Sex-role Attitudes Research Articles

Family background characteristics and relationship satisfaction in a native community in Canada.

Using data collected from a Native Canadian community by Embree (1993), we examine the influence of personal and family background characteristics on satisfaction with spousal relationships, both legal marriages and cohabitations. Of special interest are the quality of relationships with parents while growing up, alcohol abuse by the parent(s), and the experience of sexual abuse during childhood. Personal traits such as age, sex, and gender role attitudes and the respondent's own drinking behavior are also considered. Path analytic techniques model both the direct effects of independent variables on relationship satisfaction as well as the role of personal consumption of alcohol as an intervening variable in level of satisfaction with a relationship. The results of the analysis indicate that personal consumption of alcohol and the experience of sexual abuse during childhood are the best direct predictors of level of satisfaction with the current relationship, with higher alcohol consumption and experience of sexual abuse related to lower satisfaction. Age also has a significant direct, though smaller, positive influence on relationship satisfaction. Sexual abuse and the respondent's sex are also linked to level of satisfaction through personal alcohol consumption. With personal alcohol use, both the respondent's sex and the experience of sexual abuse during childhood have a significant effect, with males and those sexually abused as children reporting higher levels of alcohol consumption. The socialization explanation of the intergenerational consequences of parental behavior argues that parental role models are primary to the future family formation behavior of children. Consistent with this hypothesis, the findings concerning sexual abuse, in particular, as a predictor of both personal alcohol use and relationship satisfaction seem to underscore the importance of antecedent family characteristics in influencing later adjustment to adult roles and responsibilities.

Nursing Students' Attitudes Toward Victims of Domestic Violence as Predicted by Selected Individual and Relationship Variables

Access to quality health care for victims of abuse is often limited by the attitudes of health care professionals. Data collected from female nursing students (n = 155) revealed that those students with more egalitarian sex-role beliefs and a greater sense of control over life events were more sympathetic to battered women than those students with more traditional sex-role attitudes and less perceived control. Sex-role egalitarianism was found to be the best predictor of attitudes toward victims of domestic violence. Implications for health care practitioners and policy makers are presented.

Academic Gender Bias and Women's Behavioral Agency Self‐Efficacy

The relationship between academic gender bias and female students' agentic self‐efficacy expectations was examined. Agentic self‐efficacy expectations was defined as an individual's beliefs about her ability to successfully engage in proactive educational and career facilitative behaviors. Participants included 67 full‐time junior and senior undergraduate women enrolled in traditional, nontraditional, and gender‐neutral majors. Results revealed that perceived academic gender bias was significantly predictive of agentic self‐efficacy expectations, above and beyond the contributions of sex role attitudes, gender concentration of major, and race/ethnicity. Implications for women's career development and future research are discussed.

Sex-role attitudes and clinical appraisal in psychiatry residents.

To measure sex-role beliefs of psychiatry residents and to examine bias in clinical appraisal. Residents (45 female, 51 male) evaluated 1 of 4 possible clinical case histories-a female or male patient with histrionic personality disorder (HPD) or antisocial personality disorder (APD)-and completed the Sex-Role Egalitarianism Scale (SRES). As predicted, female residents were more egalitarian than male residents (P < 0.03) according to the SRES. As expected, significantly more male than female patients received the diagnosis of APD (P < 0.00002). Although it was predicted that female patients would more often be given the HPD diagnosis than males, no significant gender differences were found. Sex of resident was not found to influence clinical behaviour significantly. These results highlight differential sex-role attitudes, as measured by the SRES, between female and male residents and suggest that residents' sex-role biases affect the diagnosis of APD. These results have implications for psychiatric assessment and treatment. Further understanding of these issues is critical to the development of educational tools to address sex biases in psychiatry.

Reputation and behavior of battered women who kill their partners: Do these variables negate self-defense?

Vignettes describing a case in which a battered woman killed her husband were presented to college students. Independent variables were the presence or absence of verbal aggression by the woman toward her husband before the final beating, the woman's reputation and social desirability as a wife and mother, and whether or not a weapon was present when the battering husband threatened the woman before she killed him. After reading a vignette, subjects (N=413) selected a verdict, reported what influenced their verdicts, and completed attitudinal measures on sex-role attitudes, attitudes toward wife-beating, and “just world” attitudes. The presence of verbal aggression by the woman increased the odds of subjects choosing a guilty verdict by 1.71 times compared to the absence of verbal aggression. A defendant characterized as a “bad” wife/mother or a dysfunctional wife/mother was, respectively, 6.24 and 2.49 times more likely to be found guilty rather than not guilty by reason of self-defense (NGRSD) than the “good” wife/mother. Use of a weapon by the husband did not significantly increase the number of NGRSD verdicts over conditions in which no weapon was present. Neither subjects' attitudes nor demographics appeared to be related to their choice of verdicts.

