Gender socialization is the process through which individuals learn the behaviors, expectations, and roles associated with their assigned gender within a society. Parents dressing their baby girl in pink and buying her dolls, while dressing their baby boy in blue and buying him toy trucks is an example of gender socialization.
What is Gender Socialization?
- Gender socialization is the process through which a culture’s gender-related rules, norms, and expectations are learnt.
- This process often begins from a very early age for most people. It is thought that children are aware of their gender by the time they are 3 years old, long before they come to recognize any other type of group they may belong to (Stockard, 2006).
- In gender socialization, it is important to distinguish between sex and gender. Sex refers to the anatomical and reproductive differences between men and women (Kretchmar, 2011), while gender is a social construct, believed to exist on a continuum, involving ideas about masculinity and femininity.
- The central idea of gender socialization is that societies have their own ideas of what gender is. People and cultures throughout the world recognize that there are different gender groups and they have assigned roles and responsibilities.
- Through gender socialization, people develop their own beliefs about gender and ultimately form their own gender identity. People may not be consciously aware of the gender norm decisions that they make. Gender roles and norms are often built into the script of what a man/woman should do or be.
Examples of Gender Socialization
Gendered toy marketing is a familiar, everyday example of gender socialization. Many toy stores segregate “boy toys” from “girl toys.”
Boys’ toys are typically blue and cast as action figures, cars, and building blocks. Girls’ toys are typically pink and cast as dolls, dress-up games, and toy cooking or cleaning sets.
These categories reinforce what each gender is expected to do. Toys marketed to boys reinforce adventurousness, strength, and logic. Toys marketed to girls reinforce maternal warmth, physical attractiveness, and household competence.
Packaging reinforces the same message. A pink box showing a girl at play signals that a toy is “for her.”
A blue box showing a boy signals the reverse.
Evidence From Toy Preference Studies
This pattern is measurable, and measurable remarkably early.
Infants as young as three months already show different patterns of visual attention to dolls versus vehicles, depending on their own sex (Alexander, Wilcox, & Woods, 2009).
This is well before they could have learned an explicit rule about which toy “belongs” to them, or been taught one directly.
By toddlerhood, labelling alone can shift preference.
When researchers show preschoolers an unfamiliar, gender-neutral object, they arbitrarily tell the child it is “for girls” or “for boys.”
Children then rate the toy labelled for their own group more positively (Martin, Eisenbud, & Rose, 1995; Weisgram, Fulcher, & Dinella, 2014).
Nothing about the object itself differs.
That is why toy marketing counts as an agent of gender socialization, not just a neutral reflection of children’s tastes.
Agents of Gender Socialization
We call these people agents of socialisation. By extension, we also talk about agencies of socialisation, such as the family, the education system, and the media.
Gender socialization is a form of primary socialization which is the process by which children and infants learn the norms and behaviors associated with their gender. It is thought to occur within the family, peer groups, mass media and school curriculum (Bhattacharjee, 2021).
Parent socialization
Parents are often the first agents of gender socialization children experience. The process can begin even before birth.
Once parents learn the child’s sex, they may choose a nursery colour or “gender-appropriate” clothing before the baby arrives.
Parental language reflects this too. Girls may be called “pretty” or “delicate,” boys “strong” and “boisterous.” Children learn from this language how they should be according to their gender.
Expectations often diverge by gender as well. Girls may be encouraged toward cooking, shopping, and cleaning. Boys may be encouraged toward sports and manual repair work.
Children are especially attentive to same-gender models (Bussey & Bandura, 1999). A child who observes a same-sex parent behaving in gender-typical ways is, on this account, more likely to adopt the same behaviour.
Parents may also handle children differently by gender without meaning to. Girls may be encouraged to play quietly. Boys may be encouraged to play rougher.
Even parents who consciously try not to reinforce gender norms may pass on their own gendered upbringing anyway. This happens inadvertently, without the parent intending it.
How much do parents really differ in how they treat sons and daughters based on gender alone?
The clearest evidence that adults react differently to a baby purely because of its labelled sex comes from a classic study.
- Aim: to test whether adults describe and treat an infant differently based on its labelled sex, holding the infant itself constant.
- Method: mothers were observed interacting with the same six-month-old infant, introduced to different groups either as a girl (“Beth”) or a boy (“Adam”) (Will, Self, & Datan, 1976).
- Results: when presented as “Beth,” the baby was smiled at more, offered dolls, and described as sweet and soft-crying. The same baby presented as “Adam” was offered trains and described in masculine terms instead.
- Conclusion: because only the label varied, the differences in adult behaviour could only reflect gender expectations, not any real difference in the infant. This shows gender socialization by parents can begin before a baby shows gender-typed behaviour of its own.
