Stereotypical Gender Differences Research Articles

“They’re Doing Their Own Kind of Nursing”: Challenging the Gender Bias

ABSTRACT Despite Iceland's reputation as a gender equal country, men make up about 4% of nurses which is low in comparison with similar countries. To shed light on what determines the choice of nursing and on cooperation at work, interviews with ten female and seven male nurses were analysed with reflexive thematic analysis. Drawing on poststructuralist and feminist theories, focusing on power relations and gender in the workplace, the analysis revealed stereotypical gender differences. Choosing nursing was for the female nurses a “natural” channel for their talents, the males were conscious of crossing a line and prepared for stereotyping obstacles. A powerful hierarchy characterized daily work, female nurses described suppressing working situations and lack of support, males ranked themselves higher in respect and opportunities, prioritized their professional boundaries, self-care, and nursing competence, free of gender labels. This difference is an important and self-sustaining part of nurses’ image as powerless, deters young people from nursing education and leads to distance between genders in the workplace. The findings highlight the need to recognize and tackle stereotyping, which maintains inequality, prioritizing diversity instead is a task for educational and health systems, and the debate on gender equality in Iceland.

Patterns of math and English self-concepts as motivation for college major selection

A variable and person-centered approach was applied to understand the development of cross domain self-concepts of ability, patterns of math and English self-concepts of ability throughout adolescence, and their associations with college major. An expectancy-value perspective was integrated with dimensional comparison theory to understand how math and English self-concepts of ability relate to one another over time and within a person. Regression analysis identified a positive association of math self-concept throughout adolescence with math-related majors and a negative association of English self-concept with math-related majors. Cluster analysis classified students into six to seven patterns of varying math and English self-concepts of ability. Stereotypical gender differences were observed in cluster membership, with women overrepresented in high English clusters and males over represented in high math clusters. Cluster membership was predictive of the math-related college majors. Students who were higher in math self concept of ability relative to English were overrepresented in math intensive majors. Findings support the importance of considering intraindividual hierarchies and ipsative relationships when studying the development of self-concept of ability and academic choices.

Gender Differences in Stereotypes of Risk Preferences: Experimental Evidence from a Matrilineal and a Patrilineal Society

We use a controlled experiment to analyze gender differences in stereotypes about risk preferences of men and women across two distinct island societies in the Pacific: the patrilineal Palawan in the Philippines and the matrilineal Teop in Papua New Guinea. We find no gender differences in actual risk preferences, but we find evidence for culture-specific stereotypes. Like men in Western societies, Palawan men overestimate women’s actual risk aversion. By contrast, Teop men underestimate women’s actual risk aversion. We argue that the observed differences in stereotypes between the two societies are determined by the different social status of women. Data are available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2016.2505 . This paper was accepted by Uri Gneezy, behavioral economics.

Assessing task values in five subjects during secondary school: Measurement structure and mean level differences across grade level, gender, and academic subject

Students’ value beliefs tend to decrease across secondary school (Wigfield et al., 2015). However, previous studies did not differentiate between all the dimensions of task values defined by expectancy-value theory (Eccles et al., 1983). Therefore, this study evaluated an instrument for assessing multiple value dimensions across grade level and academic subjects and tested for differences between grade levels in these subjects. A total of 830 students from Grades 5 to 12 completed a questionnaire assessing their value beliefs in German, English, math, biology, and physics with 37 items each. The factor structure was shown to be invariant across academic subjects, grade levels, and gender. Generally, students in higher grades showed lower means on positive value facets and higher means on cost facets. However, the results varied substantially by facet and subject. Furthermore, stereotypical gender differences in value beliefs were found, and some of these differences increased with students’ grade level. The findings indicate that examining multiple dimensions and subjects is crucial for developing a complete understanding of the development of students’ value beliefs.

African Video Movies and Global Desires: A Ghanaian History by Carmela Garritano (review)

