Course: Gender Issues in Psychology Instructor: Ms Saba Asif
Chapter# 4 Lecture# 10 - 15
Gender: Role Attitudes
Contents
Attitudes towards men’s & women’s roles,
Affective component,
Cognitive component, Behavioral component
Gender role typing, Sex discrimination
Gender: Role Attitudes
Gender is a sociocultural process that is constantly being produced and reproduced. It is
defined as masculine and feminine properties that are culturally and psychologically formed
and developed within society (Kessler and McKenna, 2001). Gender differs from the concept
of sex, which refers to the physiological and biological characteristics that distinguish males
and females. Gender is important due to its role in shaping relations of inequality that arise
from the biological differences according to which social resources and privileges are
distributed.
Gender roles are the acts that men and women are expected to perform according to
their sex, and such roles are produced through the interaction of individuals with their
environments, as well as through the stereotyping process, which forms an image in the
individual’s mind that is not based on personal experience but derived from the culture and
surrounding environment (Lippmann, 1994). This image is generally simple and inaccurate,
as it is attained via transference between individuals.
Traditional gender attitudes link the roles and functions of women in society to typical
female characteristics, such as emotionality. Therefore, females are given the responsibilities
of caring for the home or performing certain occupations, such as nursing. This is no
difference for men, who are linked to traditional male characteristics, such as rationality and
responsibility in making important family decisions.
Gender roles
Gender roles are the behaviours that society deems 'appropriate' for each gender. Dive
deeper into the definition of gender roles, 'traditional' gender roles, how these roles are
learned, and changes to gender roles over time.
My father loves to watch old, black-and-white movies. You know the kind...the
woman is at home making a pot roast, and the husband returns from work briefcase in hand.
He greets with her and asks her what they are having for dinner, and she asks him how his
day was. A child comes into the kitchen to ask mommy when dinner will be finished.
Old movies and television shows had a certain way of portraying the family,
particularly men and women. The man was the strong, breadwinner of the family, while the
wife lovingly took care of the children and household duties. And that wasn't just what
happened on TV.
Even life operated that way for many families. My father, for example, worked hard
at being the primary breadwinner of the family and expected my mother to take care of me at
home. These behaviours of men and women that are considered socially appropriate are
called gender roles.
Traditional Gender Roles
Traditional gender roles are those behaviours seen from men and women in those old
movies. While there are many differences today, these patterns of behaviour have left an
impact on society and our thoughts about men and women. Here is a general recap of the
typical views and expectations of men and women in the early and mid-20th century.
As mentioned earlier, men were considered responsible for taking care of the family
financially. They took their jobs as sole providers very seriously. They also had the
responsibility for guiding the family. While they may listen to what their wives had to say,
they made the final decisions. Men did not do household duties or childcare. They felt the
need to be strong and refrained from showing too much emotion or sharing too many
personal feelings, especially with those outside of the family.
Women were expected to be in charge of running the household. Mothers did the
laundry, cooked the meals, and cleaned the rooms. They also took care of the children, giving
them the care and attention that was required. The wealthier families might hire a nanny, and
childcare became more widely used in the later 20th century. But the women were often in
charge of directing the nannies and dropping off or picking up from day-care. Women were
seen as more emotional than men, more likely and more encouraged to open up about their
feelings.
Attitudes towards men’s & women’s roles
Do you find it acceptable for women to work outside the home? To be construction
workers? To serve in the military? Is it acceptable for men to take the same amount of time
off from work as women when a child is born? To stay home and take care of children?
If you find all these ideas acceptable, then you have an egalitarian view of gender
roles. Most people find they agree with some of these ideas, but not all, or they only agree in
part with each of the ideas. For example, most people find it acceptable for women to work
outside the home—which is a good thing, because most women do. Fewer people find it
acceptable for a woman to work outside the home when she has a 3-month-old child and
there is no financial need for her to work.
Attitudes toward men’s and women’s roles have been referred to as gender ideologies
(Hochschild, 1989). A traditional gender ideology maintains that men’s sphere is work and
women’s sphere is the home. The implicit assumption is that men have greater power than
women. An egalitarian gender ideology maintains that power is distributed equally between
women and men, and women and men identify equally with the same spheres. There could be
an equal emphasis on home, on work, or on some combination of the two. Most people’s
attitudes toward men’s and women’s roles lie somewhere between traditional and egalitarian.
