Understanding personality is a complex and difficult task and when we try to specify the exact nature of personality, it seems to evaporate before our eyes, leaving us frustrated and uncertain. Yet, despite the difficulty of the task, many psychologists have tried to develop theories about human personality. Somewhere in the first few years of life, virtually everyone develops a stable gender identity - a psychological sense of oneself as female or male. Therefore, understanding how gender identity develops in the ordinary course of growing up is an important question within theories of personality. Moreover, internalising sex and gender as part of personality goes beyond merely knowing that we are female or male.
Many people believe that men and women tend to have different sorts of personalities.
It is widely believed that men are aggressive, self-reliant and dominant, while women are yielding, nurturing and emotional. Of course, beliefs or stereotypes about masculine and feminine personality differences may or may not be accurate. Despite the importance of gender identity and gender typing in personality development, traditional theories of personality often have not developed satisfactory explanations of how they work. These theories usually focused on male development and men's lives. Because many influential thinkers and researchers in personality took man as the norm rather than thinking about men and women equally, they underemphasized or misunderstood the importance of gender influences.