Gender Inference Research Articles

家庭婦人スポーツ活動における「主婦性」の再生産：ママさんバレーボールの発展過程と制度特性を中心に

Japanese married women only began participating widely in sports after the Tokyo Olympic Games in 1964. It is often said that participation in sports by housewives symbolized their liberation from isolated domestic life, thereby promoting gender equality. This thesis examines the development of housewives' sports activities and the characteristics of the sports institution, taking “Mums' Volleyball” as the main example, and concludes that those housewives undertook their role without themselves realizing that they were contributing to national economic growth, thereby exaggerating the sexual division of labor. The perpetuation of “housewifeliness” signifies repeated states in which housewives were liberated from their daily household routine, and then were empowered to fulfill their roles as home-makers even more effectively by the sports activities in which they participated. Thus the perpetuation of “housewifeliness” could be expressed as a circular diagram illustrating repeated liberation from “housewifeliness” and its prepetuation. With the development of their sports activities, the image of housewives changed from “isolated” to “cheerful”, and then to “autonomous”, and thus the circle could be considered a spiral diagram.In order to examine the concept of perpetuation of “housewifeliness”, how married women came to be regarded as “housewives” will be outlined, then the reasons why the housewives' sports movement occurred in the 1970s will be discussed. Finally, analysis of the institutional characteristics of “Mum's Volleyball”, such as ideology, rules, facilities for training, etc., will explain how “housewifeliness” was perpetuated.“Mums' Volleyball” was an informal name, and “Housewives' Volleyball” was the official one. Although since the 1970s, the word “housewife” has almost never been used because of its gender inference, it has been used in many cases with reference to sports activities by married women. As the word “housewife”, however, symbolized a good wife and mother, sports activities were accepted and acknowledged by their husbands and their families and, ultimately by society.The housewives who perpetuated “housewifeliness” contributed to the country's economic growth by ensuring that their husbands were always in top condition for work. In the meantime, they were required to have organizational skills, for example, skills for managing their teams, sports associations, and various tournaments in which they participated. Thus the housewives' sports activities could be said to have two faces: one was to free housewives from home-bound chores, encouraging them to have social empowerment, and the other was to accelerate their sexual division of labor as home-makers.

Wired for Gender: Experientiality and Gender-Stereotyping in Computer-Mediated Communication

The present experiments examined how experiential thinking moderates gender stereotyping in anonymous, text-based computer-mediated communication. In Experiment 1, participants played a trivia game with an ostensible partner via computer, represented by a randomly assigned gender-marked character. Consistent with the cognitive-experiential self-theory, high experientials were more likely than lows to infer their partner's gender from arbitrary characters and also exhibited greater conformity to the male- than to female-charactered partners. In Experiment 2, when the partner's comments revealed gender-linked language differences, high experientials were more likely than lows to base their gender inferences on the linguistic features. Women were more likely to accept the partner's answers when masculine than feminine questions were asked and showed greater overall conformity than men, but such self-stereotyping was more pronounced among high experientials than lows.

Effects of gendered character representation on person perception and informational social influence in computer-mediated communication

Two experiments examined (a) if the gender of a randomly assigned character would affect individuals' inferences about an anonymous partner in computer-mediated communication (CMC) and (b) how the gender inference would moderate informational social influence. In Experiment 1, participants played a trivia game on a gender-biased topic (sports vs. fashion) with their ostensible partner via computer, represented by a gender-marked cartoon character. The results showed that both men and women, despite the arbitrary nature of character assignment, categorized the partner according to the character's gender. However, the effects of the gender inference on conformity were moderated by the topic and the participant's gender. First, when the topic matched the participant's gender, there was no character effect. Second, whereas women used “expertise heuristics”, exhibiting greater conformity to the male-charactered than female-charactered partner on a masculine topic, men displayed greater conformity to the male-charactered than female-charactered partner on a feminine topic, suggesting male resistance to female influence. Using a gender-neutral topic, Experiment 2 confirmed the explanations. Although the character triggered gender-stereotypical perception of the partner, when the gender was not diagnostic of expertise, the character's gender did not affect women's conformity behavior while men nonetheless showed greater conformity to the male-charactered partner.

Some Effects of Arousal on Sex Stereotyping

When the target's gender is the most salient cue, inferences tend to be gender based; when specific behavioral information is more salient, inferences tend to be trait based. This study examined the effects on sex stereotyping of arousal during recall of these two inference situations. Gender- and trait-based inferences were manipulated by providing subjects with information about four targets: One target of each sex was described with four stereotype-neutral behaviors; another target of each sex was described with three stereotype-neutral behaviors plus one stereotype-inconsistent behavior. Subjects memorized the four descriptions under quiet conditions. Later they rated the targets on various gender-related attributes while arousal was manipulated with soft or loud white noise. Results showed that arousal promoted gender inferences for initially gender-based but not for initially trait-based inferences.

Gender differences in the effect of unemployment on psychological distress

In this paper we examine whether unemployment has a differential impact on the expression of psychological distress among men and women. Based on the traditional centrality of the work role to men and the family role to women, we defined several key domains that might affect unemployed men and women differentially: family circumstances, concerns and worries about children and family; coping responses; social support and social integration; and the centrality of the work role. While the study population either were or hoped to be in the labor force and had dependent children, they varied in their marital status and whether they were the custodial parent. Using data collected in Baltimore from those who had been unemployed but had returned to work, those who had remained continuosly unemployed for a year, and those who had been continuously employed, we compared the patterns of men's and women's reactions to unemployment. The important differences in psychological symptoms in this population were related to employment status, problems with parenting, financial difficulties, perceived lack of social support, hostility, and feelings about unemployment. By and large, the patterns of these relationships were similar for men and women. These findings suggest that when gender in ferences in psychological distress are found they may be due to differences in role configurations of men and women rather than intrinsic gender differences.