Beth - an excellent article, indeed. I assign it for my research
methods class, which is good timing because it dovetails nicely with
teaching them about APA style and avoiding sexist language (my social
students have all had methods, though, so I'm still in search of
another article :-). BTW, when I assigned this to my first-years in
intro psych, I found that they completely discount the findings
(because they do not yet understand empirical findings)...in a paper
refuting the study, they'll even say things like..."Hyde, in his
paper..."...aaah! So, I save it for sophomores now...
A wonderful article, which I've quoted often in my gender studies
class, by Janet Shibley Hyde (author of a textbook I used for a long
time, Half the Human Experience). She was trying to point out that,
even though people believe that "everyone" knows that when you hear
an expression like, "he who hesitates is lost," you know that "he"
means men and women, children don't understand this. What they
learn instead is that the male gender is dominant. They're the ones
you talk about. This of course has a very strong effect on little
girls. (My conclusion.)
Hyde, J.S. (1984). Children's understanding of sexist language.
Developmental Psychology, 20, 697-706.
Also in:
Hyde, J.S. Children's understanding of sexist language. in
Pettijohn, T.F. (Ed.). (1997) Sources: Notable Selections in
Psychology, 2nd ed. Guilford, CT: Dushkin Publishing Company.
(It was originally published in 1984 in the APA's journal,
Developmental Psychology.)
Here's Janet's description (from her textbook):
"I became interested in...the effect of sexist language on
children... First, I generated an age-appropriate sentence ...and
asked the children to tell stories in response to it:
When a kid goes to school, _____ often feels excited on the first study
...One-third of the children received he for the blank, one-third
received they, and one-third received he or she. The results
were...dramatic...When the pronoun was he, not a single elementary
school boy told a story about a girl... Clearly, then, when
children hear he in a gender-neutral context, they think of a male.
I also asked the children some questions to see if they understood
the grammatical rule that he in certain contexts refers to everyone,
both males and females. Few understood the rule; for example, only
28 percent of the first-graders gave answers showing that they knew
the rule....
(Snip) This research shows two things. First, the majority of
elementary school children have learned to supply he in
gender-neutral contexts...Second, the majority of elementary school
children do not know the rule that he in gender-neutral contexts
refers to both males and females and have a strong tendency to think
of males in creating stories from neutral he cues. For them, then,
the chain of concepts is as follows: (1) The typical person is a
"he." (2) He refers only to males. Logically, then, might they
not conclude that (3) the typical person is a male?
Beth Benoit
University System of New Hampshire
on 1/7/03 5:41 PM, Traci Giuliano at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I'm looking for a good article on gender to serve as a supplemental
reading for that section of my social psychology course. Does anyone
have something they'd recommend?
Thanks.
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Traci A. Giuliano
Associate Professor of Psychology
Southwestern University
Georgetown, TX 78627
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(512) 863-1596;fax (512) 863-1846
http://www.southwestern.edu/~giuliant
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