Hello having issue with my code in android eclipse

Question

The problem I am having with this code is that when i run it as the background for a text field, the background only shows to the viewer if the text firld is clicked on and the keyboard comes up. how do i make it so the text feild will always show this background? Clicked on or not.

Edit- my second question is this-I want to make a button that brings up a dialogue bot that has the options , Male, Female and it say choose gender as the instructions for the dialogue box. its very simple but i am getting a lot of errors in my code and I am ready to just delete everything I wrote and copy and paste new code into my Java file in android eclipse. Your help is greatly appreciated.

 <item android:state_focused="true">
 <shape> 
 <gradient android:startColor="#D8D8D8"
 android:centerColor="#FFFFFF" android:endColor="#FFFFFF"
 android:angle="90" android:centerX="0.5" android:centerY="0.5" />
 <stroke android:width="1dp" android:color="#6E6E6E" />
 <corners android:radius="7dp" />
 <padding android:left="10dp" android:top="6dp" android:right="10dp"
 android:bottom="6dp"
 />
 </shape>
 </item>

Answer 1

Remove

android:state_focused="true"

from item tag,i.e. rewrite item tag as

<item>
 <shape> 
 <gradient android:startColor="#D8D8D8"
 android:centerColor="#FFFFFF" android:endColor="#FFFFFF"
 android:angle="90" android:centerX="0.5" android:centerY="0.5" />
 <stroke android:width="1dp" android:color="#6E6E6E" />
 <corners android:radius="7dp" />
 <padding android:left="10dp" android:top="6dp" android:right="10dp"
 android:bottom="6dp"
 />
 </shape>
 </item>