Gender

Essential Reads Chosen by the editors

Why We Can’t Be Honest About Homoeroticism

By Stanton Peele on March 11, 2010 in Addiction in Society

Eric Massi's discomfort and dishonesty expresses our whole culture's inability to come to grips with the range of sexual urges, including our own. Read More

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Why We Can’t Be Honest About Homoeroticism

By Stanton Peele on March 11, 2010 in Addiction in Society

Eric Massi's discomfort and dishonesty expresses our whole culture's inability to come to grips with the range of sexual urges, including our own. Read More
Measuring Faces: Trustworthiness and Facial Features

By Daniel R. Hawes on March 9, 2010 in Evolved Primate

It seems odd, but stable facial cues, such as the width-height ratio of a man's face, may be decent predictors of his trustworthiness. Less strange is that we apparently use face-width when intuitively judging a strangers' trustworthiness... Read More
Why Women Make Better Leaders Than Men

By Ronald E. Riggio, Ph.D. on March 9, 2010 in Cutting-Edge Leadership

If most of our leaders are male, and if the U.S. is the dominant super power and the world's largest economy, how can I claim that we would be better off if women leaders were the majority? It's simple! Read More
Steve Martin, Alec Baldwin, and the Oscars - buddies tease

By Geoffrey Greif on March 8, 2010 in Buddy System

Men friends can tease each other, like Martin and Baldwin did last night. Read More
Ways to Categorize Partners of BPs

By Randi Kreger on March 8, 2010 in Stop Walking on Eggshells

No matter how healthy you are, having a relationship with someone who has a personality disorder will cause you to feel like there must be something wrong with you. If you are by nature a rescuer--especially one with low self esteem--better watch out. Read More
Go Home and Put on Some Clothes: Has Casual Friday Gone Over the Top?

By Audrey Nelson, PhD on March 8, 2010 in He Speaks, She Speaks

There is no dress rehearsal for a first impression. You hate to admit it, but don't underestimate it: we judge a book by its cover. Not fair? Nope. But it's human nature. We look at people and size them up. And women are judged more harshly and by a different yardstick than men. A woman's credibility can be on the line with her hemline. What a woman wears to work reflects and can be constructed as an indicator of her judgment. Read More
So You Think You're Not Prudish About Sex?

By Christopher Badcock, Ph.D. on March 8, 2010 in The Imprinted Brain

Victorians may have been prudish about the physical side of sex but were much less inhibited about other aspects of it than we are: in these respects, we are the prudes!
Read More
Female Violence in Sport: Maybe It Isn't Just the Testosterone

By Mitch Abrams, PsyD on March 5, 2010 in Sports Transgressions

This past week, nineteen year old freshman basketball player Brittney Griner, of Baylor University, connected on a right cross that would make anyone say, “Damn!” Read More
LA Unified School District Considers Gay Heroes as Inappropriate as OJ Simpson for Black History Month

By Calpernia Addams on March 4, 2010 in Transposition

Why on Earth is drag superstar RuPaul held up alongside a convicted murderer and a "hard partying" eccentric sports star as an example of why parents and officials should be horrified at a school's Black History Month celebration? Read More
No Heterosexual Partner? It's called "social factor infertility"

By Connie Shapiro, PhD on March 4, 2010 in When You're Not Expecting

One rarely thinks of same sex couples as "infertile," but the absence of a heterosexual partner means that they must give careful and deliberate consideration to how to enlarge their families. "Social factor infertility" differs in some ways from a diagnosis of medical infertility, and couples facing either will share some familiar emotional territory. Read More
Hidden Brain Puzzle (And Answer): Sexism in the Workplace -- Some Paradoxical Evidence

By Shankar Vedantam on March 4, 2010 in The Hidden Brain

How does overtly sexist decor in offices affect prospective job-seekers? Read More
The Third Gender

