LANGUAGE ENVIRONMENT AND GENDER IDENTITY ATTAINMENT¹

Abstract

This study attempted to explore the question whether sex‐determined grammatical gender loading in the native language will have an effect on the development of gender identity. The empirical question asked was, Will there be a relationship between the amount of linguistic emphasis on sex‐determined gender and the average age of attaining gender identity in children, in a specific language environment? Three groups of children, one in Israel, one in the USA, and one in Finland, were tested on the Michigan Gender Identity Test (MIGIT). The findings indicate a direct relationship between gender loading in the native language and gender identity attainment. It appears that the Israeli children have a significant, albeit temporary, advantage over their American and Finnish counterparts in the timing of gender development.

Implicit Knowledge of Grammatical Gender in Preschool Children

“…Children acquire the notion of biological gender around the age of 2;6 (Fagot et al 1986) and the ability to recognise the invariance of gender identity between the age of 5;0 and 7;0 (Wehren and De Lisi 1983). Nevertheless, children learning a gendered language, such as Hebrew, appear to be able to recognize their own and other sexual identities earlier than those learning languages with no gender, such as English or Finnish (Guiora et al 1982). Martinez and Shartz (1996) found that monolingual Spanish children (3-5 year old) tend to use grammatical gender in a free classification task (sorting animate/inanimate objects pictures).…”

The Impact of Gender-Fair versus Gender-Stereotyped Basal Readers on 1st-Grade Children's Gender Stereotypes: A Natural Experiment

“…Thus, when a boy falls, the verb is nafal, but when a girl falls, it appears as nafla. Hebrew-speaking children acquire the understanding of gender marking very early, usually before they are 3 years old Downloaded by [The University of British Columbia] at 22:40 11 December 2014 (e.g., Berman, 1986;Guiora, Beit-Hallahmi, Fried, & Yoder, 1982;Levy, 1983). Hence, in reading, children are aware of the association between gender and the kinds of verbs associated with males versus females, underlining the importance of the issue of the gender-fairness of basal readers.…”

Children’s Production of Subject–Verb Agreement in Hebrew When Gender and Context are Ambiguous

“…Thus, when a boy falls, the verb is nafal, but when a girl falls, the verb is inflected as nafla. Hebrewspeaking children acquire the understanding of gender marking very early, usually before they are 3 years old (e.g., Berman 1986;Guiora et al 1982;Levy 1983). Hence, school-age children know that names are associated with different verb inflections depending on their stereotypical association with gender.…”