Sex and gender differences

Traditionally agency has been associated with belonging to the male sex. Men are assumed to have masculine characteristics which stereotypically include qualities such as strength, power, decisiveness and effectiveness - all linked to ideas about men being more agentic than women. Considering only the history of ideas in the West, these views had their origins in Ancient Greek and Rome but were perpetuated in both the Jewish and the Christian traditions (Tuana, 1993). In the nineteenth century we find statements such as the following:

It is evident that the man, possessing reasoning faculties, muscular power and courage to employ it, is qualified for being a protector: the woman, being little capable of reasoning, feeble and timid, requires protection. Under such circumstances the man naturally governs; the woman naturally obeys.

(Alexander Walker, 1840, p. 131, as cited by Purvis, 1983)

It was thought that a good woman and wife should subjugate her will to that of her husband. The illustrious philosopher Immanuel Kant considered that a husband 'must tell her (his wife) what her will consists of’ (1798, as cited by Tuana, 1993).

In 1949 Simone de Beauvoir offered an approach to understanding the male-female imbalance of power through her view that men define the human type and are positioned as 'Subjects’, whereas women take the place of 'the Other’. She says that 'he is the subject, he is the Absolute - she is the Other’. The Other is classed as incidental but is necessary in the sense that she complements the Man as Subject, just as the Master would have no meaning without the Slave (and the Adult without the Child). De Beauvoir’s work (1997) has been influential in many ways, one being the use of the concept of 'Othering’, positioning oppressed categories of humans as different from and lesser than those who dominate them. De Beauvoir comments that women are often comfortable with their subjugated status. However, she sees women as capable of choosing for themselves and becoming ‘transcendent’, as she calls it - in other words, agents in the world. Many years later Bartky wrote about how many women accommodate to their own oppression, engaging in ‘self-policing’ to ensure they conform to the good girl or good women role: taking up less space in the world, managing their appearance, their deportment and their ambitions. She talks about women’s ‘relentless self-surveillance’ (1990, p. 80).

Bakan was one of the few psychologists who made use of the term agency. He wrote a book in 1966 in which he defined agency and communion as the ‘two fundamental modalities of the existence of living forms’ (pp. 14-15). For Bakan, agency was about striving to master the environment and assert the self, whereas communion was about relating to others, merging with them and valuing belonging. He considered that the sexes differed in that boys are socialised to be independent and risk-taking, while girls are expected to be sensitive, nurturing and help-seeking. Numerous studies have made use of Bakan’s dichotomy and even recent studies have found sex differences in the expected direction. For example, in 2016 Carli and colleagues reported a study of stereotypes of men, women and scientists and found that, when assessed using Bakan’s agency-communion split, men and scientists were significantly more likely to be seen as more agentic than women, who were seen as communal and passive. Most of the studies involved adults but the theory implies that the differences start in childhood. A 1999 study by Rudman and Glick found that the female applicants for a job, which required technical skills and an ability to be sensitive and helpful, who displayed agentic qualities were considered less appointable than equally agentic male applicants. The problem seemed to be that they were considered less likeable than the men. The authors concluded that ‘because women are held to a higher standard of niceness than men they may be more likely to be punished for perceived violations of these standards' (p. 1004). They note that women’s expression of agency has become more evident over recent decades and suggest that, 'because agentic traits are associated with power and status, women’s increasing agency poses a challenge to male dominance’ (p. 1005).

The evidence for a differential encouragement of agency in boys and girls is thin on the ground. However, it can be inferred from a number of studies using concepts cognate with or linked to agency. Martin conducted observational studies with 5-year-olds in the USA examining ‘how pre-schools serve as places where children learn bodily discipline’ (1998, p. 494). She found that boy children were allowed to be more free and relaxed and that girl children wore more restrictive clothing and that teachers spent more time managing their clothing. Girls were told to use a ‘nice’ or ‘quiet’ voice three times more often than boys.

In 1992 Brown and Gilligan published a book in which they discussed interviews they had conducted with 100 girls aged 7 to 18 years. Although there were exceptions, they found evidence in most of the girls of ‘a loss of voice, a struggle to authorize or take seriously their own experience’ (p. 6). In a 1994 summary of this work Brown stated: ‘our research suggests that girls are rewarded for adopting narrow conventions of femininity that require them to bury much of what they know’ (p. 383).