Peer socialization
Children can also be socialized by their peers. This happens in ways that differ by gender.
By around age three, children often prefer playing with peers of the same gender (Wharton, 2005). This pattern shows up across many cultures and lasts until adolescence.
One explanation is simple. Boys and girls tend to play differently and seek out others with a similar style (Stockard, 2006).
Girls typically form close friendships within small groups and take conversational turns. Boys typically play in larger groups, more roughly, using interruption and boasting.
Peers “police” each other’s gender conformity too. Girls face less pressure than boys to conform to gender norms. They are also less likely to receive negative attention for joining “cross-gender” activities and games (Wharton, 2005).
School socialization
Teachers and other educators may place expectations on children based on their gender.
They could do this by labeling and organizing students in group activities or creating different activities for boys and girls. As with parents, teachers may use gendered language when speaking to and about boys and girls.
Schools may encourage boys to engage in science or mathematics whereas they may be more forgiving if girls are not succeeding in these subjects.
Teachers may also discipline students in different ways depending on their gender, which may reinforce children’s beliefs and assumptions.
Media socialization
Gender socialization through media happens through movies, television, and literature.
It can reinforce stereotypes about what it means to be a boy or a girl.
Men are often cast as heroes going on adventures. Women, by contrast, are usually outnumbered by male characters.
They are often shown as physically attractive and frequently introduced only as the male lead’s love interest.
Female characters are often passive, needing to be rescued by men, and dressed to appeal to the male gaze.
Children who watch a lot of TV absorb this. They tend to hold more sex-stereotypical views of men and women.
This shapes their toy choices, career aspirations, and self-esteem (Burn, 1996).
Media portrayal is starting to shift.
Even so, much older media still shows women doing housework or as stay-at-home mothers, and men engaged in a wider range of activity.
Theories to Explain Gender Socialization
Social learning theory
Social learning theory is most closely associated with psychologist Albert Bandura.
It rests on the behaviorist approach, which explains learning through stimulus and response.
The theory holds that gender socialization comes from reinforcement. Children are rewarded, or punished, for gender-appropriate and gender-inappropriate behavior (Wharton, 2005).
For example, a boy who plays with a “gender appropriate” toy such as a football may get positive reinforcement from his father.
If he instead plays with a “gender inappropriate” toy such as a doll, he may be ignored or met with negative attention.
Children are also thought to learn from their same-sex parent.
A girl learns what it means to be female by observing her mother; a boy learns what it means to be male by observing his father.
The theory has been discredited on one key point. Parents who show sex-stereotypical behavior are no more likely than other parents to raise children who do the same (Stockard, 2006).
Children are also not the passive learners the theory assumes.
They are more active participants in their own socialization than social learning theory suggests (Wharton, 2005).
Gender codes
Gender codes are hidden, unspoken assumptions about the proper roles of men and women which are transmitted through the socialization process and are negotiated by each generation. Gender codes are not uniform but vary with location.
Traditional gender codes tend to be stronger in the working class than the middle class. Still, everyone has access to both conservative and radical gender codes, and must negotiate their own balance between them.
Cognitive development theory
Cognitive development theories of gender socialization build on the research of psychologist Jean Piaget.
These theories treat the socialization process as developmental. Children are thought to play an active role in shaping their own gender identity (Stockard, 2006).
Psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg was among the first to apply cognitive-developmental ideas to gender identity. He argued that children’s views of appropriate gender roles change as they age, reflecting their changing cognitive development (Kohlberg, 1966).
Younger children hold the most rigid definitions of gender. They are also more likely to punish others for violating gender norms. As cognitive flexibility develops, gender stereotypes and roles become more flexible too.
Kohlberg held that once children develop gender constancy, the recognition that their own gender is stable and unchanging, they become more motivated to display gender-appropriate behavior (Wharton, 2005).
Children are not just passive learners here. Cognitive development theory expands on social learning theory in this respect. It holds that ideas about gender keep changing as children get older.
However, children show clearly gendered behavior as young as two or three. This is well before gender constancy typically develops. It undercuts Kohlberg’s claim that constancy is the trigger for gender-appropriate behavior (Martin & Ruble, 2004).
Gender schema theory
Gender schema theory was introduced by psychologist Sandra Bem in 1981. She argued that children learn about gender roles from the culture they live in.
Cultures vary in this respect. Where gender differences are emphasized, children learn to use gender as a way to organize information about the world.
Gender schemas help children organize information and maintain a sense of consistency and predictability (Stockard, 2006). These schemas tend to be polarized. Children come to understand what they believe is acceptable and appropriate for each gender.
