Understanding Gender Norms and Enculturation

How do you learn about gender norms in your culture? Enculturation “ the process by which people learn the necessary and appropriate skills and norms in the context of their culture” - Babies are not born with a ‘culture’. They develop an understanding of the values, language and expectations of the culture through interacting with gatekeepers. - They develop culture through interaction with their peers. Enculturation is not complete when you are thirteen or even fifty years old. It is a constant process that reinforces your identity as a member of your culture. Processes involved in Enculturation: - Direct tuition (parents telling you what to do) - Observational learning - Reward/punishment - Conditioning - Socialisation- haven't looked at it yet - Social identity Study 1 Fagot (1978)- naturalistic observations The sample was made up of twenty-four families (12 with a boy and 12 with a girl). Each family had only one child between 20 and 24 months. Both parents lived at home and both parents were between 20 and 30 years old. All the families were white. Five families lived in university housing and six in apartments. The rest lived in private homes. The sample varied in income; some parents were still students. Observers used an observation checklist of 46 child behaviors and 19 reactions by parents. There were five 60-minute observations completed for each family over five weeks. The observer used time sampling, making note of the child's behavior every 60 seconds and then noting the parents’ response. Two observers were used to establish inter-coder reliability. The agreement between the two observers on the child’s behavior was 0.93 and for the parents’ reaction 0.83. After the observations were finished, each parent was asked to rate the 46 behaviors as more appropriate for girls, for boys, or neutral. Each parent also filled out a questionnaire on the socialization of sex roles. The findings of the observations include: - Boys were more likely to be left alone by their parents than girls. - Parents gave boys more positive responses when they played with blocks than they did girls. - Parents gave girls more negative responses when they manipulated an object than they did boys. - Parents gave more positive responses to girls than boys for playing with dolls and more negative responses to boys. - Parents criticized girls more when they participated in large motor activities – e.g. running and jumping. - Parents gave more positive responses to girls than boys when they asked for help and a more negative response to boys. - Fathers were more concerned with appropriate sex-typing than mothers and both parents found more behaviors appropriate for girls only than for boys only. Parents reacted significantly more favorably to the child when the child was engaged in same-sex preferred behavior; children were more likely to receive negative responses to cross-sex-preferred behaviors. Parents gave girls more positive responses when they engaged in adult-oriented, dependent behavior. On the questionnaire, parents did not see asking for help as a sex-preferred behavior; however, they were more likely to act positively toward a girl than a boy asking for help. This suggests that the parents were not fully aware of the methods they use to socialize their children. Link to Enculturation The study shows enculturation through the reinforcement of traditional gender-stereotypical behaviours. The study found that when girls were more reckless and more aggressive when playing with toys, they were reprimanded by their parents via direct tuition or negative parental directions. Boys, on the other hand, were motivated by their parents when presenting the same behaviour. This shows how the enculturation of gender stereotypes (like how women are expected to be more gentle, whereas this is not an expectation for boys) can be seen through direct tuition and reinforcement from gatekeepers such as parents, teaching kids how to act appropriately within the norms of their culture. Study Evaluation The study was naturalistic, done in the natural environment of the family, rather than in a lab. The study has high ecological validity because behaviour can be represented to other real life situations of families in their homes with their children, as parents and children displayed the same behaviour as their day to day life at home, so there are no demand characteristics. - Observation lacks researcher bias as 2 observers were used with high inter rater reliability as both researchers recorded the same data during observations separately, therefore suggesting that observations are not manipulated to prove that children learn through punishment, reward and enculturation. - 24 families is also a very small sample so anomalies in findings such as 1 family having reverse gender roles as the mom may not act as much like a stereotypical woman compared to other families or do not have any toys for girls (eg. dolls) even though they have a daughter, decreasing validity of data as the anomalies may lead to false conclusions on acculturation. - Sampling bias is present as all were white Americans, decreasing population validity as data can only be applied to white Americans who may have certain cultural beliefs, and we are not sure if people from other parts of the world who have different cultural beliefs will have children that go through enculturation the same way as white american children do and respond to parenting the same way as white american children do. - Families knew they were being watched as this was an overt observation, so they could have presented demand characteristics, therefore there may be more or less criticism to children's behaviour if not observed that we don't know about, decreasing the population validity as this means behaviour found in this study will not be the same as behaviour of parents and children in other families. Study 2 Kimball (1986)- Natural experiment Kimball (1986) carried out a natural experiment, taking advantage of the introduction of television in a remote area of Canada. She wanted to see if exposure to "normal television viewing" would lead to a change in the level of gender stereotyping in a Northern Canadian community. The participants were 536 children in four different communities. The sample consisted of 130 children from Notel (that is, No Television), 135 from Unitel (one station), 166 