gender bias 16 mark essay

Gender Bias In Psychology

March 17, 2021 - paper 3 issues and options in psychology | issues & debates, gender bias in psychology:.

The Two Main Forms of Gender Bia s

(1) Beta-Bias:

Often occurs when female participants are not included as part of the research process and then it is assumed that the findings apply equally to both sexes.

Example:  Taylor et al (2000), has pointed out that early research into the ‘fight or flight’ response focused mainly on male participants, later research that has adopted a more female focus has highlighted that females react in a different way to stress, adopting a more ‘tend and befriend’ approach.

(A)  Androcentrism:

(b) gynocentrism, (2) alpha bias:.

AO3: Implications Of Gender Bias In Research

(1) Implications of Gender Bias:  Gender bias research may;  create misleading assumptions about female behaviour, fail to challenge negative stereotypes and validate discriminatory practice.

Why could such findings have a negative impact on females?  Such research findings paint women to be volatile individuals who are victims of their own biological makeup holding little control/free will over their own behaviour. Research findings could also cause women to be discriminated against in the work place (for example), employers who believe women are more likely to have accidents/reduced IQ scores could favour male applicants for jobs assuming that they would be a more competent member of the workforce.

For example, research has suggested that males appear to be less sensitive than females and display more aggressive tendencies.

(3) Bias in Research Method s: The way in which research is carried out can also create gender bias assumptions (that don’t really exist). For example, male researchers tend to be nice, friendly and more welcoming the female participants rather than male participants. This often leads to female participants performing better than male participants in certain research tasks.

Why could this lead to bias conclusions being drawn?  Such practice indicates experimenter/investigator effects and would therefore lead to bias results being obtained. Due to the presence of the EV, experimenter/investigator effect, the IV would not be the sole variable affecting the DV and therefore a cause and effect relationship would be unable to be established and internal validity would be low.

Many individuals argue that the lack of females in the ‘higher’ research roles within psychology is due to the fact that women are usually seen to lack leadership qualities (in comparison to men).  Eagly (1978)  acknowledged that women may be less effective leaders than men but argued that such knowledge should be used to remove gender bias and redress the imbalances in theory and research in psychology.

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gender bias in psychology essay plan

• Issues and debates
• Created by: aniakuchnia
• Created on: 14-09-17 08:53
• Differential treatment or representation of men and women based on stereotypes rather than real differences
• Centred or focused on men, often to the neglect or exclusion of women
• Exaggerates the differences between men and women and therefore devalue one gender
• Femininity is failed masculinity due to inability to undergo the Oedipus complex
• Assuming what is true for men, is true for women- hence minimising differences
• Originally done on male animals due to difficult female hormones, however Taylor (2000) found tend-and-befriend response in women
• The aim to develop theories that apply to all people, which includes real differences
• Women are better at learning due to being more attentive, flexible and organised
• Draws away from women's special needs such as demands of pregnancy
• Lab experiments disadvantage women
• Male experimenters are more pleasant to female participants

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Issues & Debates: Gender Bias

Last updated 5 Sept 2022

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The term bias is used to suggest that a person’s views are distorted in some way, and in psychology there is evidence that gender is presented in a biased way. This bias leads to differential treatment of males and females, based on stereotypes and not real differences.

For example, Freud argued that ‘anatomy is destiny’, meaning that there are genuine psychological differences between men and women because of their physiological differences, for example, he claimed young girls suffer from ‘penis envy’, and viewed femininity as failed form of masculinity.

The difficulty lies in distinguishing “real” from culturally created gender differences. Evidence suggests that there are a small number of real gender differences, confirmed through cross-cultural studies. For example, in a review of the research on sex differences, Maccoby and Jacklin (1974) concluded that there were only four differences between boys and girls, including:

• Girls have greater verbal ability
• Boys have greater visual and spatial abilities
• Boys have greater arithmetical ability, a difference that only appears at adolescence
• Girls are less aggressive than boys
• Androcentrism

Androcentrism means being centred on, or dominated by males and can be conscious (the individual knows they are behaving this way) or unconscious. In the past most psychologists were male, and the theories they produced tended to represent a male view of the world. Hare-Mustin and Marecek (1988) argued for there being two types of gender bias: alpha and beta bias.

Alpha bias refers to theories which exaggerate the differences between males and females. For example, in his psychoanalytic approach, Freud argued that because girls do not suffer the same oedipal conflict as boys, they do not identify with their mothers as strongly as boys identify with their fathers, so develop weaker superegos.

The evolutionary approach in psychology has also been criticised for its alpha bias. This is because this approach suggests that evolutionary processes in the development of the human species explain why men tend to be dominant, why women have a more parental investment in their offspring, and why men are more likely to commit adultery. However, society has changed considerably over recent years, and it is argued that the evolutionary perspective shouldn’t be used to justify gender differences.

