Psychology
Gender Roles in Society
Gender roles in society refer to the societal expectations, behaviors, and attitudes that are considered appropriate for individuals based on their perceived or assigned gender. These roles can influence various aspects of life, including work, family, and relationships. They are often shaped by cultural norms and can impact individuals' self-concept and psychological well-being.
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10 Key excerpts on "Gender Roles in Society"
- Judith Worell(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Academic Press(Publisher)
PART ONE / Social interaction processes This page intentionally left blank 1 / Psychological sex roles: significance and change JUDITH WORELL In most societies, gender assignment at birth is a primary determinant of an individual's participation in many aspects of the organized culture. The label of female or male provides a framework for stereotyped sociocultural expectancies about how peers and adults should react to the child and the roles that each child will enact in his or her personal environment. Although social norms for male and female roles in the United States have been changing at a fast pace during the 1970s, cur- rent research on both children's and adults' attitudes suggests that stereotyped conceptions of appropriate sex-role behaviors have not dis- appeared. The evidence suggests that gender-related distinctions exist in many situations that involve academic, interpersonal, occupational, and family considerations. To the extent that girls and boys evoke dif- ferential expectations from peers and adults and are responded to in gender-distinctive ways, we can see the persistence of sociocultural sex roles in practice. The cultural expectations for gender differences in behavior are re- flected in the play interests and sex-role conceptions of even very young children (Blakemore, LaRue, & Olejnik, 1979; Kuhn, Nash, & Brucken, 1978; Myers, Weinraub, & Shetler, 1979). By the time girls and boys arrive at kindergarten and first grade, they have adopted for themselves a well-structured conception of how each gender ought and ought not to 3 PSYCHOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT IN THE ELEMENTARY YEARS Copyright © 1982 by Academic Press, Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISBN 0-12-764050-9 4 Judith Worell behave (Edelbrock & Sugawara, 1978; Garrett, Ein, & Tremaine, 1977; Katz, 1979a; Tryon, 1980; Urberg, 1979; Williams, Bennett, & Best, 1975).
eBook - PDF- Paul A M Van Lange, Arie W Kruglanski, E Tory Higgins, Paul A M Van Lange, Arie W Kruglanski, E Tory Higgins, Author(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications Ltd(Publisher)
This task specialization produces an alliance between women and men as they engage in a division of labor. Although these alliances take some-what different forms across cultures, task specialization furthers the interests of the community as a whole. Gender role beliefs arise because people observe female and male behavior and infer that the sexes possess corresponding disposi-tions. Thus, men and women are thought to possess attributes that equip them for sex-typical roles. These attributes are evident in consensually-shared beliefs, or gender stere-otypes . In daily life, people carry out these gender roles as they enact specific social roles such as parent or employee. Because gender roles seem to reflect innate attributes of the sexes, they appear natural and inevitable. With these beliefs, people construct gender roles that are responsive to cultural and environ-mental conditions yet appear, for individuals within a society, to be stable, inherent proper-ties of men and women. To equip men and women for their usual family and employment roles, societies undertake extensive socialization to promote personality traits and skills that facilitate role performance. Additionally, gender roles influence behavior through a trio of biologi-cal and psychological processes. Biological processes include hormonal fluctuations that act as chemical signals that regulate role per-formance. Psychological processes include individuals’ internalization of gender roles as self standards against which they regulate their own behavior as well as their experi-ence of other people’s expectations that pro-vide social regulatory mechanisms. Biology thus works with psychology to facilitate role performance. The broad scope of our theory enables it to tackle the various causes of female and male behavior that are of interest across the human sciences.
eBook - PDF- Erica Burman(Author)
- 1997(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications Ltd(Publisher)
They do not destabilize the social assumptions upon which such asymmetries are mounted, such as those that produce categories like 'masculine ' versus 'feminine '. Rethinking Role Theory and its Aftermath 53 Psychologizing lNatura lizing the Social Order The psychology, as well as the sociology, of sexual difference has produced the following dichotomies. The first is the 'individual! society' binary (Hollway, 1989). It derives from the premise that the subject (understood as an individual, meaning, as an autonomous being in relation to its context, a self-contained entity) is a coherently constituted entity that enters into a series of exchanges with its environment. In this way, the environment, according to the inter-actionist perspectives, can transform the patterns of behaviour of the individual. For example, let us examine the following questions: How does the 'dual shift' day affect women? How does marriage affect the possibility of success in a woman's professional life? Or, as a classic text on women and sex roles asks: What are the ef fects of sexism or prejudic ial attitudes upon women and men today? How do these limit options for both sexes? 2 What is the reason for dif ferences between women and men? Do these differences have a biolog ical basis or are they based solely upon the values and teachings of our culture? 3 What are the psychologica l effects of traditional sex roles upon women and men? How are these sex roles changing? What will be the effects of these changes on the lives of women and men? 4 What factors serve to maintain tradit ional sex roles? Will these factors show changes? (Frieze et aI., 1978: 1) These questions, in great measure, assume that the social is constituted by social roles, which are in turn assumed to be coherent and unitary, and that the tensions arise when these roles confront the psyche of the individual.
