The world is constantly changing, often for good reasons and causes. Recently, new and older generations are questioning the meaning of gender in our society and the roles it plays in our everyday lives. As a matter of fact, gender does shape our roles in society and can even shape our school and career decisions, frequently negatively, particularly for girls and women. That's why understanding gender bias and stereotypes are so important nowadays.

Gender bias has always presented a diversity of issues and debates in our society. Particularly issues and debates in psychology, on how to address gender bias and what are the consequences of gender on a person's psychology. A major question that is often raised and discussed is the nature-nurture debate in psychology. Where does gender come from? Is it something that comes only from our natural characteristics, or is it nurtured by our social environment?

In this article, we will review what is gender stereotypes and gender bias and how it affects our lives and children's lives and describe how underlying personal issues might be addressed when you find yourself in this situation, what we can do to help ourselves and therefore help them to avoid repeating certain mistakes and stereotypes.

gender
What is gender and gender bias? Source Unsplash
The best tutors available
Rush
5
5 (79 reviews)
Rush
£75
/h
Gift icon
1st lesson free!
Lucinda
5
5 (22 reviews)
Lucinda
£150
/h
Gift icon
1st lesson free!
Hakim
5
5 (16 reviews)
Hakim
£50
/h
Gift icon
1st lesson free!
Maria-alexandra
5
5 (18 reviews)
Maria-alexandra
£40
/h
Gift icon
1st lesson free!
Rush
5
5 (79 reviews)
Rush
£75
/h
Gift icon
1st lesson free!
Lucinda
5
5 (22 reviews)
Lucinda
£150
/h
Gift icon
1st lesson free!
Hakim
5
5 (16 reviews)
Hakim
£50
/h
Gift icon
1st lesson free!
Maria-alexandra
5
5 (18 reviews)
Maria-alexandra
£40
/h
Gift icon
1st lesson free!
Let's go

Gender bias definition

In order to grasp the concept of gender bias, it is essential to first understand what is gender? Gender refers to the social attributes and opportunities associated with being male or female and the relationships between women and men and girls and boys, as well as the relations between women and those between men. These attributes, opportunities and relationships are socially constructed and are learned through socialization processes. Gender is considered to be part of the broader socio-cultural context and includes other influential criteria for socio-cultural analysis such as class, race, poverty level, ethnic group and age.

Then, how does gender bias happen?

The European Institute for Gender Equality defines gender bias as 'prejudiced actions or thoughts based on the gender-based perception that women are not equal to men in rights and dignity'. In simpler words, gender bias is a gender stereotype that views or preconceives roles, attributes, or characteristics to be performed by women and men. The gender stereotype is harmful when it limits women's and men's capacities to develop any aspect of their lives, from professional career, personal choices or abilities of everyday life. Gender bias is the result of a lot of time reproducing these stereotypes.

Gender bias in our society

Gender bias is present in every aspect of our lives, whether, in a hostile or seemingly benign way, both are equally harmful and perpetuate inequalities. Further, gender bias can have a disproportionately negative impact on certain groups of women that belong to minority or indigenous groups. Gender bias can be taken as far as resulting in a violation or violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms. Like going to school, practising sports and further being forced to marry or prohibited to abort.

A common example, women are considered to be nurturing, this traditional view of women as caregivers means that child care responsibilities often fall exclusively on women. Further, women are perceived as the sexual property of men.

Where does it originate?

Gender bias is present in every social and cultural aspect of our lives, this means that it is a multi-faceted problem and a challenge to deconstruct. Gender bias is typically enacted by adults and children who reproduce the same social and cultural patterns they see in their environment. The construction of gender and gender stereotypes has a long history, thus questioning it is the first step to acknowledging its existence and understanding what we can do to stop it.

This is not only enacted by adults and parents, it is present in every child's surroundings from toys, advertising, online, on the media, and in the communities where children reside. We can even find gender bias examples in educational materials as well. In conclusion, it is everywhere you look and affects everyone, it can even make parents think they know what their children like or are interested in, rather than truly listen and observe their children's personal preferences without their own bias.

Androcentrism in our society

What is androcentrism? Androcentrism is the practice, conscious or otherwise, of placing a masculine point of view at the centre of one's world view, culture, and history, thereby culturally marginalizing femininity. The related adjective is androcentric, while the practice of placing the feminine point of view at the centre is gynocentric.

The androcentric definition does point out how the masculine figure does shape and nurture masculine roles in most societies as the norm, when this happens it is what we call the androcentric bias, where oftentimes female realities are considered less or even relegated to the abnormal. Thus, enforcing gender bias in our everyday lives many times unconsciously.