This perspective may seem very outdated in a minority world where equality between the sexes is legislated for and generally seen to have been advanced very effectively. However, there is evidence that girls and women still conform to society’s expectations of the ‘good’ or ‘nice ‘girl. On the other hand, demanding agency from boys to an extreme, through overemphasising autonomy and independence, does boys no favours either, since it can cut them off from seeking intimacy and expressing a need for others (Levant and Wong, 2017). Helgeson and Fritz (1999) have researched what Bakan (1966) called ‘unmitigated agency’, which they define as ‘a focus on the self to the exclusion of others. It includes being hostile, cynical, greedy, and arrogant’ (p. 132). High levels of unmitigated agency are found more often in men, according to their data, whereas ‘unmitigated communion’, implying ‘focusing on others to the exclusion of the self’, is found more often in women. Both are associated in different ways with poor mental health and social pathologies.

It seems that gender dimorphism persists, not only in the West but globally (England, 2010). Some of the differences between boys and girls and men and women are biological. These relatively small differences - in size, level of activity, etc. - which are evident in infants at birth seem to be built upon and emphasised in the vast majority of cultures (Greene, in press).

Later in the life course the different roles the sexes play in society, primarily related to reproduction, assume a central role in shaping the choices and social behaviours of the sexes. However, when we turn to what we know today about psychological competencies and qualities, the women’s liberation movement and other social emancipatory changes have resulted in a marked convergence - in the minority world where most of such research has been conducted - in men’s and women’s dispositions and capacities (Hyde, 2005). This demonstrates the extent to which such capacities are conditioned and sustained by external social factors.

As we stated earlier, psychologists have tended to avoid the term agency, using cognate terms such as mastery, assertiveness and self-efficacy. They also have a long-standing interest in assessing sex differences in psychological traits. There is a problem inherent in this sort of research that can often carry the assumption that the qualities assessed are fixed traits of the individual (Greene, in press). Very little of this research examines contextual variation in the expression of these supposedly inherent traits.

In 2005 Hyde published an exhaustive review of studies focused on sex differences. She concluded that there were few significant differences, one strong exception being in the area of physical and sporting prowess where boys and men typically perform at a higher level. She noted the very marked effect of context on the appearance of sex differences. For example, stereotypical sex differences are far more likely to be seen where males and females are aware of being observed and judged by others. In all the studies reviewed by Hyde, none had examined agency as such. Self-esteem has been studied quite extensively and it could be seen as somewhat cognate to agency. Hyde reports that:

Kling et al. (1999) used a developmental approach in their meta-ana-lysis of studies of gender differences in self-esteem, on the basis of the assertion of prominent authors such as Mary Pipher (1994) that girls’ self-esteem takes a nosedive at the beginning of adolescence. They found that the magnitude of the gender difference did grow larger from childhood to adolescence...However, the gender difference did not suddenly become large in early adolescence, and even in high school, the difference was still not large.

(p. 588)

Hyde also cites a study by Whitley (1997), who conducted an analysis of age trends in computer self-efficacy. In the equivalent of primary school no sex differences were found, but by high school boys saw themselves as significantly more effective than girls. For Hyde, such findings point to changes in context and expectations as children move from childhood into adolescence, changes that invite further investigation.

Relational theories about the self were first proposed by feminist theorists such asjean Baker Miller (1976), Carol Gilligan (1979) and Nancy Chodorow (1978) to distinguish the psychological orientation of girls and women from that of boys and men. This led to an unfortunate essentialist slant to the relational perspective, which implied that there were inherent psychological differences between the sexes rather than seeing them as a product of cultural conditions (Greene, 2015). In response to such criticisms, and over time, relational-cultural theory, as outlined on the website for the Jean Baker Miller Training Institute (JBMTI), has focused more on the reality that we are all, male and female, deeply implicated in relationships and that 'individuals are constituted by relationships'. The goal of the JBMTI, for example, is to question ‘the usefulness of psychology and therapeutic practices that elevate and celebrate the notion of a hyper-individuated separate self’ (www. wcwonline.org/JBMTI-Site/introduction-to-jbmti).

Whatever the cultural context, as long as the concept of agency has gendered connotations it is likely that girls and boys will encounter social pressures to perform agency in a way that aligns with the prevailing gender stereotypes.