Gender and Gender Identity Development for Students

Abstract

The entanglement of sex, gender, gender identity, and gender expression creates a complex context for understanding the ways in which students develop their conceptualizations of gender and gender identity. Gender identity is a person’s own self-conceptualization of their own gender and gender expression is one’s performance and enactment of gender. Researchers have studied the ways in which socially constructed binary gender roles and the intersection of multiple identities influence the gender identity development of college students. The field of higher education and student affairs has become somewhat more critical and fluid in their understanding of gender and gender identity development. The shift of the journal is one emblem of the changing conceptualizations of gender and gender identity development in student affairs professionals’ practice and scholarship. The chapter discusses multiple case studies related to gender and gender identity development.