The PsyCreative Column

One of the first things we notice about any individual is their gender. Is it a male or female? Is it someone that we maintain our distance with someone we make friends with, or someone that can potentially be of romantic interest to us? Gender goes a long way to answer these questions. It used to be as simple as males and females earlier. However, as we go further, with people getting more aware about sex, gender, and the basic concept of choice, something now popularly known as gender fluidity has quickly gained traction, especially in the western part of the world. Here in India, we’re still more in touch with our more conservative roots, and unaccepting of this.  So, what is this? What do we mean when we say gender fluidity? To understand this, we first need to understand the concept of gender identity and expression of gender. Gender identity refers to one’s internal sense of their gender. They may feel masculine, feminine, both, and neither. It can remain the same as assigned...

  The modern-day perception of attractiveness has drastically changed from more traditional times. One can say that this change has occurred mostly owing to the feminist revolution of our day and age. Physical attractiveness is one of the paramount issues of our recent struggles against inequality and a lack of inclusiveness in society of individuals who do not seem to “fit” the “norms” of beauty in society. However, we must try and understand why physical attractiveness has played a role in our perceptions of individuals for millennia of mankind’s existence, and how we can use these explanations to further the cause of gender equality and better reason with people while trying to make everyone’s perceptions more inclusive.      If you were assigned female at birth and are somewhere between the age of 15 and 35 years at present, it may be very likely that you have tried, or at least thought, to rebel against your parents and/or societal pressures at some point, reg...

The institution of marriage, though an age-old concept, has evolved markedly over the past few decades. However, till date, heterosexual marriage persists to be a deeply gendered institution and construct. Gender roles play an integral role in the division of work, the power dynamic and even in humdrum decision making. Most feminist literature regards gender as having an integral role in the production and proliferation of gender hierarchies at a domestic level. In 1972, a sociologist named Jessie Bernard identified marriage as having primarily two types – “his” and “hers” in her book The future of Marriage . She uncovered that “his” is better than “hers” in terms of the benefits drawn from a marriage. Research shows that marriage is more beneficial to men than it is to women. Married men, on average, are said to be happier and healthier than single men and married women. They have longer life spans, earn more and have lower stress levels than married women. This is because marriage is...

Gender psychology is the exploration of the concepts of masculinity and femininity across cultures and the influence of those concepts on behavior, health, interpersonal relationships, and psychological processes. Although gender psychology originally denoted the analysis of biological sex differences between men and women, the field has grown to encompass the social construction of gender as well.( APA Dictionary of Psychology )  Is sex a psychological choice? Do your biological functions decide if you are a man or a woman ; or your comfortability with your own body decide which gender you want to be? Are there only two distinct genders or is it a sort of a scale instead? People often get confused between the terms sex and gender . Sex refers to biological differences between males and females. For example, chromosomes (female XX, male XY), reproductive organs (ovaries, testes), hormones (estrogen, testosterone) ; gender refers to the cultural differences expected (by society / cu...

Men and women are not equal. There, I said it. They differ right from their basic morphologies to variations in complex brain structures. Research has shown a gender-related difference in the limbic-thalamo-cortical circuitry explaining the differences in thalamic activation while processing unpleasant linguistic information, which is fancy talk for basically ‘Men and women handle emotional stimuli, and express them in their own unique ways.’ Regardless of their biological distinctiveness, I think that all genders must be treated with equal respect, but how is that possible if men and women are not equal? Essentially, equality means being given the same opportunities without consideration of the personal hurdles people might face. Let’s take an example of a village primary school, where both girls and boys are equally encouraged to attend. But equality stops right there, and doesn’t acknowledge the fact that although girls are also encouraged, their conservative families might not agr...

We live in a world where the determination of the sex of a baby is right away associated with established gender roles that they are supposed to adhere to. It is usually observed starting right from the baby shower that the color blue is often related to boys and similarly pink is for girls, throughout their life. I’m sure you must have seen and experienced the difference in the color of stationeries, toys, room walls,and apparel in general between you and your sibling of the opposite gender. People are expected to adopt those colors only, which are consistent with their gender, mostly because of the influence of media, families or societal norms. The segregation of even the colors based on just the gender of the individual speaks volumes about the extent of the division of gender roles in everything. Now, the division of gender roles is not entirely invalid. But the problem arises when these gender roles become stereotyped and an unchangeable paradigm. It limits the individual to havi...