Beta bias theories have traditionally ignored or minimised sex differences. These theories often assume that the findings from males can apply equally to females.

For example, Kohlberg’s stage theory of moral development was based on extensive interviews that he conducted with boys aged 10-16. The same all male sample was then re-interviewed at intervals of 3-4 years over a 20- year period. His classification system is based on a morality of justice and some researchers, such as Carol Gilligan (1982), have found that women tend to be more focused on relationships when making moral decisions and therefore often appear to be at a lower level of moral reasoning when using Kohlberg’s system. Therefore Kohlberg’s approach meant that a real difference was ignored.

There is also evidence of beta bias in psychological research. Male and female participants are used in most studies, but there is normally no attempt to analyse the data to see whether there are significant sex differences. Where differences are found, it may be possible that these occur because researchers ignore the differential treatment of participants. For example, Rosenthal (1966) reported that male experimenters were more pleasant, friendly, honest, and encouraging with female than with male participants. This led Rosenthal to conclude: “Male and female subjects may, psychologically, simply not be in the same experiment at all.”

Even some animal research can be argued to suffer from beta bias. For example, biological research into the fight-or-flight response has often been carried out with male animals because they have less variation in hormones than females. It was assumed that this would not be a problem as the fight-or-flight response would be the same for both. However, later stress research by Taylor et al. (2000) has challenged this view by providing evidence that females produce a tend-and-befriend response. The beta-bias in the earlier animal studies meant that for a long time the stress response was not fully understood and a real difference was ignored.

The result of beta bias in psychological research is that we end up with a view of human nature that is supposed to apply to men and women alike, but in fact, has a male or androcentric bias. For example, Asch’s (1955) conformity studies involved all male participants, as did many of the other conformity studies (e.g., Perrin & Spencer, 1980) and therefore it was assumed that females would respond in the same way.

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Psychology Gender 16 Mark Example Answers Bundle

Subject: Psychology

Age range: 16+

Resource type: Assessment and revision

Last updated

19 August 2021

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This pack includes an example 16 mark essay response for each topic within the gender section of AQA psychology A-Level. These are written by myself at A/A* level (usually graded around 12-16 out of 16). In most of my answers I use the general structure of either 1 or 2 paragraphs of AO1 (description) and 4 paragraphs of AO3 (evaluation and issues and debates). Some may be structured differently due to the topic having more or less content than the others. In the cases where there are more paragraphs than required for a 16 mark question (around 6), you can choose the topics you feel comfortable discussing - I have simply provided example paragraphs for all of the options.

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Addressing Gender Bias in Medical Care

“A gender line … helps to keep women not on a pedestal, but in a cage,” Ruth Bader Ginsburg once warned. Her words resonate now as loudly as ever, as gender inequalities continue to restrict and erase the experiences of women.

We have become so accustomed to these disadvantages that we often don’t speak about them and fail to notice them in our daily lives. Gender biases, or the preferential treatment of one gender over another, often emanate from harmful stereotypes and assumptions about intelligence, income, aspirations, and lifestyle and have far-reaching consequences, as well as deep-seated roots in history .

One of the most consequential effects of gender bias is seen within the medical field, where women are more likely than men to experience dismissal of their symptoms, obstacles to quality care, and misunderstandings by their providers. Despite composing 50% of the population, women are grossly underrepresented in medical studies. Historically, they have often been absent from clinical research and have only recently gained access to large-scale clinical trials.

Following the devastating outcomes of doctors prescribing thalidomide in the 1970s for morning sickness, which led to birth defects and infant deaths, the FDA composed guidelines that excluded women in their reproductive years from drug trials. The agency did not officially reverse this policy until almost 20 years later. In 1993, Congress passed a law requiring NIH-funded research to include women and minorities in clinical trials, but researchers were not required to include female animals in preclinical trials until as recently as 2016.

Many other factors have also contributed to this disparity, including consideration of men’s physiology as the “norm”; concerns over inclusion of women and even of female animal models due to hormonal fluctuations; and the increased costs of recruiting and adding women to participate in studies. The result for women has been higher rates of adverse medication reactions, mistreatment and undertreatment of disease, and a deficiency in evidence-based care.

Even less is understood about the differences in clinical manifestations, biopsychosocial challenges, and long-term health-care outcomes in gender-non-conforming people. There can often be significant delays or inadequate care provided to transgender, gender-nonconforming, and nonbinary people, due to discrimination and lack of knowledge and training on how to provide quality care. Underlying the lack of inclusion of women and gender-nonconforming people in medicine is the entrenched, societal ideal that upholds white, able-bodied men as archetypal and views other people as inferior.   This discrimination prevents providers from recognizing the complex interplay of biological sex and gender, psychosocial factors affecting health care, and socioeconomic differences between genders.

