THE DEVELOPMENT OF GENDER DIFFERENTIATION IN YOUNG-CHILDREN

A sample of 128 boys and girls in four age groups (three, five, seven, nine years) under-took tasks designed to assess their ability to cate gorize by gender, gender constancy, evaluations of gender groups, and gender discrimination in the allocation of prizes in a task performanc e setting. Results indicated that all children could categorize accura tely by gender although nine-year-olds tended to adopt more complex cr iteria. Gender constancy increased with age, although not monotonicall y-seven-year-olds displayed less constancy than five-year-olds. Gender differentiation in attitudes was very marked from five years upwards, and even earlier in girls (both groups viewed their own gender more f avourably). This greater own gender favouritism among girls was even c learer in the discrimination task: girls awarded girls' groups more de sirable toys even when they had ostensibly performed less well than th e boys' group. The boys attended more to performance information. Girl s also made more negative comments about boys than vice versa.