Gender Schema Theory

Gender schema theory (GST) is a cognitive theory developed to explain the role of gender in organizing meaning, both for self and for others. GST was first proposed by psychologist Sandra Lipsitz Bem in 1981. Bem's formulations built on the more general developmental process through which children learn to incorporate content-specific information into more abstract cognitive structures that are used to process and organize what the person perceives. Observing that all societies make distinctions between male and female, Bem was interested in how children learn to use the content around them related to gender both to evaluate people and situations and to assimilate new information.

Key terms for this theory are schema and schema theory. A schema is a network of cognitive [Page 437]organizations that guides how an individual perceives self, others, and situations. As such, a schema is a systematic framework for interpretive activity. In short, it is a mental representation of a broad range of attributes, traits, and behaviors that are associated with women or men in a particular culture. Once a schema is established, only minimal cues are necessary to elicit the more elaborate set of meanings associated with the schema. Schema theory proposes that perception and the assignment of meaning by people result from the interaction of incoming information and perceptual cues with the perceiving person's existing schema.

Several propositions guide GST, and many communication scholars have found this theory from cognitive psychology to be useful in understanding the assignment of meaning in communication transactions. The main propositions forming the core of GST revolve around the degree to which an individual has developed highly defined gender Schemas. These propositions have been amply tested through research. Five propositions from Bem's work are central to GST:

• 1.
  The child learns to link certain content items to broader attributes that he or she links to “sex” and “gender” (male and female), and these linkages form the basis for “sex-typing” and cultural myths about female and male characteristics (for example, associating certain colors, postural cues, clothing, activities, etc., with female or male).
• 2.
  The child learns to use a complex network of sex-linked associations to process new information and to make sense of cues that she or he perceives, thus making perception a constructive process (for example, a preschool-aged child who has learned to identify “boys” and “girls” will have difficulty with stabilizing gender for a person with a girl's name who looks sex-indeterminate because she has short hair, a lower pitched voice than is typical for females, and does not have a visibly accentuated female body type).
• 3.
  The self-concept is made meaningful through the gender schema that a child develops such that self-monitoring and evaluation occur through application of the gender schema (there are many daily life examples of making decisions guided by a gender schema about what to say, what to wear, how to present oneself to another person or persons in a specific situation).
• 4.
  Once formed, a gender schema is “an anticipatory structure” that works like a shorthand to assign gender meanings to self and others when relevant events or cues activate the schema (for example, seeing a woman wearing a flowered print skirt might activate a meaning structure related to her being a highly feminine woman).
• 5.
  Gender Schemas are regulative for judgments of what is natural or unnatural, right or wrong, valued or nonvalued (for example, a man who stays at home to care for the children might lead to the judgment that he is weak relative to his wife).

Gender Schemas function to fill out a profile of gender identity once a cue or set of cues is available from an event or person. Because cultural practices change over time, gender Schemas also change. For example, the vast majority of today's children in the United States are less likely than children of the past to believe that certain occupations are restricted to men or to women. Yet, gender Schemas can persist even when change has occurred. For example, even today, many people continue to fill out a male gender schema when they hear dentist or airplane pilot and a female schema when they hear secretary or third-grade teacher.

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