Blackwell Reference Online

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Gender bias is behavior that shows favoritism toward one gender over another. Most often, gender bias is the act of favoring men and/or boys over women and/or girls. However, this is not always the case. In order to define gender bias completely, we first must make a distinction between the terms gender and sex. When we use the term gender , we mean socially constructed expectations and roles for women and men, for girls and boys. Specifically, girls and women are expected to demonstrate feminine behavior, and boys and men are expected to act masculine. By sex , we mean biological differences assigned to females and males in order to distinguish between the two. The biological characteristics assigned to females and males often consist of primary or secondary sex characteristics. The term gender bias is often (wrongly) used interchangeably with the term sexism. Sexism is typically defined as the subordination of one sex, usually female, based on the assumed superiority of the other sex ( Kendall 2005 ) or an ideology that defines females as different from and inferior to males ( Andersen & Taylor 2005 ). Sex is the basis for the prejudice and presumed inferiority implicit in the term sexism. The term gender bias is more inclusive than the term sexism, as it includes both prejudice (attitudes) and discrimination (behavior) in its definition. Studies of gender bias also ... log in or subscribe to read full text