The Development of the Distinction between the Gender's Appearance and Reality: A Study on Romanian Preschoolers

The present study concerns the process of forming and developing the gender identity at preschool age children in Romania through the investigation of gender identity particularities related to the ability of children to distinguish between the appearance and reality of the gender (AR). 261 children aged 2;8 to 6;11 years have been tested in two categories of AR gender tasks: the reality of the gender (“what really is”) and the appearance of the gender (“what it looks like”). Depending on the promoting or non-promoting of the tasks, children were grouped as “gender-realist” vs. “gender-nonrealist”. The study emphasized that the development of the ability of appearance-reality gender (AR) distinction is not related to the gender of the subjects and that, with the increase in age, more and more children acquire the ability to differentiate real gender from the apparent one. It has been observed that participants made more fenomenism errors compared to those of the realism, illustrating a decrease in the frequency of occurrence, with the subjects’ increase in age, only in the case of the fenomenism error. Referring to the ability of AR gender distinction, the influence of the age upon its development was evidenced by the increase of the comprehension level, along with the age of the children, of their own affiliation and of the others’ to a particular category of the gender, of the invariable character of the gender, regardless of the situation or the activity the individual is involved in.