Reviewed by: African Video Movies and Global Desires: A Ghanaian History by Carmela Garritano Joseph Oduro-Frimpong (bio) African Video Movies and Global Desires: A Ghanaian History by Carmela Garritano. Ohio University Press. 2013. $26.06 paper; $12.99 e-book. 246 pages. One of the key defining features of most Ghanaian video movies is that they are embedded—either explicitly or implicitly—in Pentecostal Christian aesthetics. Fittingly, a major research perspective, situated at the juncture of religion and film (and pioneered by Birgit Meyer), elucidates how the movies draw on shared Pentecostal beliefs and practices to mediate themes on occult practices.1 In African Video Movies and Global Desires: A Ghanaian History, Garritano, motivated by her apt identification of the video movies’ “unrestrained and unruly heterogeneity” and their concomitant multiple narrative forms, examines a subject with which scholars have so far not explicitly engaged.2 This characteristic of the video movies as a “shifting and historically contingent discursive field marked by myriad ideologies, anxieties, discourses, and desires” enables the author to explore a historical narration of the Ghanaian movie industry through analyses of selected video movies.3 This [End Page 151] approach allows the author to show the connection between the economic circumstances that gave rise to the industry and the manifestation of these same conditions within the movies’ themes—centered on poverty, work, and gender—that the first generation of producers explored. Here, the author teases out the ways in which the movies normalize and refashion “dominant discourses of globalization, gender and sexuality, neoliberalism, and consumerism.”4 In the same breath, she also emphasizes the manner in which the innumerable number of movies made since the inception of the industry in the 1980s generates a certain ambivalence toward these same themes. The approach also enables the author to explore and elaborate on multiple visual texts and their “variations in aesthetics, narrative form, modes of spectator engagement [as well as] [their] anxieties, desires, subjectivities, and styles.”5 This discussion is in the introduction to the book. In this same section, Garritano presents the book’s thematic focus, offers a short historical overview of the initial negative critiques of video movies by African film and literature scholars, and addresses the global aspirations of the industry’s players when she adopts the term Ghallywood. Additionally, the introduction includes a succinct summary of the five chapters that make up the book. The introduction together with the conclusion provide the theoretical lens of contextual criticism that underpins this work and the historical approach that the author adopts to investigate the huge changes that have occurred in the Ghanaian video-movie industry. In “Mapping the Modern: The Gold Coast Film Unit and the Ghana Film Industry Corporation” (chapter 1), Garritano examines the gamut of the history of filmic practices in late colonial Ghana (Gold Coast) as well as early postcolonial independent Ghana, when the Ghana Film Industry Corporation (GFIC) was established, until its collapse in the 1980s. Consistent with recent approaches in the social sciences that reject simple binaries, Garritano conceptualizes these two histories as “complex, overlapping disjunctive order[s]” that are characteristic of global media cultural practices.6 This fruitful way of framing the GFIC as not a mere supplanting of the Gold Coast Film Unit (GCFU) enables her to investigate how these units cinematically produced “modernity as articulated in the late modern colonial and the national films.”7 Through a close reading of Boy Kumasenu (Sean Graham, 1952; GCFU) and A Debut for Dede (Tom Reibero, 1992; GFIC), Garritano teases out how these two films, in their treatment of modernity, tradition, and nation, use stereotypical gender differences in articulating their respective perspectives around these themes. In “Work, Women, and Worldly Wealth” (chapter 2), Garritano explores the early history of the Ghanaian video-movie industry from 1987 to 1992. This period witnessed the country’s implementation of a World Bank loan package that required the privatization and liberalization of the nation’s economy and media, respectively. Thus, Garritano shows how Ghana, much as in the cultural-political terrain of Togo during the same [End Page 152] period, experienced “a time in which the money [had] dried up, the state [had] pulled back from...

Why are women underrepresented in Computer Science? Gender differences in stereotypes, self-efficacy, values, and interests and predictors of future CS course-taking and grades

This study addresses why women are underrepresented in Computer Science (CS). Data from 1319 American first-year college students (872 female and 447 male) indicate that gender differences in computer self-efficacy, stereotypes, interests, values, interpersonal orientation, and personality exist. If students had had a positive experience in their first CS course, they had a stronger intention to take another CS course. A subset of 128 students (68 females and 60 males) took a CS course up to one year later. Students who were interested in CS, had high computer self-efficacy, were low in family orientation, low in conscientiousness, and low in openness to experiences were more likely to take CS courses. Furthermore, individuals who were highly conscientious and low in relational-interdependent self-construal earned the highest CS grades. Efforts to improve women’s representation in CS should bear these results in mind.

A state conceptualization: Are individuals’ masculine and feminine personality traits situationally influenced?

College students’ ( N = 200, 100 males; M age = 19.53; SD = 3.64) reported masculinity and femininity varied according to partner sex (other-, same-sex) and context (cooperative, competitive). Participants worked cooperatively or competitively with same- or other-sex peers to create Origami figures. Stereotypical gender differences were most apparent when instructions emphasized cooperation. Partner sex (same-sex) cued femininity for women and context (cooperative) cued masculinity for men. The study strengthens the claim that, in addition to a stable trait component, there is a flexible state component of masculinity and femininity that varies according to proximal situational demands.

