Sex‐typed behaviour in the primary school: the significance of contrasting explanations

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
This paper is concerned with explanations of sex‐typed behaviour in primary school children. Three explanations are considered. The first is in terms of social pressures to conform to the norms of society. The second focuses on children's intellectual commitment to the ‘truth’ of gender stereotypes, whilst the third is an amalgam of the first two. It is argued that these contrasting explanations of sex‐typing are worthy of study on account of their distinctive policy implications. To explore children's beliefs about the validity of gender stereotypes, three moral dilemmas were presented to 161 six‐ to 11‐year‐olds. Each dilemma involved an act of discrimination based on a gender stereotype. The children were required to say whether they thought the discriminatory act was fair and to give reasons for their answer. The significance of their responses is discussed in terms of different explanations of sex‐typed behaviour.

This publication has 3 references indexed in Scilit: