Babies see gender constructs, study shows
By Kate Nussenbaum
Senior Staff Writer
Published: Sunday, October 21, 2012
http://www.browndailyherald.com/babies-see-gender-constructs-study-shows-1.2781703 Before babies learn language, they can perceive gender stereotypes. Studies suggest that at 18 months, before they even have the ability to understand their own gender identity, infants will focus longer on images that challenge typical roles — a man putting on lipstick, for example. By age two, they can locate themselves in the gender system and identify pictures of males and females based on external characteristics like hair length and clothing. But they cannot discern a naked person's sex.
These phenomena are examples of ways our social context influences our development, said Anne Fausto-Sterling, professor of biology and gender studies, in a public conversation Friday with Debbie Weinstein '93, assistant director of the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women. Students and their parents filled Pembroke Center 305 to listen to the talk, entitled "An Alternative to Nature v. Nurture: Biology in a Social World."
"These days the nature-nurture debate is a fallback for a lot of people," Fausto-Sterling said. "But actually the whole contour of that so-called debate is really changing. It's changing across the board because people are becoming much more aware of the ways in which nature and nurture are integrated phenomena."