The Contextual Specificity of Masculinity and Femininity in Early Adolescence

AbstractUsing a social constructionist perspective, we investigated the flexibility of early adolescents' (N = 80, 40 boys, 40 girls; M age = 13.14; SD = .65) masculinity and femininity as a function of the interpersonal context (same‐ or other‐sex partner) and situational demands (co‐operation or competition). Participants played a block‐building game with a girl and a boy peer and were instructed either to play the game co‐operatively or competitively. Boys' and girls' femininity scores were greater when working with a girl peer rather than a boy peer. Stereotypical gender differences in masculinity were most apparent when instructions emphasized co‐operation. These findings provide empirical support for a social constructionist theory of gender development by demonstrating how the proximal situation changes adolescents' views of gendered aspects of their identity. A conceptualization of masculinity and femininity as flexible states is discussed as supplementing the idea that masculinity and femininity are enduring personality traits. Implications of the study for understanding how social situations maximize or minimize gender differences and similarities are discussed.

American and Chinese College Students’ Anticipations of Their Postgraduate Education, Career, and Future Family Roles

American and Chinese college students’ anticipations showed no gender differences in their desires for postgraduate education, marriage, and parental status. Stereotypical gender differences emerged in both countries when caregiving roles were considered: Both men and women rated it more likely for women than for men to quit their jobs to be caregivers. Overall, male college students, the Chinese men in particular, felt less comfortable than did women in situations where their spouses were superior in earnings, achievements, and social status. More Chinese than American students planned to enter marriage and parenthood at a later age, and the Chinese students rated the importance of family lower. These findings are discussed in light of the general sociocultural model and the role distribution theory.

Behavioral Health Risk Factors of United States Emergency Medical Technicians: The LEADS Project

Personal risk behaviors are modifiable. This report describes the 2002 national baseline of behavioral health risk factors of US emergency medical technicians (EMTs) that can guide policy and program development in improving EMT well-being. A 19-item Health Behavioral Risk Survey (Appendix) was added to the 2002 Longitudinal Emergency Medical Technician Demographic Study mail survey. Risk survey questions covering physical activity, tobacco use, and alcohol use were modeled after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2002 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) questionnaire. Personal, non-work related seatbelt use and motor vehicle driving questions were adopted from the 2002 US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) Motor Vehicle Occupant Safety Survey (MVOSS). Post-stratification adjustment factors were used to allow comparisons with BRFSS and MVOSS national estimates. A total of 1,919 EMT respondents were compared with 239,866 BRFSS and 5,220 MVOSS respondents. These comparisons indicate that EMT-Basics drove more slowly than paramedics; male EMTs drove faster, drank more, and wore their seatbelts less often than did female EMTs; female EMTs smoked more and engaged in vigorous exercise less than males. Those EMTs who reported to be in fair or poor health, smoked more and exercised less than those who reported to be in good or excellent health. Regardless of gender, age, or race, EMTs, on average, wore their seatbelts less often, drove faster than, and were less likely to engage in moderate physical exercise, compared to US adults. Stereotypical gender differences in risk behaviors exist among EMTs. An EMT's self-reported health positively correlates with smoking and exercising. Compared to US national estimates, except for smoking and vigorous exercise, EMTs have increased risk behaviors.

Are Peasants Risk‐Averse Decision Makers?

Les AA. se proposent d'evaluer l'approche qui explique le conservatisme culturel de la petite agriculture de subsistance par la rationalite d'une analyse cout-benefice effectuee par les paysans, ou les individus prennent des decisions en fonction d'un comportement d'aversion au risque en raison de leur situation economique incertaine et precaire. A cet effet, ils combinent des recherches de terrain comparatives experimentales avec des recherches ethnographique economiques dans deux groupes de petites exploitations agricoles, les Mapuche du Chili et les Sangu de Tanzanie. Ces experimentations, malgre des lacunes methodologiques, mettent en doute les approches theoriques standards. Concues afin de mesurer les preferences pour le risque directement, elles montrent que les Mapuche et les Sangu expriment une preference pour le risque dans leurs prises de decisions - suggerant que de facon generale les agriculteurs de subsistance n'agissent pas en fonction d'une aversion envers le risque. D'autre part, la preference pour le risque semble s'expliquer essentiellement en fonction du groupe culturel. En conclusion, les AA. esquissent brievement une alternative theorique au modele standard.

Men and Women Dealing with Conflict in Heterosexual Relationships

Marital therapists and researchers have suggested a tendency toward Pursuit by women and Withdrawal by men as an important gender‐linked pattern of dealing with marital conflict. The relationships of gender and sex role orientation to behavior in intimate heterosexual relationships were examined in two studies of nondistressed couples. In Study 1, 29 couples were examined longitudinally before and after marriage using an observational and self‐report design. No gender differences in Problem Solving, Intimacy, or Conflict behaviors were observed premaritally, but communication variables seemed in general to be more important for men's satisfaction than for women's. In Study 2, 324 undergraduates were examined cross‐sectionally. In this self‐report study, stereotypical gender differences, particularly for Withdrawal, were observed. We conclude that gender differences, such as the Pursuit/Withdrawal cycle, are a function of gender roles and marital distress rather than gender per se.