Gender psychology and sex psychology. What are the main differences?

Gender psychology is an absolutely new direction in the system of social and humanitarian sciences; it is just beginning its first steps and declaring itself as an independent science in the field of psychological cognition. Gender psychology is responsible for the behavior of people, depending on their belonging to the male or female sex. She studies such phenomena as self-esteem, socialization, prejudice, discrimination, self-perception and the emergence of various social norms and roles. The basis of gender psychology is psychosocial development of the individual and sex psychology, it is these aspects that determine the structure of the teaching.

Gender sociology deals primarily with the sexual development of girls and boys, and the adequacy of their sexual roles. The bulk of scientific work on gender psychology does not deal with the study of social inequality of the sexes, the nature of gender differences and the evaluation of psychological varieties between the sexes.
Initially, the term "sex" was intended to denote the physiological characteristics of a person (male or female), the sex of a person was considered the foundation and prevailed in determining the social and psychological differences between men and women.

As a rule, men are more ambitious, rational and independent, while women are considered more sensual, tender, emotional and sociable. Such ideas about women and men are very common in our culture. Gender psychology on the basis of the latest scientific research argues that there are more similarities between women and men than differences. The only clear distinction between the sexes is their role in reproducing offspring. To date, physical differences between the sexes are very vague, since muscularity and endurance is no longer a priority for the male population of the planet. For example, men from southeast Asia are much lower than European women.

In addition to physiological divisions between people, there is a division of their forms of activity, social roles, differences in behavior and temperament. Very often the biological sex does not quite correspond to emotional characteristics, and sometimes it is the complete opposite. Hence the notion of "gender psychology" - that is, science that studies the totality of cultural and social norms that are considered a privilege of one or the other sex. Ultimately, it is not the biological sex of the individual that determines his activity and behavior, but the sociocultural norms affect the psychological characteristics of men and women. To be in a woman or a man is not to have certain anatomical features of the structure of the body, it means scrupulously to fulfill the gender roles prescribed by the society.

Unlike gender psychology , gender psychology does not just study the psychological characteristics of men and women. In the center of her attention, first of all, the results of personal development, caused by the phenomena of sexual stratification and differentiation. Gender psychology primarily focuses on the hierarchy of statuses, roles, positions of women and men, while the issue of discrimination and gender inequality is actively discussed. Gender psychology, like gender linguistics, unlike sex psychology is characterized by different theoretical and methodological grounds. For example, for gender psychology, the basis is the socio-constructivist paradigm, while for sex psychology the basis is considered a biodeterministic paradigm.