Cognitive explanation of gender essay (10)

When explaining how gender identity and roles develop, the cognitive approach emphasises the role of thinking processes. It refers to how children gather and make sense of information about gender and how their understanding of gender changes over time. It assumes that changes in gender role behaviour reflect changes in how children understand and think about gender. These changes in understanding, in turn, reflect the gathering of information about gender taken from the environment and the developmental changes in the child’s brain that allow them to process information in more advanced ways.

Kohlberg has a table to explain his theory of gender development. It says that a child’s understanding of gender strengthens in stages. At beginning, children think in characteristic ways about gender. As the child moves through the stages its understanding of gender becomes greater. The first stage is gender identity, which is usually reached by the age of 2 years. At this stage the child is able to correctly identify its own sex. The second stage is gender stability, which is usually reached by the age of 4 years old. At this stage the child realises that gender remains the same across time. However, its understanding of gender is heavily influenced by external features like hair and clothing. A boy at this stage might say that if he put a dress on he would be a girl. It is not until the third stage, gender constancy, that the child starts to understand that gender is not affected external features. This stage is usually reached by the age of 7 years. Kohlberg’s theory suggests that gender development is driven primarily by maturation. Slaby and Frey used an interview based experiment and found that children fell into three distinct groups which reflected the stages of gender development described by Kohlberg.

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