They are also three to four times more likely to die while pregnant or in the first year postpartum, while Indigenous women have twice the maternal morbidity and mortality rates of White women. This is the result of complex, generational, and deeply rooted, institutionalized systems of race-based discrimination. Despite the fact that Black women experience disease at higher rates, they are not yet adequately represented in research, which limits the generalizability of treatment recommendations, even compared to those of white women.

Several studies examining why Black women are recruited less often and participate less in clinical trials have found logistical constraints and   mistrust in the research community due to fear of experimentation to be the most common concerns. Many potential participants fear medical exploitation, and rightfully so, given the history of horrendous injustices inflicted on Black men and women by medical researchers: In 1840, Black women were subjected to gynecological surgery without anesthesia; in 1932, the 40-year Tuskegee experiment began, which egregiously harmed Black men by withholding syphilis treatment; and researchers famously cultured and used cancer cells from Henrietta Lacks without her consent in the 1950s. These are the most well-known offenses, but they only scratch the surface of the medical abuses Black people have endured. This year, in a sign of progress, the American Cancer Society announced a large study that will examine the increased breast cancer risk for Black women, and we hope that this is just the first of many upcoming efforts to understand and improve their health.

The good news is that medical science finally appreciates the reality that gender is an important factor in patient care when considering age-appropriate preventative measures, anatomical differences, and genetic influences that affect pathophysiology and the clinical manifestation of disease. For example, researchers have studied the gender disparities in how pain is experienced and treated by practitioners. Chronic pain and associated conditions are more common in women than in men, and studies have found the biological response to pain is influenced by gender.

Investigations in the perception of pain have suggested that fluctuations in estrogen and inflammatory responses, as well as in women-specific genetic variations, may lead to increased pain sensitivity and severity. Women’s response to pain is postulated to be present at birth, as demonstrated in one study , where infant girls undergoing heel sticks were more likely to have widespread nociceptive cortical activation than males were, indicating an increased sensitivity to pain. Unfortunately, this research is not always reliable. For instance, gender stereotypes lead men to underreport pain, so they   are often perceived to have higher pain tolerance. One study also found that providers perceive women to be in less pain than they actually are and therefore underestimate their self-reported pain. A large factor in this discrimination was due to women’s facial expressiveness, which providers discounted as exaggerated. These findings suggest that doctors regard women’s pain as less credible and so fail to properly treat it. This failing is even more pronounced for Black women patients. The overarching theme of these studies is how gender biases result in generalized treatments that may not be as effective or as safe for anyone other than White men, who tend to be the test subjects, and how gender stereotypes affect how we understand patients.

Not only has gender bias affected the availability of reliable data on women’s health, but it also has had repercussions on the access to care.   One large scale survey found that younger women, particular those who are non-White, have reported more delays in obtaining medical care than men have. Many of these barriers are related to difficulty in affording services. This is even more significant for Black and Hispanic women. Women pay around 20% more annually for health care outside of   pregnancy, despite meeting insurance deductibles and utilizing medical services at higher rates than men. Black women, on average, continue to earn less money than men do, which contributes to difficulties such as affording medications and accessing transportation to address medical issues. Additionally, there are underrecognized yet significant time and monetary constraints that come with the domestic labor and childrearing that fall largely to women, even today.

As we continue to examine gender and racial differences, a key question arises: Since we now know better, how can we do better? Disassembling a system that has supported bias in health care for decades is no easy feat. However, we have made some progress in recent years to address racial and gender disparities. Medical educators increasingly recognize the different clinical presentations of pathology in women compared with those in men, such as in acute myocardial infarctions or heart attacks. Medical colleges more frequently address the complex biopsychosocial factors and social determinants of health that affect the well-being of the population. An expanding willingness to discuss and explore gaps in medical knowledge related to institutional biases and to implement new curricula to deconstruct these stereotypes is one pathway toward approaching equitable care.

Cultural sensitivity is no longer a choice; it’s a public-health mandate, and if we fail to address and discuss differences in our experiences, we will only continue to perpetuate them. Another way the medical field is now attempting to deconstruct bias is by utilizing tools to help providers identify their own implicit biases, because awareness is the first step to change. If we can start to recognize that women’s’ health extends far beyond pregnancy and menopause and to explore the complexities not only of biology but also of being a woman in today’s world, then we can make progress.   We must continue to encourage participation in difficult conversations about race and gender and to be curious about our own actions and biases in daily life. Despite seemingly insurmountable and systemic challenges, women have continued to live full, long, and abundant lives. What might we accomplish in a society that strives to truly value and respect all people?

Editor’s Note: The contents of this article are not affiliated with the University of South Florida.

This article was originally published in  AWIS Magazine . Join AWIS to access the full issue of  AWIS Magazine  and more  member benefits .

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