from Multitel (more than one station), and 105 from Vancouver. Both Unitel and Multitel were from the same geographic region. Vancouver was used as a control. The children's level of gender stereotyping was measured using the Sex Role Differentiation (SRD) scale. The SRD asks children to rate how appropriate or frequent certain behaviors are for boys and girls their own age, as well as how often their mothers or fathers perform certain tasks. The SRD was administered to all students in grades 6 and 9 in each of the three towns both before and 2 years after television was introduced to Notel. The control group's data was obtained from a previous study that was carried out 8 months before this study began. The children filled in the questionnaire during normal class time. Since information about the children's parents was requested, the responses were anonymous. Before their town had television, Notel children held more egalitarian gender attitudes than children who viewed television regularly. Girls had lower levels of gender stereotyping than boys at the beginning of the study. Two years after Notel obtained television, gender stereotyping had significantly increased in both the NOTEL boys and girls. In Phase 2, there was no significant difference between the gender stereotyping scores among the boys in the three towns. When looking more carefully at the subscales on the SRD, the Notel boys' stereotypes with regard to gender and jobs had increased significantly. The study supports that the introduction of television increased levels of gender stereotyping.—> summary :**Study 2: Kimball (1986) - Natural Experiment (Expanded Summary)** - **Objective: To investigate the impact of television exposure on gender stereotyping in a Canadian community.** - **Procedure: A natural experiment comparing four communities: Notel (no TV), Unitel (one station), Multitel (multiple stations), and Vancouver (widespread TV access). The Sex Role Differentiation (SRD) scale was used to measure children's gender stereotypes before and two years after television's introduction to Notel.** - **Findings: Children in Notel showed more egalitarian gender attitudes before television access. After two years of television exposure, gender stereotyping significantly increased in both boys and girls in Notel. This suggests that observational learning from television reinforces cultural gender norms.** `Link to Enculturation The study showed enculturation through children's levels of stereotyping after two years of television introduction. They found that the cultural norm of gender behaviour had significantly strengthened as kids had more strongly gender-stereotyped behaviours of females and males. They learned this behaviour through models they observed on television. This shows how enculturation for kids can take place through observational learning which helps to strengthen their understanding of cultural norms. Study Evaluation Kimball’s study has low temporal validity as the study was conducted in 1984 to 1986 which means it may not be able to be applied to today’s generation as stereotypes/views on stereotypes may have changed ` The study is a natural experiment, so ecological validity is high. This is because it has been conducted in the participants' school rather than an artificial lab setting, this reduces the chance of demand characteristics from researchers. This increases ecological validity as it can determine the role of television on children’s gender role development in an everyday situation as well as determining the extent of enculturation as it can determine the effect in the context of their daily life However, since the researcher did not manipulate the independent variable, participants were not randomly allocated to conditions, and there was no ability to control for extraneous variables, the study has low internal validity and causality cannot be determined. Since the data were anonymous, this means that the researchers did not compare data from Phase 1 and Phase 2 for specific children. Instead, the study is cross-sectional. The researchers could not see changes in the gender stereotypes of individual children over time. Low generalizability as the study was conducted in canada. tThis may mean that behaviours exhibited by the kids may vary to kids from other countries as they may have different norms surrounding gender behaviours. Theory Evaluation: Limitations: - Neglect of individual agency: Places excessive influence on the role of culture in shaping individuals and therefore neglects other possible factors such personal experience and individual identity which may influence a person's behaviour. - Oversimplification of culture: over simplifies concept of culture - treating it as one idea rather than a combination of several influences such as sub cultures and intercultural interactions and globalization. - Neglect of power dynamics: not sufficiently address power dynamic within cultures and how this may influence cultural norms and inequalities within these norms as well as the individual ability to challenge and form new beliefs. - Focuses on western culture: most of the studies focus on western cultures as they are most understood, however it limits our understanding of norms in other non western and marginalised cultures. This criticize the applicability and generalizability of the theory of enculturation- studies only focus deeply on one culture Strengths: - Takes into account the ever changing nature of behaviour as it considers enculturation as a continuous process which adapts based on our experiences throughout our life. - Takes holistic approach: acknowledges that cultures have different norms and structures and how these influence and individuals socialization - Application: can be applied to various environments and cultures to explain similar trends in behaviour and how it is fundamental to human development. It can be applied to explain how these from different backgrounds navigate their respective cultures and its main/core elements/ values. - Practical: can be used in education - helps educators and practitioners understand how culture can influence students learning and development and helps to create more culturally inclusive courses and teaching methods. - Take into account that cultures evolve overtime through the combination of norms and values from other differing cultures. Which influences the evolution of societal behaviour.