eBook - ePub- John Coleman(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
It should serve a descriptive function of documenting actual behaviour. Unfortunately, gender norms have historically and sociologically been defined as the societal prescriptions of what the ‘shoulds’ and ‘should nots’ are for each sex, equating ‘norms’ with external dictates. With this historical and sociological usage, ‘gender norms are the prescriptive guidelines that form the gender roles’ (Doyle 1985: 88). Gender stereotypes are oversimplified ‘socially shared beliefs that certain qualities can be assigned to individuals, based on their membership in the female or male half of the human race’ (Lips 1988: 2). Thus males share one cluster of traits, to include as examples aggression and objectivity, while females share another, to include emotionality and passivity, etc. Gender stereotypes are a rigid and simplified version of gender roles that provide little or no flexibility for individual difference. Gender identity 2 has been described in terms of process as well as product. The process refers to decision-making as to whether and to what degree these externally defined gender roles are appropriate to one’s self-definition (Archer 1985). One begins to formulate a gender identity in childhood. At that time the individual primarily accumulates, and clusters into schemas by ‘boy versus girl’, the messages provided by significant others in one’s society. The evaluative component of gender definition largely emerges during adolescence, and becomes increasingly refined throughout the adult years
eBook - PDFAdult Personality Development
Volume 2: Applications
- Lawrence S. Wrightsman(Author)
- 1994(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications, Inc(Publisher)
4 Sex Roles Man may work from sun to sun, But woman's work is never done. Old saying Perhaps the most significant development in psychological thinking over the past two decades is the emergence of gender to accompany race and social class as the primordial axes around which social life is organized (Michael Kimmel, quoted by Brooks, 1991, p. 19). First came a realization of the male bias in psychological theory and research, along with recognition of the detrimental nature of gender stereotypes. The emergence of feminism as a force in society and as a perspective in psychology contributed to a critical examination of the supposed benefits and significant constraints of traditional gender roles, and later, led to development of the men's move-ment. (See also Box 4.1.) The Power o f Sex-Role Stereotypes Late in 1987, Secretary of Transportation Elizabeth Dole resigned her powerful cabinet position in order to assist her husband, Senator Robert Dole, in his campaign for nomination by the Republican party as its presidential candidate. Critics asked why she was pres-53 54 ADULT PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT BOX 4.1 W h y Gender Differences? Beyond biological differences in the two sexes, differential sociali-zation of sons and daughters contributes greatly. A review by Jeanne H. Block (1984) provides the following conclusions: 1. Mothers and fathers appear to encourage achievement and competition more in their sons than in their daughters. 2. Independence or the assumption of responsibility is empha-sized more for boys than for girls (especially by fathers). 3. Punishment is more salient in treatment of boys than of girls. 4. Relationships between parents and daughters are characterized by greater warmth and physical closeness and greater assump-tion of trustworthiness. sured to resign to avoid a conflict of interest when male candidates who themselves held public offices were not (Cohen, 1987).
