The Psychology of Gender

Within the field of behavioral science, there is variation in the theoretical conceptualizations and methodological approaches to studying gender. Historically, the psychology of gender is embedded in early twentieth-century Freudian personality theory of unconscious motives driving women and men, which was preceded by what Shields and Dicicco described as the more androcentric paternalist explanations of nineteenth-century behavioral science. More contemporary psychological theorizing about gender commonly adopts a theoretical conceptualization of gender that refers broadly to psychological, social, and cultural representation of biological sex categories. The emergence of feminist psychology in the 1960s and 1970s and its proliferation in the 1980s had a profound impact on shaping the research questions and theoretical conceptualizations of the psychology of gender that were anchored in a more social and cultural approach to explaining gender differences. Collectively, these historical and contemporary approaches to the psychology of gender could be described as moving from a more unconscious motivation and “essentialized” gender psychological approach that assumes that differences between males and females arise from preexisting “natural ‘essential differences’ toward a more sociocultural orientation nurtured orientation to gender that explores the role of socialization, identity, and culture in complex social behavioral differences between men and women.” These distinctions in the theoretical conceptualization of gender largely reflect a highly contentious debate among psychologists about nature and nurture causation of sex differences and similarities in traits, abilities, behavioral tendencies, attitudes, and beliefs. The nature-nurture debate is the common term used to describe these theoretical conceptualizations used to explain gender behavioral differences. The purpose of this chapter is to describe theoretical conceptualizations of the psychology of gender to advance the argument that these conceptualizations can be used to better understand, protect, and defend information and systems in cybersecurity situations, as well as to understand/study the participation of women in computer science/computing fields.