societal messages about one’s identity. Borgona et al. recommend that mental health services be made accessible that are sensitive to both gender minority and sexual minority status.

How do we create gender-affirming social contexts for children and youth?

Starting at birth, children learn the social meanings of gender from their society and culture. Gender roles and expectations are especially portrayed in children’s toys, books, commercials, video games, movies, television shows and music (Knorr, 2017). Therefore, when children make choices regarding their gender identification, expression, or behavior that do not conform to gender stereotypes, it is important that they feel supported by the caring adults in their lives. This support allows children to feel valued, resilient, and develop a secure sense of self (American Academy of Pediatricians, 2015). People who care about the healthy gender development of children and youth, like their parents, families, friends, classmates, schools, and communities, can create local contexts of celebration and validation that allow all children to form complex and multifaceted gender identities. Collective social movements around LGBTQ+ and women’s rights are having many positive effects in changing current status hierarchies, which will result in social contextual conditions that are better for all our development.

Developmental psychologists, psychiatrists, and pediatricians can play important roles in creating gender-affirming support for children, youth, and families. For example, in a recent paper on the development of transgender youth, Diamond (2020) points out that, “physicians’ and psychologists’ lack of knowledge about transgender and nonbinary identities can be a significant barrier to competent care (American Psychological Association, 2015). Current practice guidelines for both the medical and psychological treatment of transgender youth adopt a gender-affirmative model of care, which views gender variation as a basic form of human diversity rather than an inherent pathology, and which takes a multifaceted approach to supporting and affirming youth’s experienced gender identity and reducing psychological distress… Providing youth—and parents—with more time, support, and information about the full range of gender diversity, and the fact that gender expressions and identities may change dynamically across different stages of development, may help facilitate more effective decisions about social and medical transitions” (p.112).

Developmental researchers can also make contributions by continuing to explore these complex issues. For example, few studies have been conducted to date, and so more research is needed, on the development of ingroup/outgroup biases (preferences for one’s own gender), reactions to gender norm violations, awareness of preferential treatment, gender prejudice and discrimination, and bullying based on gender variation (Martin & Ruble, 2010). Interventionists can work to identify the conditions that promote healthy gender and sexual development. Such studies have shown, for example, the beneficial effects of inclusive sex education programs in school that foster awareness and acceptance of gender diversity. As Diamond (2020) concludes, “studies suggest that the most beneficial intervention approaches involve creating safe and supportive spaces for all youth to give voice to diverse experiences of gender identity and expression; educating peers, schools, communities, and families about the validity of transgender and nonbinary identities; and providing youth with access to supportive and informed care… In light of the complexity of adolescent gender variation, the best course of action for all youth might involve expanding the gender-affirmative model beyond the conventional gender binary, thereby providing a broader range of options for identity and expression, and affirming and supporting the experiences of youth with complex, nonbinary identities… Whether a child identifies as male, female, transgender, gender fluid, or nonbinary, environments that foster self-acceptance, validation, openness, broadmindedness, and support regarding gender expression will yield lasting benefits.” (p. 113)

Current research is now looking at those young children who identify as transgender and have socially transitioned. In 2013, a longitudinal study following 300 socially transitioned transgender children between the ages of 3 and 12 began (Olson & Gülgöz, 2018). Socially transitioned transgender children identify with the gender opposite to the one they were assigned at birth, and they change their appearance and pronouns to reflect their gender identity. Findings from the study indicated that the gender development of these socially transitioned children looked similar to the gender development of cisgender children, or those whose gender is aligned to the sex they were assigned at birth . These socially transitioned transgender children exhibited similar gender preferences and gender identities as their gender matched peers. Further, these children, who were living every day according to their gender identity and were supported by their families, exhibited positive mental health.

Click here to read: Olson, K. R., & Gülgöz, S. (2018). Early findings from the Transyouth Project: Gender development in transgender children. Child Development Perspectives ,  12 (2), 93-97.

Olson and Gülgöz’ study not only echoes an increasing consensus among pediatricians and other experts in child development that affirming non-conforming children in their own felt sense of gender seems to be the best course for promoting children’s development (e.g. Rafferty, Donaldson, & Forcier, 2020) and also underlines an important takeaway lesson : Increasingly, it seems that it is possible to reduce the negative outcomes reported previously for gender non-conforming children if children are supported by their families, schools, and societies in developing into their authentic selves.

Complexity, Truth, and Beauty

Gender development is inherently complex, involving many dimensions of biological sex, gender expression and identity, as well as temperament, intrinsic interests, cognitive constructions, social relationships, and changing historical and societal frames. Together, these forces create an infinite number of unique and individual pathways, which cannot be captured by two boxes and cannot be nurtured by drawing and enforcing arbitrary lines. Notions like gender expansion, creativity, and fluidity can become  goals that we both support and strive for in our own development and in the development of all those whose nurturance has been entrusted to us.

Supplemental Materials

• Learn about GLSEN, whose mission is to create safe and gender-inclusive schools for LGBTQ+ youth.

https://www.glsen.org

• This Ted talk features a non-binary pre-teen, who discusses their gender journey.

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“Lifespan Development: A Psychological Perspective, Second Edition” by Martha Lally and Suzanne Valentine-French is licensed under a CC-BY-NC-SA-3.0

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Toilets, bowties, gender, and me  by TEDx  is licensed CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0

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Spring 2024: Gender and Development

Giri spring 2024: gender and development, what do we mean by "development" and "gender" what are the barriers and challenges to gender equality in development what indicators can be used to measure and track gender inequality in economic and social development.

In Spring 2024, the Global Inequality Research Initiative focused on “Gender and Development”. We examined how gender influences and is influenced by social and economic development processes.

The course began by providing an overview of gender inequalities in various aspects of social and economic life around the world. This included an exploration of the disparities that exist in areas such as education, healthcare, and work. Following this, students explored the concept of development with a specific emphasis on how gender is incorporated into the development discourse. We also studied diverse approaches to gender and development and their evolution over time.

The course then examined in detail various specific topics:

• What is the intra-household division of labor and how does it impact gender equality in the household and beyond?
• What is the relationship between long-term development and women’s share of the labor force?
• What are some of the key gender differences in labor markets and paid employment, such as differences in pay, hours worked, and types of jobs held by men and women?
• What are the gender-differentiated impacts of various phenomena such as globalization, macroeconomic policies, and Covid-19 pandemic?
• What are the gender dimensions of poverty, migration and climate change?
• What do intersectional analyses reveal about disadvantages experienced by people when multiple categories of social identity interact with each other?

Global Education Monitoring Report

Launch of the 2024 Gender Report: Technology on her terms

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The 2024 Gender Report delves into the nuanced dynamics of gender and technology within educational settings, acknowledging the potential of technology to transform learning experiences while also recognizing its role in perpetuating existing disparities. The report shows that gender divides exist at all stages of intersections between technology and education. These begin with gaps in the initial access to technology through to how girls and boys study subjects that lead to careers in technology development. The result is a vicious cycle within which girls are constantly on the back foot, ultimately unable to alter the stereotypes and gender bias in technology that might leave them excluded in the first place. 

Entitled Technology on her terms,  the report is divided into two parts. The first part reviews progress on gender parity in education for most SDG 4 targets, documenting the continuing growth in girl's and young women’s participation in education at different levels, which has helped reverse decades of discrimination. The second part, assesses gender gaps that have emerged in many countries in terms of access to technology and education and social outcomes, ranging from digital skills to exposure to various risks. This part also discusses how gender disparities, start early, with math anxiety among girls and lack of self-efficacy feeding into later subject choices and careers.

The 2024 Gender Report will be launched on 25 th April on Girls in ICT Day.

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EDITORIAL article

This article is part of the research topic.

Women in Biogeochemical Dynamics Research: 2022

Editorial Frontiers in Environmental Science "Women in Biogeochemical Dynamics Research" Provisionally Accepted

• 1 Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne, France
• 2 Institute of Marine Sciences, Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Spain

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

At present, less than 30% of researchers worldwide are women. Long-standing biases and gender stereotypes are discouraging girls and women away from science-related fields, and STEM research in particular. Science and gender equality are, however, essential to ensure sustainable development as highlighted by UNESCO. In order to change traditional mindsets, gender equality must be promoted, stereotypes defeated, and girls and women should be encouraged to pursue STEM careers.Therefore, we are proud to offer this platform in Frontiers in Environmental Science to promote the work of women scientists. To be considered for this collection, the first, last, or corresponding author should be a researcher who identifies as a woman The papers presented here highlight the diversity of research performed across the entire breadth of Biogeochemical Dynamics research and the advances in theory, experiment, and methodology with applications to compelling problems. Contributions to this journal showcase the breadth and depth of investigations aimed at understanding and mitigating human impacts on our planet.One significant study by Chua and Fulweiler (2023) highlights the importance of hightemporal-resolution gas concentration measurements in capturing the rapid response of sediments to low-oxygen conditions. This research sheds light on the dynamic nature of sedimentary processes and underscores the necessity of precise monitoring techniques in studying environmental phenomena.In another investigation, Forsyth et al. (2023) delve into the bioconcentration and translocation of rare earth elements in plants from legacy mine sites in Portugal. Their findings not only contribute to our understanding of plant-metal interactions but also have implications for environmental management strategies in areas affected by mining activities.Meanwhile, Ismail and Al-Shehhi (2023) offer a comprehensive review of biogeochemical models' applications in various marine environments. By synthesizing existing knowledge, the authors provide valuable insights into the role of these models in elucidating complex biogeochemical processes and guiding sustainable marine resource management practices. Lavergne et al. (2024) draw attention to the importance of conserving microorganisms in terrestrial ecosystems, focusing on soil microbial diversity in Chile and the Antarctic Peninsula. Their work underscores the need for heightened awareness and proactive conservation efforts to safeguard these essential components of ecosystem functioning.In a study with implications for land management practices, Rissanen et al. (2023) investigate the vegetation impacts on methane emissions from boreal forestry-drained peatlands. Their findings highlight the role of moss cover in modulating emissions and emphasize the importance of considering vegetation dynamics in peatland management strategies.Addressing the pervasive issue of plastic pollution in marine environments, Romera-Castillo et al. ( 2022) quantify the leaching of dissolved organic matter from aged plastic and its impact on microbial activity. This research underscores the urgent need to mitigate plastic pollution and its cascading effects on marine ecosystems. Furthermore, Santos et al. (2022) employ leaf wax biomarkers to reconstruct environmental conditions in a high-mountain lake area in western Iberia. Their work illustrates the utility of biomarker analysis in paleoenvironmental reconstructions and contributes to our understanding of past environmental changes. Sun et al. (2023) investigate the release of inorganic mercury and subsequent methylmercury production in boreal peatlands due to ground warming. Their findings underscore the complex interactions between climate change and mercury cycling in peatland ecosystems, highlighting the need for integrated approaches to mitigate mercury pollution.Lastly, Vila-Costa et al. (2023) data represent a significant step forward in unraveling the intricate interactions between pelagic marine bacteria and organic pollutants. By conducting comprehensive field studies in the tropical Pacific and subtropical Atlantic Oceans, the researchers provide invaluable insights into the responses of these bacteria to various pollutants.Collectively, these studies exemplify the diverse and interdisciplinary nature of research featured by women in Environmental Science. By advancing our understanding of environmental processes and informing evidence-based management strategies, these contributions play a crucial role in addressing the myriad challenges facing our planet. As we navigate the complexities of the Anthropocene, women scientists are at the forefront of fostering dialogue and innovation to promote environmental sustainability and stewardship. In the realm of biogeochemical dynamics research, women scientists have long been making significant contributions, yet their achievements and perspectives are sometimes overlooked or underrepresented. As we strive for inclusivity and diversity in the scientific community, it's imperative to shine a spotlight on the invaluable work of women researchers in this field. It's essential to amplify their voices, recognize their contributions, and support their career advancement. By fostering an inclusive and supportive environment that values diversity, we can harness the full potential of women scientists and unlock new insights into the complex dynamics of our planet's biogeochemical cycles. In conclusion, women scientists are driving innovation, discovery, and progress in biogeochemical dynamics research. Their expertise, leadership, and dedication are indispensable assets in tackling the environmental challenges of the 21st century. Let us continue to celebrate and uplift the contributions of women in science, paving the way for a more equitable and sustainable future.

Keywords: women in STEM, environmental science, Biogeochemical Dynamics Research, Gender Equality, Diversity in Science

Received: 09 Apr 2024; Accepted: 11 Apr 2024.

Copyright: © 2024 Cosio, Bravo and Sebastian. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Mx. Claudia Cosio, Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne, Reims, France

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Christie talks importance of including women in agricultural research

In celebration of International Women in Agriculture Day, Maria Elisa Christie, director of Women and Gender in International Development at the Center for International Research, Education and Development at Virginia Tech, presented “ Integrating gender equity in international agricultural research for development .” The lecture took place on March 26 in Curtiss Hall’s Dolezal Auditorium.

In her role at Virginia Tech, Christie works to incorporate gender into agricultural research projects, particularly those that take place in countries around the world. She said it is important for researchers to consider how best to include women in their projects, given the women’s many duties in their homes – caring for children, tending to gardens and livestock, and much more – that limit their ability to travel to research sites.

The projects should also be related to the work women are doing. Home gardens, also known as house lot gardens, often are ignored in research projects, but that may be where women spend a good portion of their time growing plants to feed their families and sell at the market.

“You need to do something that matters to them,” Christie said.

Prior to the lecture, Christie also spent time interacting with several Iowa State faculty and student groups. This included visits to the Center for Sustainable Rural Livelihoods, Seed Science Center, Student Innovation Center and Margaret Sloss Center for Women and Gender Equity.

Sponsors of the lecture included Corteva Agriscience, the International Association of Students in Agriculture and Related Sciences, the Department of Agronomy, and the Committee on Lectures.