The impact of context on gender social identities

Abstract

What follows is a quasi-experimental study aiming to analyse the influence of the social division of roles (especially the division between public and private spheres of activity) on gender social identities. Subjects were asked to describe themselves as well as their images of the ‘perfect or ideal person’ in the context of their professional activities or their close relationships. The order of presentation (self-description and the description of the ‘perfect person’) was balanced. We found that women and men perceived themselves according to the traditional gender stereotypes (women perceived themselves as more feminine while men describe themselves as more masculine). However the context in which subjects imagined themselves affected their self-perceptions as well as their images of the ‘ideal person’: A public context (professional activity) elicited more masculine self-images in women and men whereas private contexts (close relationships) led to more feminine images of themselves. Furthermore, the images of the ‘perfect person’ varied according to which context was salient: these images were more masculine in the public context and more feminine in the private one. Finally, the asymmetry hypothesis in social comparison was confirmed. Although there was a significant correlation between self-images and the image of the ‘perfect or ideal person’, this correlation was stronger when subjects described themselves first and described their images of the ‘ideal person’ before. This result was interpreted as reflecting the subjects' tendency to see themselves as prototypes in the social comparison. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.