Evaluation of Davis’ Social Construction Theory - Male

This theory was developed to explain the social construction of college men’s gender identity by having participants explore conflicts related to socially constructed gender roles that may impact men’s identity development. In doing so, there is an assumption that identity develops as one interacts with society and that gender is a central dimension of one’s perceived self-concept. This assumption is a limitation of Davis’ theory because her own data reports that males do not often even consider their masculinity as a part of their identity. Therefore, gender, at least during the traditional college student age of the individual’s interviewed (18-21), is not a central dimension of one’s perceived self-concept. Davis' theory also does not take into consideration the notion of transgender individuals, a growing population in millennial college students, and its impact on male's socially constructed gender roles

There are several critiques of this theory. Firstly, Davis supports this theory from data she collected from only ten white, traditional aged students from the same university. This limited sample size is very unlikely to be generalized to the diverse population of male American college students across the United States. The ten males were also referred to Davis by student affairs professionals who were asked to identify students who were reflective about gender issues or currently struggling with their own gender development. This effort to recruit through people who are able to identify participants of particular interest to the researcher creates a biased sample and should be considered when assess the validity of Davis’ theory.