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There is growing evidence that stereotype- based bias functions like a habit as an ingrained pattern of thoughts and behaviors.Changing a habit is a multistep process. Successful habit-changing interventions not only increase awareness of problematic behavior but must motivate individuals to learn and deliberately practice new behaviors until they become habitual. We conducted a pair-matched, single-blind, cluster randomized, controlled study at the University of Wisconsin– Madison (UW-Madison) comparing a gender bias habit-reducing intervention delivered separately to 46 departments with 46 control departments. The control departments were offered the intervention after its effects were assessed in the experimental departments (“wait-list controls”). Participants were faculty in these 92 medicine, science, or engineering departments.  Faculty in departments exposed to the gender-bias-habit- reducing intervention demonstrated immediate boosts in several proximal requisites of intentional behavioral change: personal awareness, internal motivation, perception of benefits, and self-efficacy to engage in gender-equity- promoting behaviors. The sustained increase in self-efficacy beliefs at three months provides strong evidence of the effectiveness of the intervention. Self-efficacy is the cornerstone of widely accepted behavioural change theories.Positive outcome expectations are also important in promoting behavioural change and increased at three days after the intervention. 

The behavior of women and men varies greatly depending on situations, cultures, and historical periods. This flexibility emerges as men and women tailor their division of labor to local ecological and socioeconomic demands. The resulting division is supported by childhood socialization practices that, in interaction with sex differences in child temperament, help boys and girls to develop psychologies suited to their likely adult activities. Although responsive to local conditions, the division of labor is constrained by women’s childbearing and nursing of infants and men’s size and strength. Because these biological characteristics influence the efficient performance of many activities in society, they underlie central tendencies in the division of labor as well as its variability across situations, cultures, and history. Gender roles—that is, shared beliefs about the traits of women and men—track the division of labor because people infer these traits from their observations of the sexes’ behaviors. Social percei- vers often essentialize these traits by regarding them as inherent in the biology or social experience of women and men. Gender role expectations, which tend to be consensual within cultures, influence behavior through proximal social psychological and biological processes, whereby (a) other people encourage gender-typical behavior and individuals conform to their own gender identities and (b) hormonal, reward, and cardiovascular mechanisms enable masculine and feminine behaviors. The evidence that men and women sometimes engage in gender- atypical activities suggests a flexible psychology that is not rigidly differen- tiated by sex. Flexibility refers not to random variation of behavior, but to the capacity to vary behaviors to enable reproduction and survival under changeable situational demands. For example, both sexes can be socially sensitive or aggressive, given appropriate socialization and support from social normative, self-regulatory, and hormonal processes. This responsive- ness to cultural and situational demands arises from humans’ evolved capacities to innovate and share information with others and thereby to produce a cumulative culture in which beliefs and practices are shared and subsequently modified. 

the psychological attributes of men and women vary depending on the demands of their social roles. Also, because women’s but not men’s social roles have changed greatly in most indus- trialized nations since the mid-twentieth century, the psychology of women has changed more over time within these nations than the psychology of men. As expected, these changes have taken the form of women adopting many attributes associated with men, with little complementary tendency for men to adopt attributes associated with women.

The specific roles of women and men in a society depend primarily on how the physical differences between the sexes—women’s childbearing and nursing of infants and men’s size and strength—enable or constrain the efficient performance of everyday activities. A division of labor emerges that is tailored to ecological and socioeconomic demands, and socialization practices are organized to support this division. Women tend to perform activities compatible with childcare, and men tend to perform activities less compatible with childcare, including those that require bursts of strength and force. Female and male biological attributes exert less influence in industrialized societies with low birthrates, shortened duration of lactation, and employment roles that favor brains over brawn.

People within a society observe the activities of men and women and form corresponding beliefs about their psychological attributes. From the different activities of the sexes, they infer gender stereotypes–that is, shared expectations that women and men are intrinsically different. These gender role inferences, in turn, promote sex-differentiated behavior through the range of social psychological and biological processes we reviewed in this chapter. In short, guided by gender role beliefs that are shared within a society, children are socialized for the skills, traits, and preferences that support their society’s division of labor. Also, most adults conform to these shared beliefs by confirming others’ expectations and by internalizing them as personal standards for their behavior. In addition, biological processes such as hormonal activation support gender roles. By this confluence of biosocial processes, individuals within a society dynamically construct and share gender roles tailored to their time, culture, and situation. As a result, the observed division of labor within one’s own society seems appropriate and desirable to most people, even though the specific activities of the division vary over time and cultures. 