A taxonomy of couples based on influence strategies: The case of home purchase

This study develops a taxonomy of husband-wife dyads that is based on the couple's influence strategy mix employed in resolving preference discrepancies in a home purchase situation. Four groups of couples are identified: compromising couples, wife-driven couples, dogmatic couples, and light influencing couples. A comparative analysis of these four groups shows that the type of influence strategy mix used by the couple is linked to some of their demographic characteristics, sex-role attitudes, and has ramifications with respect to the sharing of influence on the decision outcome.

Sex Differences in Attitudes Toward Homosexual Persons, Behaviors, and Civil Rights A Meta-Analysis

Meta-analytic techniques were used to compare men's and women's attitudes toward homosexual persons, homosexual behaviors, and gay people's civil rights. As expected, size of sex differences varied across these categories. Men were more negative than women toward homosexual persons and homosexual behavior, but the sexes viewed gay civil rights similarly. Men's attitudes toward homosexual persons were particularly negative when the person being rated was a gay man or of unspecified sex. Women and men evaluated lesbians similarly. Ratings of homosexual persons and homosexual behavior were least likely to differ by subject sex for samples of nonprofessional adults. In addition, sex role attitude mediated sex differences in attitudes toward homosexuality. Biases in the research literature and areas that deserve further attention, such as the confounding of sample with measurement strategy and the tendency to study gay men or targets of unspecified sex, are discussed.

Gender roles in marriage: What do they mean for girls' and boys' school achievement?

This study explored the implications of parents' traditional vs. egalitarian marital roles for girls' and boys' patterns of math and science achievement in 67 families with young adolescents. Marital roles were measured in terms of parents' relative involvement in child-oriented activities (e.g., in egalitarian families mothers and fathers participated equally in child-oriented activities). Findings revealed that girls from egalitarian families maintained a high level of achievement across the transition to the seventh grade, whereas girls from traditional families declined in math and science performance. For boys, no significant patterns emerged. Additional analyses revealed that egalitarian and traditional families differed in terms of absolute levels of paternal involvement, parents' sex-role attitudes, and indices of marital power. Our findings were consistent with a person-process-context model of development: Egalitarian and traditional contexts were characterized by different family processes and had different implications for boys and girls.

The Effects of Work History and Timing of Marriage on the Division of Household Labor: A Life-Course Perspective

First-married couples (n = 1,467) interviewed for the National Survey of Families and Households were studied to evaluate how two life-course measures, work history and marital timming, predicted the time each spouse spent doing housework. Housework time estimates of each spouse were regressed on life-course measures, background factors, sex role attitudes, and work-based resources in hierarchical regressions. Direct relations were found for each spouse 's work history on husbands' contributions to housework. Only indirect relations, however, were supported for marital timing and employment histories with wives' housework contributions. Timing of marriage was related to family composition, which, in turn, affected women's housework. In addition, women's employment history predicted the types of jobs women were likely to have, which influenced their time spent doing housework. For decades researchers have struggled with the question of what factors influence the division of labor within the household. While women have entered the job market at unprecedented rates, research has shown that men's contributions to household labor have risen only slightly (Berk & Berk, 1978; Coverman & Sheley, 1986; Spitze, 1988) or not at all (Berk, 1985; Rexroat & Shehan, 1987; Shelton, 1990). In fact, the underlying theme of the family work literature is that unpaid work is divided systematically according to gender (Thompson & Walker, 1989). Although several researchers note a gradual change toward a more egalitarian division of household work (Blair & Johnson, 1992; Douthitt, 1989; Pleck, 1985), neither the set of variables nor the processes that explain the allocation of tasks or predict their egalitarian division have been identified adequately. To date, three theoretical perspectives have received the lion's share of the research attention in this area. These perspectives examine resources, sex/gender roles, and family structure (including personal and family characteristics). More recently, a fourth model associated with the life-course perspective (Bengtson & Allen, 1993; Elder, 1978) seems to be gaining prominence in the literature. This study is intended to contribute to this development. REVIEW OF LITERATURE The resource approach to the allocation of family work has a long history (Blood & Wolfe, 1960). Resources such as income, education, and occupational status are thought to contribute to a spouse's prestige or power in a relationship, making it possible to avoid mundane housework (Huber & Spitze, 1983). The following resource measures have met with fairly consistent but modest success in the explanation of variance in the division of household labor: wives' income (Antill & Cotton, 1988: Kamo, 1988; Model, 1981), husbands' and wives' education levels (Coverman, 1985; Ross, 1987), and husbands' and wives' occupational statuses (Berardo, Shehan, & Leslie, 1987; Maret & Finlay, 1984). Consistent with predictions, possession of greater resources is typically associated with performing less household labor. Time is another resource (Rice & Tucker, 1986) and has also received considerable attention in the family work literature (e.g., Coverman, 1985; Presland & Antill, 1987). Rather than a power-focused resource, however, available time seems to obligate its owner to contribute more to housework. Therefore, available time, unlike other resources, tends to be positively related to the amount of housework done (Coltrane & IshiiKuntz, 1992; Geerken & Gove, 1983; Presland & Antill, 1987). Although time and power-based resources play a part in the way housework is allocated, they do not offer a complete explanation. Consequently, researchers have looked to psychosocial factors such as sex-role attitudes (Hiller & Philliber, 1986; Kamo, 1988; Model, 1981; Pleck, 1985; Ross, 1987) and other gender issues (e.g., Thompson & Walker, 1989) to assist in explaining family work. …