eBook - PDFGender Roles
A Handbook of Tests and Measures
- Carole A. Beere(Author)
- 1990(Publication Date)
- Greenwood(Publisher)
Journal of Individual Psychology, 33(2), 246-249. 100 Gender Roles LaTorre, R. A., & Piper, W. E. (1979). Gender identity and gender role in schizo- phrenia. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 88(1), 68-72. Lavine, L. O., & Lombardo, J. P. (1984). Self-disclosure: Intimate and noninti- mate disclosures to parents and best friends as a function of Bem Sex- Role category. Sex Roles, 11, 735-744. Leahy, R. L., & Eiter, M. (1980). Moral judgment and the development of real and ideal androgynous self-image during adolescence and young adult- hood. Developmental Psychology, 16(4), 362-370. Leak, G. K., Millard, R. J., Perry, N. W., & Williams, D. E. (1985). An inves- tigation of the nomological network of social interest. Journal of Research in Personality, 19(2), 197-207. Leary, M. R., & Snell, W. E. (1988). The relationship of instrumentality and expressiveness to sexual behavior in males and females. Sex Roles, 18(91 10), 509-522. Lee, A. G. (1982). Psychological androgyny and social desirability. Journal of Personality Assessment, 46(2), 147-152. Lee, A. G., & Scheurer, V. L. (1983). Psychological androgyny and aspects of self-image in women and men. Sex Roles, 9(3), 289-306. Lee, S. S. (1987). Attributions and performance: The effects of sex role identity and sex-typed tasks. Journal of Social Psychology, 127(2), 151-157. Lemkau, J. P. (1983). Women in male-dominated professions: Distinguishing personality and background characteristics. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 8(2), 144-165. Lemkau, J. P. (1984). Men in female-dominated professions: Distinguishing per- sonality and background features. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 24(1), 11 122. Lenz, E. R., Soeken, K. L., Rankin, E. A., & Fischman, S. H. (1985). Sex-role attributes, gender, and postpartal perceptions of the marital relationship. Advances in Nursing Science, 7(3), 49-62. Lester, D. (1984a). The fear of death, sex and androgyny: A brief note. Omega Journal of Death and Dying, 15(3), 271-274. Lester, D.
eBook - ePub- Patrick Leman, Harriet Tenenbaum, Patrick Leman, Harriet Tenenbaum(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Psychology Press(Publisher)
Research has established that even though there has been a steady increase in the number of women who work outside the home, there is still the prevailing stereotype that women are more nurturing and are more suited for caretaking than men (Gorman & Fritzsche, 2002). Belief in as well as adherence to these gender expectations can limit individuals of all ages in their exploration of viable occupations, such that they may be denied access or may self-select occupations that allow them to focus on being in either the primary breadwinner or caretaker role in their families. This section of the chapter will review research from the social role theory first as it provides foundational evidence of why many adults might adhere to gender expectations within the career and family contexts. The chapter will then introduce and review developmental research grounded in the social domain theory, which moves the adult research further by exploring children's and adolescents' social cognition about these adult roles with the goal of understanding why these gender expectations might continue to exist.According to research based in the social role theory, adults associate men and women with their primary roles and develop stereotypes based on the characteristics they presume are necessary for each of these roles. Furthermore, gender role ideologies are based on socialization processes and individuals' experiences with roles as they are modelled. In this way, women are more often associated with the caretaker role and the family, and men are more often associated with the role of breadwinner and career (for a review, see Eagly & Wood, 2012).A further assumption of social role theory is that stereotypes can change as the roles of men and women shift over time (Diekman & Eagly, 2000). Many of the studies about gender roles in the home have been conducted with university-age students or adults and the prevailing finding is that while women expect to work outside the home, they also expect and anticipate having to do more household work and caretaking (Askari et al., 2010; Fetterolf & Eagly, 2011; Kaufman, 2005). Men and women do not differ in their desire for marriage and family (Erchull et al., 2010), yet women anticipate that they will have to balance their careers with child-rearing responsibilities and understand that there may be a conflict between raising a family and having a successful career (Fetterolf & Eagly, 2011). Research has not found that men anticipate this same kind of conflict and many college-age men still express the desire to have a wife who will stay home with the children while they are young (Stone & McKee, 2000). While more researchers are arguing that men's and women's overall workloads are moving towards equality (Bianchi et al., 2006), there is not enough empirical evidence from the social role theory to suggest a change in the societal perception that one of women's primary roles should be to serve as the family's caretaker.
