Gender Schema Theory Essay

What is gender system theory? Gender schema theory was formally introduced by Sandra Bem in 1981 as a cognitive theory to explain how individuals function gendered in society, and how sex-linked characteristics ar maintained and transmitted to other members of a culture. Gender-associated information is predominantly transmuted through and through society by way of schemata, or networks of information that allow for some information to be to a greater extent easily assimilated than others. Bem argues that there are individual differences in the degree to which people hold these gender schemata. These differences are manifested via the degree to which individuals are sex-typed. It concerns the development of an internal schema, or mental framework, which organizes and directs the behavior of an individual as a male or female. For example, the gender schema of being female might include the proposition I am a girl, so I turn with dolls, not trucks.As every person should be intimate male and female children become masculine and feminine, and mainly at a very junior age. By the time they are four years of age, for example, girls and male childs are typically come to prefer activities be by the culture as appropriate for their sex and also to prefer same-sex peers. The acquisition of sex-appropriate preferences, skills, personality attributes, behaviors, and self-concept is typically referred to within psychology as sex-typing.When children are younger, including me, parents read the girls dont play with cars, those are for boys. Girls play with dolls, and because you are a girl you must play with dolls, and vice versa for the males. The children gain and follow this information as they go on they are being punished or rewarded for their actions. For example, the girl will stop play with the toy car, and wont be yelled at by her parents for playing with a boys toy. As the years go by they believe all of this is true because people tell them it is and their culture also tells them this so they continue with this information.