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Summary Sexism controversy
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Notes of the four subcategories involved in this controversy - Gender bias, heterosexism, social and historical context and invisibility of women
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Sexism controversyGender differences and bias:
An area of interest to many psychologists and the public is whether there’s differences in the
mental lives of males and females
It’s important to establish if there or real differences or if any detected differences are due to
fault of gender bias in research
Investigating gender differences isn’t about saying one gender is better than another. For
example, if a gender difference in personality exists, it might indicate that personality is
affected by physiological differences or socialisation differences between men and women and
this can help us understand behaviours
A problem occurs when differences are detected - these differences are not necessarily actual
differences but could instead be due to a conscious gender bias held by the psychologist or an
unconscious gender bias that has affected a psychologist’s research design
Broadly speaking, gender bias is where one gender unfairly and inappropriately influences the
study of behaviour to the detriment of another
Psychology has been criticised for demonstrating gender bias in many of its theories
Two examples of gender bias include alpha bias and beta bias
Alpha bias is where any differences between males and females are overstated and
embellished. It tends to amplify or exaggerate stereotypical differences between males and
females
Beta bias tends to understate, disregard and ignore any differences
Much of psychology can be criticised for having and androcentric view as subjects of research
have primarily been men, so psychology’s explanations of behaviour have been skewed
towards a ‘male view’, possibly to the detriment of women
Another type of gender bias is gynocentrism and whilst this is less frequent, it can occur when
a researcher uses an all-female sample or draws conclusions from a female perspective,
possibly to the detriment of men
Gender bias in psychology poses several problems;
Firstly, any gender biased theory or piece of research is flawed as it cannot be a valid,
universal explanation of human behaviour
Secondly, any applications, such as therapies, that result from flawed theory or piece of
research may not be appropriate or as effective as they could be
Thirdly, gender biased research and theories may be adding credibility to sexist stereotypes
and fuelling discrimination
Gender bias can enter the research process at many stages
It can occur in question formation. When choosing areas to study, those of more interest to
males may receive more research funding
It can occur in research methodology. Methods often chosen in psychological research include
masculine methods such as experiments which maintain a power imbalance between the
researcher and the participants
It can also occur during the interpretation and data analysis stage. Descriptive statistics are
used to represent the performance of male groups and female groups. These sorts of statistics
will nearly always illustrate a difference between groups
It can occur when forming conclusions. If significant gender differences are found,
psychologists tend to conclude it occurs due to some internal cause like biological differences
Finally, it can occur in publication. Journals may be more likely to publish research which has
found a difference between the genders as research which finds that no significant difference
in males and females may be considered less interesting, and so does not get published. They
could also favour publication of research which is only beneficial to men or androcentric
Heterosexism:
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