An Analysis Of Hyde's The Gender Similarities Hypothesis

Teaching About Gender

It is no secret that boys and girls grow up hearing about all of their differences. In Hyde’s article, “The Gender Similarities Hypothesis”, she recognizes the frequency of psychological studies done to prove that males and females are very different. It is a common belief that males and females have more mental differences than similarities. As Hyde’s article explains, this seems to be untrue. In fact, it is the opposite that Hyde finds true. She claims that males and females are almost completely psychologically the same, with only a few differences. In her article, she compares meta-analyses of different functions such as math computation, special perception, helping behavior, and more. She found that the vast majority of these experiments showed small differences between the abilities of males versus those of

When I searched the Toys R Us store, the “electronics” sections for each gender had only a few items, such as headphones and boom-boxes, and were basically the same products, with color being the biggest difference. Then in the “learning” section, there was only one computer-like toy, LeapFrog. Again, the only difference being the colors (the boys’ was blue and the girls’ was pink). Then I looked at the toy section on the Walmart website, where I found something that surprised me. Of course there were different categories for boys and girls, but when it came to electronics, there was no such distinction. It was simply labeled as “kids’ electronics”, even when I was navigating in the different gendered sections. I was expecting something very different than this, like finding many more toys that were more computer-like in the boys’ category. It turns out, for two major toy stores, there were really not many differences when it came to computer use for boys and