By Mark Sherman, Ph.D. on March 4, 2010 in Real Men Don't Write Blogs

I suspect that seeing a title like this makes you think that I must be about to talk about transsexuals, but I'm not. I don't know anything about transsexuals, and, therefore, I'd worry that anything I might say about them would be politically incorrect.
No, here are the three genders I'm talking about: Men, women, and academic men. Read More
One Attack Missing in the Assault on Tiger

By Susan Newman, Ph.D. on February 21, 2010 in Singletons

It's refreshing that focus on Tiger's only child status as a root cause of Tiger's actions has been absent. Read More
Women and the Split Ear Advantage

By Audrey Nelson, PhD on February 20, 2010 in He Speaks, She Speaks

A part of women’s role is social maintenance. They take care of people and relationships and their superior listening skills facilitate this critical role at both home and work. Read More
Identical But Genetically Different (and why you can thank your mother for your IQ)

By Christopher Badcock, Ph.D. on February 19, 2010 in The Imprinted Brain

Varying X-chromosome gene inactivation in identical female twins makes some differences between them also genetic and gives some surprising insights into intelligence. Read More
The Wage Gap -- Unconscious Bias in Judging the Value of Predominantly "Female" Professions

By Shankar Vedantam on February 18, 2010 in The Hidden Brain

Apologists for the wage gap blame women for choosing low-paying jobs. Here is why they're wrong. Read More
Amy Bishop and the Trauma of Tenure Denial

By Katherine van Wormer, MSSW, Ph.D. on February 16, 2010 in Crimes of Violence

Workplace shootings by women are extremely rare and, until now, seemingly non existent. Two unique factors are prominent in the situation that led to the University of Alabama-Huntsville mass slaughter. The first is the unique history of violent rage reportedly in the background of the assailant. The second is the structural violence that sometimes accrues to the university tenure process. The author who herself once experienced tenure denial helps us understand how these two factors came together to produce a situation of grief and horror.
Read More
Olympics and Gender Empowerment Through Sport

By Elizabeth Meyer, Ph.D. on February 16, 2010 in Gender and Schooling

What a great time to reflect on the importance of sport in shaping girls' experiences throughout their lives. Read More
2010 Resolution: Dress Like a Power-Player (Part III)

By LisaMarie Luccioni, M.A., AICI, CIP on February 15, 2010 in The Image Professor

2010 Resolution: Dressing for Power (Part III)

You don't need an executive title or advanced rank to project power and authority. Get the job, land the client, acquire the account, and command both attention and respect as you leap-frog over people otherwise flailing about. Want to enhance your power base? I've got answers and most, I suspect, you've never even considered.

Here's the last post in my series on Power-Dressing. I'd recommend first reading Part I (suggestions 1-5), Part II (suggestions 6-10), and then concluding with our Part III listed below. Do I have pictures? Of course. Let's move. Read More
Facing Loneliness on Valentine's Day

By Harry K. Wexler, Ph.D. on February 14, 2010 in Getting Laid Over 60

One impact of loneliness, or the fear of it, is that it can compel us to make poor relationship choices. In desperation to be with someone, we often choose the wrong people... At a deeper level, as in all questions of the spirit including love and meaning, we must at some point face ourselves, and being alone, although undesirable, provides that important opportunity.
Read More

Gender Blogs

Gender and Schooling
Ending bullying and harassment, and promoting sexual diversity in schools.
By Elizabeth Meyer, Ph.D.
Men and Matters of the Heart
Rediscovering emotions in mid-life.
By Wayne Giancaterino, Ph.D.
The Power of Women
Harness Your Unique Strengths at Home, at Work, and in Your Community
By Susan Nolen-Hoeksema

Gender Basics

In the old days, it was so simple. Men killed the animals, women raised the kids. Then we moved out of caves, invented gender studies, and learned a bit about genetics. Now nothing is clear-cut.

Go to the Gender Basics page for more on Gender including:

Current Issue

The Expectations Trap

Why we're conditioned to blame our partners for our unhappiness.