Discuss the gender difference that is found with regard to self-esteem. What are some of the proposed causes for this difference?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Women tend to have lower self-esteem than men. This is in large part due to the lower status that girls and women hold in most societies. To the extent that women are excluded from important life arenas, their self-concepts suffer. This occurs across cultures and in locations where women experience the lowest status there are larger gender differences such that women have much lower self-esteem than men. Women who have more education or are from a higher class have somewhat higher self-esteem, but the gender difference persists. Recent research shows that this gender difference emerges during puberty and begins to decline at about 65 years of age, with the difference dissipating by old age. However, the text does not clarify if this is due in part to a decrease in the self-esteem of men as they become members of a devalued group (elderly) or due to a rise in the self-esteem of women as they age or some combination of these effects.