Thus, Hochschild identified a third gender ideology, transitional. A typical transitional
attitude toward gender roles is that it is acceptable for women to devote energy to both work
and family domains, but women should hold proportionally more responsibility for the home,
and men should focus proportionally more of their energy on work.
There are ethnic and cultural differences in attitudes toward men’s and women’s
roles. Black women seem to have less traditional gender-role attitudes than Black men or
White women and men (Carter, Corra, & Carter, 2009). Whereas Black and White men have
similar attitudes toward women’s involvement in politics, Black men have a more favorable
view than White men toward women working outside the home. The fact that Black women
have been employed outside the home for a longer period of time than White women due to
economic necessity may account for some of these differences. A study of Asian immigrant
women showed that those who worked outside the home did not perceive employment as a
distinct role but as an extension of their domestic role, which is to place the family’s welfare
above that of the individual (Suh, 2007). Even though education is greatly valued in Asian
cultures, the value for women and men is not the same. The value of education for women is
to make them suitable partners and mothers (Hall, 2009).
One’s attitudes toward gender can be classified as traditional, egalitarian, or transitional.
■ Although gender-role attitudes have become less traditional over time, most people fit into
the transitional category, not fully embracing equality for women and men across all
domains.
■ To understand cultural differences in gender-role attitudes, one needs to understand what
the expectations for men and women are in the particular culture.
■ Compared to Caucasians, African Americans have less traditional attitudes about women
working outside the home.
The three components of attitudes toward the category gender: affect (feelings), cognition
(beliefs), and behavior.
People’s feelings toward gender are described by the term sexism; people’s beliefs about
gender are referred to as sex-role or gender-role stereotypes; and people’s behavior toward
others based on gender is known as sex discrimination.
AFFECTIVE COMPONENT: SEXISM
Sexism is one’s attitude or feeling toward people based on their sex alone. Disliking a doctor
because she is female or a nurse because he is male are examples of sexism. Instruments that
measure sexism often consist of people’s beliefs about men and women but contain an
affective component to these beliefs. That is, the beliefs reflect either a high or low regard for
someone because of his or her sex.
You might expect that sexism has declined over the past several decades, and perhaps it has.
But today, there is a more subtle version of sexism. Swim and colleagues (1995)
distinguished between traditional and modern sexism. Traditional sexism includes
endorsement of traditional roles for women and men, differential treatment of women and
men, and the belief that women are less competent than men. Traditional sexism reflects an
open disregard for the value of women. Few people today would publicly express such
feelings. Modern sexism, by contrast, includes the denial of any existing discrimination
toward women, an antagonism to women’s demands, and a resentment of any preferential
treatment for women. In short, modern sexism implies that one is not sympathetic to
women’s issues and indirectly endorses the unequal treatment of men and women. Modern
sexism is associated with underestimating women’s difficulties in obtaining jobs traditionally
held by men. Swim and colleagues (1995) found that modern sexism was correlated with
overestimating the percentage of women who hold male-dominated jobs. Modern sexism is
also associated with the use of sexist language and with the inability (or unwillingness) to
detect sexist language when asked to do so (Swim, Mallett, & Stangor, 2004).
Traditional sexism is a blatant disregard for women, whereas modern sexism is a more
subtle indicator of devaluing women, for example, by denying that women have any
disadvantages in society compared to men.
Types of sexism
■ Hostile sexism reflects a negative feeling toward women, whereas benevolent sexism
reflects a positive feeling toward women based on their sex.
■ Benevolent sexism is less likely to be regarded as sexist because it focuses on positive
beliefs about women and results in prosocial behavior (i.e., men helping women).
■ Hostile and benevolent sexism are positively correlated, however, reflecting the fact that
both are rooted in the belief that women are less competent than men.
■ Women in countries that are more sexist are more likely to endorse benevolent sexism
toward women.
■ Sexism toward men is less well studied compared to sexism toward women and is more
accepted in some sense. Women score higher than men on hostile sexism toward men,
whereas men score higher than women on benevolent sexism toward men.
COGNITIVE COMPONENT: GENDER-ROLE STEREOTYPING
The following is a description of a famous person: