Gender: Awareness, Identity, and Stereotyping

Gender is an extremely salient and important part of the way in which children's social worlds are organized. Before they enter kindergarten, children have acquired a wide range of gender-related knowledge, including an understanding of themselves as members of a gender group and a variety of gender-stereotyped associations. As children develop, gender identity becomes important to the way in which children view and evaluate themselves. This article considers three types of gender knowledge (gender awareness, identity, and stereotypes), as well as how they develop in infancy and early childhood and relate to various behavioral and psychological outcomes.