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The Berenbaum Lab
Sex and gender matter
Being born a girl or a boy affects many aspects of life, including appearance, social relationships, activities, aspirations, values, the likelihood of experiencing psychological and physical health problems, and the specific form in which those problems are manifested. Sex and gender also provide a lever to understand the nature and causes of variations in health and behavior in general.
With an interdisciplinary lens, we focus on describing and explaining gender development:
We study how biological predispositions (created by prenatal sex hormones) set the stage for characteristics that are developed through a person’s transactions with the social world (family and peer socialization), and how the brain serves as the substrate for these processes.
Our work addresses questions about basic developmental processes and applications to care of children with endocrine disorders and to understanding women’s under-representation in science and math.
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