Gender schemas make new situations more predictable. Children build more elaborate schemas as their gender identity and understanding of gender roles develop.
The theory suggests these schemas are internalized so that males and masculinity are seen as the norm, valued more highly than females and femininity (Wharton, 2005).
One limitation is the problem of individual differences. The theory does not explain why children who share much the same environment respond differently to gender-appropriate behavior.
Psychoanalytic theory
The psychoanalytic theory of gender socialization is different from the learning theories above. It was not outlined until the 1970s, by Nancy Chodorow, building on the work of Sigmund Freud.
The theory suggests some aspects of gender identity come from unconscious psychological processes, not from conscious modeling or schemas.
A key factor is the mother’s role as primary caregiver. Because children spend more early time with mothers, Chodorow argues their first identification is with the feminine.
Girls’ development is therefore comparatively simple: they have already identified with the mother. Boys, however, must first reject that feminine identification.
They then construct masculinity as “not feminine.” In this process, boys also learn to devalue femininity.
Criticisms of psychoanalytic theory for gender socialization are that the theory is hard to empirically verify.
It also reinforces gender stereotypes, places too much emphasis on the unconscious, and does not explain how children who were not raised by mothers develop their gender identity.
Critical Evaluation
Most gender-development research is correlational, not experimental.
Cause and effect are therefore often unclear: a child who already prefers gender-typed toys may draw more gender-typed encouragement from parents, rather than the encouragement creating the preference.
These measurement tools are not neutral either.
They can build in the same assumptions.
Older questionnaires that decide in advance which traits count as “masculine” or “feminine” have faced exactly this criticism (Bem, 1974).
Treating “male” and “female” as simple, fixed starting categories is itself a live methodological caution, not a neutral assumption (Connell, 1987).
More recent hormonal and neurological research has reopened part of this question, showing that early biology can also play a modest, contributing role (Hines, 2011).
A newer, more radical perspective goes further still.
It questions not just how gender is learned, but whether the underlying sex categories are as fixed as the socialization model assumes.
West and Zimmerman reframed gender not as a stable trait a person has, but as something continuously produced through everyday interaction (West & Zimmerman, 1987).
Judith Butler’s related idea of performativity argues that repeated, culturally scripted acts do not just express a pre-existing gender identity but actively constitute it (Butler, 1990).
Contemporary Research
This question sits at the heart of social learning theory.
Does a child need a same-sex parent to develop typically gendered behavior? The strongest available test comes from a large-scale synthesis of children raised by same-gender parents.
- Aim: to test whether parental gender and sexual orientation measurably affect children’s gender-typed behavior and identity.
- Method: a meta-analysis pooling 33 published and unpublished studies, over 5,000 children and adolescents in total, comparing children raised by same-gender and different-gender parents (Fedewa, Black, & Ahn, 2015).
- Results: across studies that specifically assessed gender-role development, parental gender and sexual orientation showed no significant effect on children’s gender-typed behavior or identity.
- Conclusion: this is difficult to reconcile with a strong version of same-sex-modeling theory. Other agents, such as peers and media, appear to do most of the work of gender socialization, largely independent of parental gender.
A separate, large review found a similar pattern.
Children’s gender stereotypes become more flexible across middle childhood, but often persist into adulthood rather than being simply outgrown (Solbes-Canales et al., 2020).
How Does Gender Socialization Affect Society?
Inequalities in the workplace
Gender socialization shapes several documented forms of workplace and economic inequality:
- Devalued labor: Tasks and behaviors associated with femininity, such as housework and childcare, are often unpaid and unappreciated because they are coded feminine.
- Employer bias: Because feminine-coded labor is devalued, some employers hold the bias that women are weaker workers, especially given assumed extra labor at home.
- Wage gap: Women can still be paid less than men for equivalent work, and women-dominated fields such as healthcare are often underpaid relative to male-dominated roles.
- Motherhood penalty: Mothers can face a workforce “penalty” in opportunities and advancement that is not extended to fathers.
Negative attitudes about different genders
Children often favor their own gender. This attitude can show up as discriminatory behavior toward other genders.
Adults may reinforce this gender-segregated behavior. It can become a problem once children need to function in gender-integrated settings such as school.
Children who cannot relate well to other genders may find their differences reinforced rather than reduced.
Both boys and girls tend to associate positive characteristics with their own gender at first. Does this hold steady with age? One influential study tested this directly, alongside whether any such belief already shapes children’s own interests.
- Aim: to test whether young children already associate high-level intellectual talent, being “really, really smart,” more with men than women, and whether that belief shapes their own interests.
