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Jean Piaget

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This essay attempts to analyse, using appropriate illustrations, the extent to which gender stereotyping conforms to Jean Piaget’s four stages of development, which he elaborated in his Theory of Cognitive Development. It will first begin by clearly defining the terms; ‘gender,’ ‘stereotype,’ and hence the term ‘gender stereotyping.’ It will thereafter define cognitive development and will furthermore discuss in depth the stages of cognitive development, which are sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational respectively. A critical assessment will then be made on the extent to which gender stereotyping acts in accordance to Piaget’s stages of development, to aid one have a final opinion of his Theory of Cognitive Development.
Gender was a word used by Ann Oakley and others in the 1970s to describe the characteristics of men and women that are socially determined, in contrast to the ones that are biologically determined. Gender is therefore a term referring to the social and cultural construction of men and women. The word stereotype is defined as an organised set of beliefs concerning the characteristics of all members of a defined group (Golombok, 1995). Therefore, gender stereotyping is the overgeneralisation about the characteristics of an entire group of people based on their gender. It is the perception of people on how others should behave.
According to Piaget (1952), cognitive development was a progressive reorganisation of mental processes as a result of biological maturation and environmental experience. He believed that children progress through a series of four critical stages of cognitive development and that each stage is marked by shifts in how they understand the world. He called the first stage the sensorimotor stage, which is the period of time from birth up to two years of age in which the infant learns about the

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