Relationship of Sex Role to Male- and Female-Dominated Professions

Abstract

Sex role, its assessment and relationship to other aspects of personality, is of current topical interest. An instrument (1) categorizes people into one of four sex roles, androgynous, masculine, feminine, or undifferentiated. Researchers have attempted to relate these sex roles to a number of personaliry variables such as self-esteem, flexibiliry, and independence ( 2 ) . The present study focused upon sex role as related to a major life interest, career choice. Within the university, e.g., nursing and education attran a disproportionate number of women who seek a terminal degree and mathematics, chemistry, and physics have been primarily chosen by men. It was hypothesized that persons who enter a discipline in which the opposite sex dominates and achieve success, as evidenced by an advanced degree and full-time employment, would be more likely to possess traits associated with the opposite sex and be categorized as androgynous more often than persons who enter fields in which their own sex predominates. The Bem Sex-role Inventory was sent to all faculty members at a state university in disciplines meeting the following two criteria, ( a ) 60% or more of the people employed in that field were one sex and ( b ) 60% or more of the degrees in that field were conferred to members of one sex. By these criteria, biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, and business administration were designated male-dominated fields; nursing, education, and fine arts were female-dominated fields. Forty-two persons completed and rerurned the questionnaires including 29 males, 13 in female-dominated disciplines and 16 in disciplines traditionally chosen by men with an age range of 30 to 64 yr., and 3 8 females, 21 in female-dominated disciplines and 17 in male-dominated fields with an age range of 25 to 58 yr. All participants were of a Caucasian American ethnic background. Masculine and feminine scores were computed for each participant. Median values of 5.30 and 5.10 on the masculine scale and 4.55 and 4.82 on the feminine scale a-ere obtained for males and females, respectively. Using the median split ( 1 ) each participant was placed into one of the four sex-role categories. Chi-squared tests on these four categories were computed for each sex in maleand female-dominated disciplines. A value of 6.41 ($ < .05, df = 3 ) indicated a significant difference for males in female-dominated disciplines with a majority categorized as androgynous as hypothesized. As expected, no significant differences were found for males in male-dominated fields and females in female-dominated fields. However, females in male-dominated professions were not more likely to be androgynous as had been hypothesized. While only 18% of these women were androgynous, 41% were categorized as masculine. It appears that males who succeed in female-dominated professions are in fact more likely to integrate feminine personality attributes with their masculinity. However, women who have risen to the top of a male-dominated field do not show a similar trend.