- Method: children aged five to seven guessed the gender of a “really, really smart” story character. Separately, they were offered novel games framed as being for “really, really smart” children or for children who “try really, really hard” (Bian, Leslie, & Cimpian, 2017).
- Results: at age five, boys and girls equally linked brilliance to their own gender. By age six and seven, girls became less likely than boys to link brilliance to their own gender, and lost interest specifically in the “smart” game.
- Conclusion: a stereotype linking brilliance to men emerges around the start of formal schooling. It already measurably narrows girls’ own interest in activities marketed as being for exceptionally clever children.
Girls can develop negative feelings about their own gender. Their sense of their own abilities can suffer too.
Strict societal ideas about gender can also make life harder for people who are non-binary, transgender, or who otherwise do not conform to their assigned birth gender.
It can be difficult for these individuals to be their true selves in a society that treats gender as a strict binary.
Limitations for men
Gender socialization limits men as well as women. Boys and men can feel pressure to succeed and dominate in their careers. Falling short of that can feel like failure.
Men and boys may avoid affectionate expression with peers, treating anger as the one acceptable emotional outlet. Vulnerable emotions and crying often get coded as feminine, so they avoid showing them in front of others.
A boy who shows typically “feminine” traits risks being bullied. He learns not to display them again.
Suppressing vulnerable emotion carries a cost. It can damage men’s mental health and make them less likely to seek help when struggling.
Socialization toward aggression is also linked to higher rates of violence, including against women (Marcus, 2018).
Frequently Asked Questions
How does gender socialization relate to gender stereotypes?
Gender stereotyping is where a set of attributes, characteristics, or roles are ascribed to people simply because of their gender.
People are thought to be socialized into holding these stereotypes.
Societies often have fixed ideas about each gender.
When these ideas are socialized into children, they can grow up holding stereotypes about other genders, or feeling pressure to conform to their own.
Gender stereotypes tend to become more flexible later in childhood as cognitive flexibility develops.
In many cases, though, they persist and continue to shape behavior well into adulthood (Solbes-Canales et al., 2020).
This falls unevenly by gender. Female stereotypes tend to be less restrictive than male ones.
Females are generally less scrutinized than males for not adhering to their gender’s stereotypes (Wharton, 2005).
How does gender socialization relate to sexism?
The persistence of traditional gender roles exacerbates gender inequalities, encourages rigid behaviors, and maintains unbalanced power relations within societies in favor of men (Marcus, 2018).
With society having the attitude that women are weaker or less competent than men at the same work, this can lead to discriminatory behavior towards women.
The roots of prejudices, discrimination, and violence against women can be traced back to widespread gender stereotypes, which come from gender socialization (McCarthy et al., 2018).
Is gender socialization important?
Gender socialization is thought to be important since it helps individuals to develop their gender identity – deeply held internal perception of one’s gender.
Being aware of gender socialization and gender roles means that individuals can choose what they most identify with and develop their own identities.
Can gender socialization occur throughout life?
Gender socialization is a lifelong process, though most of it happens during childhood. Beliefs about gender learned early can affect people for the rest of their lives.
New ideas can still be learned in adulthood. Through this ongoing socialization, people shape their own beliefs about what they can achieve.
For instance, a man may believe he is capable of succeeding in his career. A woman, by contrast, may think she has less chance of success simply because she is a woman.
Can gender socialization be tackled?
It helps to become more aware of how you have been socialized based on your assigned gender. From there, you can ask whether a decision reflects that socialization or your own choice.
Parents and educators can also act directly so children are not restricted by their gender.
Using gender-neutral language is one option. It ensures boys and girls are spoken to in similar ways.
Encouraging a wide range of toys and activities helps too. So does creating playful environments where children of different genders interact.
Discussing and challenging gender stereotypes, rather than emphasizing gender differences, is another option. Children then learn they need not stay confined to traditional gender roles.
Key Takeaways
- Definition: Gender socialization is how a culture’s gender-related rules, norms, and expectations are learned, from early childhood onward.
- Early Start: Children are aware of their own gender by around age three, before they recognize other social groups.
- Sex vs. Gender: Sex refers to anatomical differences between men and women; gender is the socially constructed overlay of masculinity and femininity built on top of it.
- Key Agents: Parents, peers, schools, and media each shape gender-typed behavior, mainly through the toys, activities, and language offered to a child.
- Competing Theories: Social learning, cognitive-developmental, gender schema, and psychoanalytic theories each explain gender socialization differently, and each has documented limitations.
- Modern Evidence: A large meta-analysis found no reliable effect of parental gender or sexual orientation on children’s own gender-typed development (Fedewa et al., 2015).
- Lifelong Process: Gender socialization does not end in childhood; new expectations continue to be learned and renegotiated throughout life.
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