Gender Influences On Gender Identity

Gender is a socially constructed definition of what women and men are. It is different to the term ‘sex’. Sex refers to the biological characteristics of a woman and a man. What is masculine and feminine, for males and females, can vary depending on their cultural background. This means that the society’s expectations confirm the behavioural, psychological and physical qualities that are related to the particular gender. Moreover, gender identity is a persons sense of self-identification as a female, male, both, neither or somewhere in between. On the other hand, sexuality influences gender but it focuses on a persons sexual orientation/preferences and their capacity for sexual feelings. How a person identifies their gender may be very arguable

Feminists note the ways in which a woman is different from a man; they stress the biological and cultural differences between genders. They also often reverse the dominant patriarchal values of a man by showing preferences to women’s qualities and their competencies over a man’s. Furthermore, a person’s gender identity is their own personal account of their gender. It is the degree to which a person identifies as a male, female, or any other gender. Moreover, the way that a person’s gender identity forms, is not understood completely because there are many circumstances which have influenced its development, such as, biological, and social factors. There are multiple theories which state how people develop their identity in different ways. According to the social-learning theory, children will develop their gender identity by observing and imitating the people around them, which then leads to them either being rewarded or punished for imitating that behaviour. On the other hand, gender-schema theorists

These are anti-essentialism and social categorisation. Anti-essentialism talks about gender not being seen as stable, and permanent characteristic of the individual, or as something that lives within the individual and as part of their biology or personality. Instead, gender is seen as an unusual social categorisation system, which is used to priories and emphasise gender differences among individuals. Moreover, the individual’s gender is not seen as something biologically “male” and “female” but instead as social products which result from society. Some social constructionists view the the idea, of being made up of two types of sexed bodies, and two types of gendered people who are different from one another, as a very powerful thought which outlines reality rather than simply reflecting reality. This is because people think that there are two types of sexes since the world around them continuously reinforces this idea. In turn, people participate in helping to reproduce this idea. This is seen when a person who does not fit in either gender, uses surgery to try and “fix” their ambiguous genitals. From this approach, gender is seen as something which a person does rather than something a person is or