Cultural bias and gender roles

What is cultural bias?

Not every society has only an androcentric bias, they also have cultural bias. Cultural bias definition is, a tendency to interpret a word or action according to culturally derived meaning assigned to it. This phenomenon of interpreting and judging phenomena by standards inherent to one's own culture is sometimes considered a problem in psychology or other human sciences, because it makes it difficult to attempt to develop methods or theories that could compensate or eliminate the cultural bias.

Thus, gender bias would be different for different cultures because the assumptions concerning gender vary. Depending on your own cultural bias, you might consider discussing gender a taboo or a topic that is acceptable to discuss. These differences, translate in difficulties when wanting to address gender bias' challenges or questions.

What does it cause in children?

When gender bias at large goes unacknowledged for long, it can lead to inaccurate simplistic generalisations about gender that cause negative effects on children at an early age. For example, the effects reported related to gender bias are huge discrepancies between the number of girls and boys who choose subjects like science, technology, maths, or engineering.

There is still a minority of women and girls who pursue a career in these subjects. Similarly, it can be hard for boys and men to select humanities and art subjects because of gender bias and the influence of peer pressure on children.

In other aspects of their lives, children will grow to reproduce the gender bias, cultural bias and androcentrism in their lives and be negatively affected in other areas of their lives: in their intimacy, personal choices, careers and so forth. Where violation or restriction to express themselves and their freedom is most important, thus more harmful for their physical and mental well-being. Some children will suffer dysphoria, with their parents not realizing it.

Deconstructing gender bias since childhood: Where to start?

Deconstructing gender bias, start with ourselves, and it takes time. Wanting our children to be different from us seems impossible without us challenging how we think and enact in certain situations. Here are essential things and behaviours we can start to learn and re-learn to deconstruct gender bias.

confidence
Self-awareness, curiosity and confidence play a major role in reducing gender bias in every aspect of our children lives. Source Unsplash

Self and gender awareness at an early age

Self-awareness plays a major role when wanting to deconstruct gender bias, thus setting an example for our children while they learn to listen to themselves.

Here are some examples where it is important to be self-aware:

  • Avoiding and stopping making stereotypical presumptions about, or references to, what our kids would like or activities they’d like to do. But also to any other adult person.
  • Honouring and encouraging their tendencies and interests and allowing them to make their own choices. Just like we want to do as adults.
  • Presenting a wide range of activities, toys, materials, tools, technology, pronouns regardless of any commercial gender bias. Simultaneously allowing them to choose without judgment.
  • The same goes for experiences; encouraging physical play or activity, investigation and exploration, which helps build confidence without influencing their choices
  • Permitting and encouraging activities and friendships with all or any children without any reference to gender

Being open and talking about difficult questions with our children, such as what is a boy or a girl? What are gender and sex? Why do we use different pronouns to address someone? Handling complex questions is a good exercise to make our children think for themselves and reflect on the world that surrounds them.

It is always possible to practice these questions with a mental health professional or children specialist that can give you further guidance on how to address these questions within your family and as a parent. This practice will create a strong connection between you and your children, where, asking questions in a safe environment, encourage them to build their self-awareness and confidence.

Constantly educate ourselves to help our children

Being a parent or a tutor entails many responsibilities, one of them is to constantly keep ourselves educated about children psychology, education and more.

The role of psychology

The studies of psychology are relevant because they are concerned with many topics that relate to the gender bias or areas of studies such as,

  • androcentrism psychology and men psychology
  • women psychology and gynocentrism psychology
  • cultural bias psychology, cultural relativism psychology
  • ethnocentric psychology

This list is not representative of all the psychology issues and debates and studies that are made that are related to the gender bias. But showing interest in these subjects helps us see the new findings in terms of education, sexual identity, gender roles or cultural differences. Keeping an eye on the psychology publication and relationship debate topics will guarantee a better understanding of children and adults' psychology and how they are related or affecting the gender bias in our every day lives.

Be open

Being constantly curious about the world that surrounds us and questioning our traditions, ways of thinking, judging and living is an invaluable experience. It will not only help your kids be more aware of the world and develop a profound identity but also be aware of the persons next to them.  Also, it will enrich your life and parenting experience. Remember that as a parent, you are the primary support system of your kid. Encouraging them to talk at a young age about how they feel, will create valuable people for their future and future generations.

There are many things we can learn from the curiosity of our children, do not stop the wonder with which they came to the world.

Enjoyed this article? Leave a rating!

4.00 (2 rating(s))
Loading...

Sophia

A vagabond traveller whose first love is the written word, I advocate for continuous learning, cycling, and the joy only a beloved pet can bring.