Masculinity, Femininity, and Gender-Related Traits: A Conceptual Analysis and Critique of Current Research

Abstract

Publisher Summary The research employing the Bern Sex Role Inventory (BSRI), Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ), and other instruments containing separate M and F scales has fundamentally been inspired by a shift in societal attitudes, shared by most social scientists, toward a more egalitarian view of the status of women and the relationships between the sexes. Substitution of traditional bipolar theories with the proposition that masculinity and femininity are independent dimensions and that androgyny, a combination of both, is associated with greater psychological competency than sex-typing held out the promise that a society, in which roles are not differentially assigned to men and women, except as dictated by biology, is both feasible and desirable. The chapter discusses that the multidimensional nature of sex-role and other gender-related phenomena is also beginning to be recognized. Although gender identity is essentially dimorphic, the general statement that masculine and feminine attributes and behaviors cannot or do not coexist has been effectively refuted. Androgyny, defined as the possession of substantial numbers of desirable attributes and response dispositions currently stereotyped as masculine and feminine, or as an indifference to sex-role standards that leads the person to behave according to his or her individual predilections may turn out to have the benefits assigned to it.