eBook - PDFChild Psychology
A Canadian Perspective
- Alastair Younger, Scott A. Adler, Ross Vasta(Authors)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
The process of self-socialization requires a good deal of knowledge about gender and related attributes. What children know about gender and when they know it is the focus of the next section. Some studies have shown that young children adapt their toy preferences to win approval from peers. (Banana Stock/Media Bakery) Understand how society, parents, peers, and the self contribute to gender-role socialization. 1. How can gender-role development be viewed as a process of socialization? 2. What roles do parents play in the socialization of gender? 3. How do peers and self contribute to gender-role development? LEARNING OBJECTIVE 16.4 644 Chapter 16 – Gender-Role Development and Sex Differences UNDERSTANDING GENDER ROLES AND STEREOTYPES We have reviewed considerable evidence that socialization processes are involved in sex typing. In this section, we turn to the cognitive processes that influence gender-role development. Of par- ticular interest is the developing child’s increasing understanding of gender roles and stereotypes. THE DEVELOPMENT OF GENDER IDENTITY We have already mentioned Kohlberg’s (1966) stage model of gender constancy, which includes gender identity (“I am a boy/girl”), gender stability (“I will grow up to be a man/woman”), and gender consistency (“I cannot change my sex”) (Martin et al., 2002; Ruble et al., 2007). Data from a number of studies have confirmed this theoretical progression. By 3 years of age, almost all chil- dren display gender identity. Gender stability follows around 4 years of age, and gender consistency around age 5. Children have a full understanding of gender constancy at around 6 years of age (Halim & Ruble, 2010). Males and females progress through these stages at approximately the same rate (Bem, 1989; Fagot, 1985; Martin & Little, 1990).
eBook - PDFGender at Work
A Social Psychological Perspective
- Melanie C. Steffens, Ma. Àngels Viladot(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
Thus, social role trumped gender when forming impressions of people. These findings corroborate what we have concluded in Chapter 3 on stereotypes: Individuating information is more important than gender when judging individuals. Contemporary gender roles In Western cultures, remarkable changes in gender roles have been observed recently. That is, the roles of men and women have become more similar over the last decades, primarily accounted for by women’s increased entry into the employee role (see Introduction for numbers). In contrast to these observations within the occupational domain, comparable changes regarding the domestic role have not taken place. A large-scale study on contemporary gender division of labor in Germany revealed that women still spend nearly twice as much time on household chores and childcare as men (Kuenzler, Walter, Reichart, & Pfister, 2001). Similarly, the German microcensus of 2005 showed that 56% of working mothers having a child younger than three years of age have taken parental leave, whereas only 3% of the working fa- thers have made use of this opportunity (German Federal Office of Statistics, 2006). Likewise, in a Gallup Poll in 2008 addressing the division of household chores within married couples living in the United States, 54% of the married respondents reported that the wife cared for the children on a daily basis, whereas only 9% reported that the husband did. A comparable distribution was found for chores such as “prepare meals” (58% vs. 14%), “do laundry” (68% vs. 10%), and “clean the house” (61% to 6%; Newport, 2008). In short, although women are increasingly found in the employee role, men have not entered domestic roles to the same degree (Shelton, 1992). A similar asym- metry can be observed within the occupational domain, in that men have not social role theory 95 entered female-dominated occupations to the same extent that women have entered male-dominated occupations (England, 2003).
eBook - PDF- Ann Harriman, Bloomsbury Publishing(Authors)
- 1996(Publication Date)
- Praeger(Publisher)
On personality char- 70 WOMEN/MEN/MANAGEMENT acteristics such as love, sociability, nurturance, dependency, empathy, or emotionality, areas in which males and females are perceived to differ sig- nificantly, there is very little evidence that real differences exist (Maccoby and Jacklin 1974). It is fair to say, then, that actual sex differences have been greatly ex- aggerated. However, circumstances that are perceived as real are real in their consequences. So long as these perceptions exist, differences in expe- rience are sure to follow. It is also important to bear in mind when we talk of sex differences that we are talking about statistical rather than individual differences. Differences that occur between males and females are distrib- uted over normal and overlapping curves. While men on the average may be stronger or more aggressive than women on the average, an individual woman may be stronger or more aggressive than a good percentage of the male population, or the reverse. Gender Differences: Feminine or Masculine Because our world is infinitely complex, we simplify our understanding by grouping physical and social phenomena into categories. For this reason natural scientists divide the physical world into genera, phyla, etc. Social scientists study human behavior in the forms of roles, role sets, and stere- otypes. In studying sexual behavior, social scientists look for "sex roles" and "sex-role stereotypes." A role is the expected and actual behaviors or characteristics that are associated with a particular social "status" in our society (Duberman 1975). A stereotype is the set of traits or characteristics that are attributed to all individuals who occupy a particular role. Stereo- typing occurs when the observed traits or behaviors of some members of a role group are attributed to all members of the group by the larger so- ciety.
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