as playful (Galen & Underwood, 1997). Some 20 years earlier, a study by Feshbach (1978) concluded that young girls more so than young boys would behave in a pro-social manner.
Ann Gilligan (1982) is one among several theorists who contend that women conceptualize and analyse issues, events, and actions differently from men. This difference in perspective leads women into interpersonal behaviours that tend to be more strongly oriented toward collaboration than to competition. She also states that women tend to define their personal identities in terms of the men with whom they affiliate. Gilligan frequently is criticized by other female writers on the grounds that her conclusions offer validation to sexual stereotypes. Approximately 10 years ago, Mednick and Thomas (1993) continued to hold that most women were still socialized to seen life goals through marriage as opposed to seeking such goals through work. Chodorow (1999), in The Power of Feelings, contends that gender socialization is unique to each individual woman. A quarter century earlier, Bardwick (1971) held that women generally avoided conflict and competition, while seeking to nurture.
Gender equality (or the reverse side of the coin, gender-based discrimination) and gender-specific behaviours emanates from the social subordination of females. The social subordination of females in society has occurred through the process described by social learning theory. The subordination of females provides both the philosophical basis for a justification by a patriarchal society and a basis for economic practices that facilitate the development and maintenance of societal inequities between females and males within a society through the several life stages. This institutional subordination also explains gender-specific behaviours (Barry, 1979).
The origins of social learning theory lie in attempts to combine psychoanalytic and stimulus-response theory into a comprehens...