Is nature or nurture the stronger influence on sex differences and similarities? If asked, most psychologists would probably reply that the question is misguided. Obviously, both are influential. Yet, as we show in this article, nature–nurture debates have remained highly conten- tious in the psychology of gender, and contemporary researchers only sometimes integrate the two causal influences. More commonly, researchers focus on one type of cause to the exclusion of the other or treat them as competing explanations. In analyzing the state of these nature–nurture debates in psychological science, we invoke the terms in their broadest meaning, whereby nature refers to biological structures and processes and nurture refers to sociocultural influences. In this article, we analyze changes in psychologists’ thinking about nature and nurture by tracing the psychol- ogy of gender from the founding of the Association for Psychological Science in 1988 to the present day.  We believe that the future of science pertaining to gender and sex differences lies in overcoming ideological and identity biases and formulating theories that effectively integrate principles of nature and nurture into interactionist approaches. Yet, the complexity of such theories presents intellectual challenges for psychological scientists who try to model the intrinsic dependence of nature on nurture and vice versa. Perhaps as a result, research has tended to focus on one or the other type of cause, yielding a muddled scientific voice in public discourse. Adding further difficulties, the media and public need simplifying frameworks that facilitate using scientific evidence to rea- son about gender in daily life. Excellent communication is essential because any messages from psychological science on gender issues compete with robust informal reasoning based on ideology, everyday observation, and cultural traditions. Among the competing informational sources on sex and gender, science may not be winning. 

The loss of natural forests through deforestation and forest degradation is estimated to now account for about one fourth of total global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.2 Forests not only serve as an essential carbon reserve, they also provide livelihoods, subsistence and income for more than 1.6 billion of the global poor. Those who rely on forests for their livelihoods are among the poorest people on the planet, and they are disproportionately women.

Further, women and men’s specific roles, rights and responsibilities, as well as their particular use patterns and knowledge of forests, shape their experiences differently. As such, gender- differentiated needs, uses and knowledge of the forest are critical inputs to policy and programmatic interventions that will enable the long-term success of REDD+3 on the ground.4 However, given various social, economic, and cultural inequalities and legal impediments, particularly within the forest sector, women (and often other marginalised groups, such as indigenous people, the poor, youth, and handicapped, etc.) within many societies continue to experience ongoing exclusion that limit their ability to fully participate in, contribute to, and benefit from REDD+.5 It is therefore crucial that deliberate and meaningful efforts are taken to ensure REDD+ action is inclusive, fair and gender responsive both in policy and in practice.

It is widely acknowledged that gender equality and women's empowerment are catalysts for reaching sustainable development, including in REDD+. Acknowledging this critical role of gender in sustainable development, UN-REDD has been taking active steps to systematically promote gender equality and a human rights-based approach in its work since its formulation in 2008. These efforts involve utilizing a multi-pronged approach with gender. Support has been provided both at the global level, with tools, guidance and reporting on gender and REDD+, as well as at the national level, with assistance provided in integrating gender equality and women’s empowerment principles within nationally- led REDD+ action. UN-REDD’s approach on gende r has also centered on establishing linkages and connections with other UN-REDD thematic areas, such as governance, REDD+ national strategies/action plans (NS/APs), policies and measures (PAMs), safeguards, multiple benefits and stakeholder engagement. This has helped to promote an integrated approach to gender, wherein it is addressed both as a stand-alone as well as cross-cutting issue in UN-REDD’s work. This Methodological Brief outlines steps to proactively strengthen UN-REDD’s Gender Approach in country operations to help partner countries achieve gender-responsive REDD+ in the design and implementation of the four key elements of REDD+ [i.e. NS/ AP, national forest monitoring system (NFMS), safeguards information system (SIS) and forest reference emission level / forest reference level (FREL/FRL)], as defined by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)7. Similarly, it also supports UN-REDD partner countries to systematically integrate gender-responsive activities in corresponding common REDD+ thematic areas (e.g. governance, stakeholder engagement, drivers of deforestation and forest degradation (DDFD), PAMs, safeguards, etc.). With this enhanced conceptual and practical focus, emphasis is placed on going beyond gender-sensitive action, such as ‘recognizing’ and ‘doing no harm’, to instead achieve a gender-responsive approach of ‘doing better’ and ‘changing’ the course of actions so they advance gender equality and women’s empowerment and thereby, also more sustainable REDD+ processes and outcomes. This means that steps will be taken to help advance gender equality and women’s empowerment, change gender norms and achieve gender equitable outcomes.