How do you learn about gender norms in your culture?

Enculturation

“ the process by which people learn the necessary and appropriate skills and norms in the context of their culture”

- Babies are not born with a ‘culture’. They develop an understanding of the values, language and expectations of the culture through interacting with gatekeepers.

- They develop culture through interaction with their peers. Enculturation is not complete when you are thirteen or even fifty years old. It is a constant process that reinforces your identity as a member of your culture.

Processes involved in Enculturation:

- Direct tuition (parents telling you what to do)

- Observational learning

- Reward/punishment

- Conditioning

- Socialisation- haven't looked at it yet

- Social identity Study 1 Fagot (1978)- naturalistic observations The sample was made up of twenty-four families (12 with a boy and 12 with a girl). Each family had only one child between 20 and 24 months. Both parents lived at home and both parents were between 20 and 30 years old. All the families were white. Five families lived in university housing and six in apartments. The rest lived in private homes. The sample varied in income; some parents were still students. Observers used an observation checklist of 46 child behaviors and 19 reactions by parents. There were five 60-minute observations completed for each family over five weeks. The observer used time sampling, making note of the child's behavior every 60 seconds and then noting the parents’ response. Two observers were used to establish inter-coder reliability. The agreement between the two observers on the child’s behavior was 0.93 and for the parents’ reaction 0.83. After the observations were finished, each parent was asked to rate the 46 behaviors as more appropriate for girls, for boys, or neutral. Each parent also filled out a questionnaire on the socialization of sex roles. The findings of the observations include:

- Boys were more likely to be left alone by their parents than girls.

- Parents gave boys more positive responses when they played with blocks than they did girls.

- Parents gave girls more negative responses when they manipulated an object than they did boys.

- Parents gave more positive responses to girls than boys for playing with dolls and more negative responses to boys.

- Parents criticized girls more when they participated in large motor activities – e.g. running and jumping.

- Parents gave more positive responses to girls than boys when they asked for help and a more negative response to boys.

- Fathers were more concerned with appropriate sex-typing than mothers and both parents found more behaviors appropriate for girls only than for boys only. Parents reacted significantly more favorably to the child when the child was engaged in same-sex preferred behavior; children were more likely to receive negative responses to cross-sex-preferred behaviors. Parents gave girls more positive responses when they engaged in adult-oriented, dependent behavior. On the questionnaire, parents did not see asking for help as a sex-preferred behavior; however, they were more likely to act positively toward a girl than a boy asking for help. This suggests that the parents were not fully aware of the methods they use to socialize their children.

Link to Enculturation The study shows enculturation through the reinforcement of traditional gender-stereotypical behaviours. The study found that when girls were more reckless and more aggressive when playing with toys, they were reprimanded by their parents via direct tuition or negative parental directions. Boys, on the other hand, were motivated by their parents when presenting the same behaviour. This shows how the enculturation of gender stereotypes (like how women are expected to be more gentle, whereas this is not an expectation for boys) can be seen through direct tuition and reinforcement from gatekeepers such as parents, teaching kids how to act appropriately within the norms of their culture.

Study Evaluation The study was naturalistic, done in the natural environment of the family, rather than in a lab. The study has high ecological validity because behaviour can be represented to other real life situations of families in their homes with their children, as parents and children displayed the same behaviour as their day to day life at home, so there are no demand characteristics.

- Observation lacks researcher bias as 2 observers were used with high inter rater reliability as both researchers recorded the same data during observations separately, therefore suggesting that observations are not manipulated to prove that children learn through punishment, reward and enculturation.

- 24 families is also a very small sample so anomalies in findings such as 1 family having reverse gender roles as the mom may not act as much like a stereotypical woman compared to other families or do not have any toys for girls (eg. dolls) even though they have a daughter, decreasing validity of data as the anomalies may lead to false conclusions on acculturation.

- Sampling bias is present as all were white Americans, decreasing population validity as data can only be applied to white Americans who may have certain cultural beliefs, and we are not sure if people from other parts of the world who have different cultural beliefs will have children that go through enculturation the same way as white american children do and respond to parenting the same way as white american children do.

- Families knew they were being watched as this was an overt observation, so they could have presented demand characteristics, therefore there may be more or less criticism to children's behaviour if not observed that we don't know about, decreasing the population validity as this means behaviour found in this study will not be the same as behaviour of parents and children in other families. Study 2 Kimball (1986)- Natural experiment Kimball (1986) carried out a natural experiment, taking advantage of the introduction of television in a remote area of Canada. She wanted to see if exposure to "normal television viewing" would lead to a change in the level of gender stereotyping in a Northern Canadian community. The participants were 536 children in four different communities. The sample consisted of 130 children from Notel (that is, No Television), 135 from Unitel (one station), 166 from Multitel (more than one station), and 105 from Vancouver. Both Unitel and Multitel were from the same geographic region. Vancouver was used as a control. The children's level of gender stereotyping was measured using the Sex Role Differentiation (SRD) scale. The SRD asks children to rate how appropriate or frequent certain behaviors are for boys and girls their own age, as well as how often their mothers or fathers perform certain tasks. The SRD was administered to all students in grades 6 and 9 in each of the three towns both before and 2 years after television was introduced to Notel. The control group's data was obtained from a previous study that was carried out 8 months before this study began.

The children filled in the questionnaire during normal class time. Since information about the children's parents was requested, the responses were anonymous. Before their town had television, Notel children held more egalitarian gender attitudes than children who viewed television regularly. Girls had lower levels of gender stereotyping than boys at the beginning of the study. Two years after Notel obtained television, gender stereotyping had significantly increased in both the NOTEL boys and girls. In Phase 2, there was no significant difference between the gender stereotyping scores among the boys in the three towns. When looking more carefully at the subscales on the SRD, the Notel boys' stereotypes with regard to gender and jobs had increased significantly. The study supports that the introduction of television increased levels of gender stereotyping.—&gt; summary :**Study 2: Kimball (1986) - Natural Experiment (Expanded Summary)**

- **Objective: To investigate the impact of television exposure on gender stereotyping in a Canadian community.**
- **Procedure: A natural experiment comparing four communities: Notel (no TV), Unitel (one station), Multitel (multiple stations), and Vancouver (widespread TV access). The Sex Role Differentiation (SRD) scale was used to measure children's gender stereotypes before and two years after television's introduction to Notel.**
- **Findings: Children in Notel showed more egalitarian gender attitudes before television access. After two years of television exposure, gender stereotyping significantly increased in both boys and girls in Notel. This suggests that observational learning from television reinforces cultural gender norms.**

`Link to Enculturation The study showed enculturation through children's levels of stereotyping after two years of television introduction. They found that the cultural norm of gender behaviour had significantly strengthened as kids had more strongly gender-stereotyped behaviours of females and males. They learned this behaviour through models they observed on television. This shows how enculturation for kids can take place through observational learning which helps to strengthen their understanding of cultural norms. Study Evaluation  Kimball’s study has low temporal validity as the study was conducted in 1984 to 1986 which means it may not be able to be applied to today’s generation as stereotypes/views on stereotypes may have changed  `

The study is a natural experiment, so ecological validity is high. This is because it has been conducted in the participants' school rather than an artificial lab setting, this reduces the chance of demand characteristics from researchers. This increases ecological validity as it can determine the role of television on children’s gender role development in an everyday situation as well as determining the extent of enculturation as it can determine the effect in the context of their daily life However, since the researcher did not manipulate the independent variable, participants were not randomly allocated to conditions, and there was no ability to control for extraneous variables, the study has low internal validity and causality cannot be determined. Since the data were anonymous, this means that the researchers did not compare data from Phase 1 and Phase 2 for specific children. Instead, the study is cross-sectional. The researchers could not see changes in the gender stereotypes of individual children over time.

Low generalizability as the study was conducted in canada. tThis may mean that behaviours exhibited by the kids may vary to kids from other countries as they may have different norms surrounding gender behaviours. Theory Evaluation: Limitations:

- Neglect of individual agency: Places excessive influence on the role of culture in shaping individuals and therefore neglects other possible factors such personal experience and individual identity which may influence a person's behaviour.
- Oversimplification of culture: over simplifies concept of culture - treating it as one idea rather than a combination of several influences such as sub cultures and intercultural interactions and globalization.
- Neglect of power dynamics: not sufficiently address power dynamic within cultures and how this may influence cultural norms and inequalities within these norms as well as the individual ability to challenge and form new beliefs.
- Focuses on western culture: most of the studies focus on western cultures as they are most understood, however it limits our understanding of norms in other non western and marginalised cultures. This criticize the applicability and generalizability of the theory of enculturation- studies only focus deeply on one culture

Strengths:

- Takes into account the ever changing nature of behaviour as it considers enculturation as a continuous process which adapts based on our experiences throughout our life.
- Takes holistic approach: acknowledges that cultures have different norms and structures and how these influence and individuals socialization
- Application: can be applied to various environments and cultures to explain similar trends in behaviour and how it is fundamental to human development. It can be applied to explain how these from different backgrounds navigate their respective cultures and its main/core elements/ values.
- Practical: can be used in education - helps educators and practitioners understand how culture can influence students learning and development and helps to create more culturally inclusive courses and teaching methods.
- Take into account that cultures evolve overtime through the combination of norms and values from other differing cultures. Which influences the evolution of societal behaviour.

Transcript for:Understanding Gender Norms and Enculturation

Transcript for:
Understanding Gender Norms and Enculturation