Gender Schema Theory

Last Friday we completed our look at cognitive explanations of gender development with gender schema theory. This is the most recent of the theories we have looked at, and an influential one with plenty of common-sense appeal.

 Like Kohlberg's cognitive developmental theory it broadly agrees with the social learning explanation, but stresses that early in childhood children learn their gender schema from their parents, peers, the media etc. This mental framework then affects what they learn from their models in the future. Information which doesn't fit with their schema is likely to be forgotten or distorted. This makes gender identity / behaviour less flexible than SLT suggests.

This approach disagrees with Kohlberg in that it claims that children's gender schemas are developed early - as soon as they have gender identity aged around two.

Here is the presentation.

And the video illustrating how young children have fairly fixed, stereotypical views relating to gender role and behaviour - their gender schema: