Gender Schema Theory - Positive Social Change

Positive Social Change

A strong source of sex-typing comes from the rearing practices of parents. Bem offers strong suggestions for preventing the sex-typing of children, including the prevention of access to media that promotes sex-typing, altering media and stories to eliminate sex-typing information, and modeling equal roles for mothers and fathers in the household. For example, Bem edited the books that her children read to create a more androgynous view. This included, for example, drawing long hair and feminine body characteristics on male figures. Ultimately, however, this is somewhat limited because children will become exposed to some of this sex-typing information, particularly when they begin attending school. Therefore, Bem suggests teaching alternative schemata to children so that they are less likely to build and maintain a gender schema. Some examples include an individual differences schema, where children learn to process information on a person-by-person basis rather than make wide assumptions about groups based on information from individuals. Also, providing children with a sexism schema, where children learn to process sex-typed information through a filter that promotes moral outrage when sexist information is being promoted, can assist in providing children with the resources to not only keep from becoming sex-typed but also promote positive social change.

Bem wished to raise consciousness that the male/female dichotomy is used as an organizing framework, often unnecessarily, especially in the school curriculum. She stressed that the omnirelevance of gender has a negative impact on society, and that the gender schema should be more limited in scope. Within the feminist lens, androgyny is not radical enough, because androgyny means that “masculine” and “feminine” still exist. Rather, society should decrease the use of the gender dichotomy as a functional unit, and be aschematic.