Gender Role Orientation Research Articles

THE EFFECTS OF SEX-TYPED TRAIT DESCRIPTIONS ON JUDGMENTS OF LIKEABLENESS

The present study attempted to specify some of the conditions in which the use of sex-typed trait description would influence ratings of likeableness. Ninety male and 90 female subjects evaluated descriptions of stimulus persons varying in gender and sex role orientation. Female subjects rated masculine role descriptions less favorably than feminine or androgynous descriptions regardless of the gender ascribed to the stimulus person. Male subjects' judgments were influenced by the appropriateness of the gender of the stimulus person to the sex role of the description. Researchers should be aware that trait descriptions may have subtle sex role connotations which will influence subjects' judgments.

Impact of counselor gender and counselor sex role orientation on perceived counselor characteristics.

Impact of counselor gender and counselor sex role orientation on perceived counselor characteristics.

Impact of counselor gender and counselor sex role orientation on perceived counselor characteristics.

Impact of counselor gender and counselor sex role orientation on perceived counselor characteristics.

Understanding female careerism

Horner's fear of success construct rests on the assumption that women react negatively to achievements which violate their definition of appropriate gender-role behavior. Consistent with this assumption, the present investigation attempted to determine whether fear of success imagery expressed in response to different achievement-related cues would covary with (a) a woman's own gender-role orientation and/or (b) the perceived gender-role norms of her significant male. One hundred female honors students completed the Maferr Inventory of Feminine Values and responded to projective cues depicting competitive success characterized as (a) traditionally male, (b) traditionally female, (3) social—domestic, and (d) vicarious. Only one relationship reached significance. Women who perceived the significant male in their life as endorsing nontraditional gender-role behavior were more likely to respond negatively to vicarious success. Fear of success bore no relationship to the gender role of the subject herself. In view of these findings it is considered unwise to regard fear of success as the single, most powerful determinant of a woman's role choices. A more generalized cognitive model which incorporates additional intrapsychic as well as situational factors is proposed.

Toward a Homosocial Theory of Sex Roles: An Explanation of the Sex Segregation of Social Institutions

Occupational segregation of women is a major reflection of the generalized segregation that characterizes all aspects of Western social life. It is the visible sign of a massive institutional substructure on which we are most likely to founder unless we are able to find a way around it. Two of the papers in this section deal with macrosociological segregation patterns that link different institutional sectors of society: Safilios-Rothschild addresses the question of sex segregation in the articulation between the institutions of the family and the occupational world; Gates explicates the ways in which the legal institutions buttress the segregation of the domestic and occupational domains. The Laws paper, operating on a different level of analysis, looks at different theoretical approaches to women's segregated involvement in the labor force.

Transvestism and Transsexualism

To the Editor:— I have seen and examined more than 300 transvestites and transsexuals during the past 14 years, and am at present engaged in active research on this problem with a number of collaborators, under a grant from the Erickson Educational Foundation. I have just published the first medical book on the subject, The Transsexual Phenomenon (Julian Press, New York). Dr. Hastings has given a clear and comprehensive summary, especially as to the management of transsexualism ( 197 :599, 1966). Dr. Barker is right in differentiating transvestism from transsexualism ( 198 :488, 1966), but he did not emphasize the fact that transvestism can be merely a symptom of transsexualism, which is a psychopathological condition, based on a disturbance of gender role orientation. According to recent animal experiments by Seymour Levine and Roger Gorski, transsexualism may indeed have a neuro-endocrine, prenatal origin, with transvestism as its most frequent symptom in later life.