Cultural variations in gender role

We've now looked at the cross cultural research into gender development. Here is the presentation from the lesson. This contributes to the nature/nurture question, because if gender roles / behaviour are genetic / hormonal in origin we'd expect every culture to show the same differences. Anthropologists like Margaret Mead went looking for cultures which didn't fit, and found them, providing seemingly strong evidence for the Social Learning explanation of gender. However there are big methodological issues with anthropological research, particularly investigator effects (seeing what they want to see) and participant reactivity (trying to please the investigator).

Here is an essay question to do for homework for Wednesday 26th:

To what extent does cross cultural research support the importance of social learning in gender development? 8 AO1 + 16 AO2

Here is the first installment of the very useful Margaret Mead documentary