Biological Approach To Gender

592 Words3 Pages
Describe and evaluate the biological approach to gender development Biological psychology stresses the importance of our brain structure, genes and hormones for how we behave. It is believed that women and men act, think and feel differently because of how the brain works. This is supported through our genetic structure as females (XX) and males are (XY), it is said that sex is determined at conception and it is universal, where as gender is mailable and cultural. Gender relates to how you perceive and see yourself. Klinefelters syndrome (XXY) supports that we are a product of our genes, as a sufferer would have under developed genitals and a lack of body hair, which shows how a difference in genes can effect us. Like wise, sufferers of Turners syndrome (XO) result on webbing at the neck and a short body. It allows us to draw up some conclusions about how much out biological make up is responsible for gender related behaviour. A cross cultural study which supports the biological approach would be Imperato Mc-Ginely, where he took 38 boys from families in the Dominican Republic to investigate how well the boys adopted their male identity when they had been brought up as females, due to their ambiguous genitalia. The boys had no problems adapting to their new male identity and grew up as traditional males. This case illustrates the importance of biological factors in gender development and shows that essentially gender is just a psychological concept. This case had been criticised also because they belonged to a very patriarchal society, where they may have been pleased to be male. Another study, which supports the nurture theory, was carried out by Money and Erhardt to look at the case of someone who had their gender reassigned to see whether gender is down to social or biological causes. They looked at the case of a boy who had his genitals badly damaged
Open Document