Gender Bias - Issues and Debates

Question 1

Alpha bias

Answer 1

this occurs when the differences between men and women are exaggerated. Therefore, stereotypically male and female characteristics may be emphasised.

Question 2

Beta bias

Answer 2

-this occurs when the differences between men and women are minimised. This often happens when findings obtained from men are applied to women without additional validation.

Question 3

Androcentrism

Answer 3

• taking male thinking/behavior as normal, regarding female thinking/behavior as deviant, inferiour, abnormal, ‘other’ when it is different.

Question 4

Positive consequences of alpha bias

Answer 4

Has led to some theorists (Gilligan) to assert the worth and valuation ‘feminine qualities’.

• Has led to healthy criticism of cultural values that praise certain ‘male’ qualities such as aggression and individualism as desirable, adaptive and universal.

Question 5

Positive consequence of beta bias

Answer 5

Makes people see men and women as the same, which has led to equal treatment in legal terms and equal access to, for example, education and employment.

Question 6

Negative consequences of alpha bias

Answer 6

Focus on differences between genders leads to the implication of similarity WITHIN genders, thus this ignores the many ways women differ from each other.

• Can sustain prejudices and stereotypes

Question 7

Negative consequences of beta bias

Answer 7

Draws attention away from the differences in power between men and women.

• Is considered as an egalitarian approach but it results in major misrepresentations of both genders.

Question 8

Consequences of gender bias

Answer 8

Kitzinger (1998)
- argue that sex differences are political (women have same rights as men). So gender differences distorted to maintain the status quo of male power.

• Women kept out of male-dominant universities.
• Women were oppressed.
• Women stereotypes (Bowlby).

Feminist argue that gender bias used against women to maintain male power.

Judgements about an individual women’s ability are made on the basis of average differences between the sexes or biased sex-role stereotypes, and this also had the effect of lowering women’s self esteem; making them, rather than men, think they have to improve themselves (Tavris, 1993).

Question 9

Examples of gender bias in research

Answer 9

Kohlberg - Moral development
Freud - psychosexual development
Biomedical theories for abnormality