The Influence of Sex Role Attitudes of Parents on The Choice of Career Patterns in Female Adolescents

The Influence of Sex Role Attitudes of Parents on The Choice of Career Patterns in Female Adolescents

Longitudinal study on the determinants of career choice among young women: to continue or change jobs

This longitudinal study over the five-year period of 1988-1993 seeks to ascertain the determinants of young women's career choice-continued employment with same organization or changing employment organization. Another purpose of the study is to compare the characteristics between two types of career choices. The sample consists of 204 employed women with a variety of occupations who are in their 20s and early 30s. They previously or currently work in Tokyo. Using chi-square tests, t-tests, and canonical discriminant analyses it is found that the determinant to continue employment with same organization is the desire for a lifetime career. The determinants of changing employment organization are shorter-educational-training professional jobs and high income. The comparison of the characteristics of the two types of women in 1993 shows that a woman who continues employment with the same organization for 7-8 years has a higher egalitarian sex role attitude, higher income, is a mother, and is in a managerial position. The woman who changes employment organization is older and has a shorter-educational-training-professional job.

Women as cues for men's approach or distancing behavior: A study of interpersonal sexist discrimination

The purpose of this study was to investigate interpersonal sexist discrimination, operationally defined as distancing behavior. A heterogeneous sample of participants were approached at four train stations and completed two paper and pencil simulated seating measures, a sex role attitudes measure, and provided demographic information. It was predicted that in the neutral situations presented in the seating measures where there is a choice to sit either next to a man or a woman, men would more often choose to sit next to a man but women were not expected to make seating choices based on the gender of the person seated. Men's seating choices were found to be influenced by the gender of target persons whereas women's choices were not, but men either distanced from or approached women target persons. Self-reported sex role attitudes were found not to be related to distancing behavior.

Women′s Perceptions of Social-Sexual Behavior: A Cross-Cultural Replication

Japanese female undergraduates ( N = 258) read a vignette depicting social-sexual behavior toward a woman at work and indicated their perceptions of the incident, the coping responses expected from the target, and their own sex-role attitudes and social self-esteem. Three contextual variables (actor status, actor-target familiarity, and the sexuality of body touching) were manipulated in the vignette. Hierarchical multiple regressions indicated that women having liberal sex-role attitudes perceived the behavior to be more inappropriate and expected more assertive coping responses of the target than women having conservative sex-role attitudes, and that women having low social self-esteem perceived the behavior to be more sexually intimidating than women having high social self-esteem. Only the sexuality of body touching influenced women′s perceptions. Similarities and differences in the perceptions of Japanese and American women are discussed.

Sex, power, and dependency: The politics of adolescent sexuality

This study examines the social psychological determinants of adolescent sexual activity. Drawing on power-dependency theory within a social exchange framework, a conceptual model of adolescent sexuality is developed and tested using survey data on 288 teenagers. It is hypothesized that attributes of power (confidence with members of the opposite sex, popularity, opposite-sex friends, and egalitarian gender role attitudes) would indirectly decrease sexual activity (participation in unwanted sex and the extent of intimate sexual behaviors) through their negative effect on dependence (discomfort with physical appearance, the need for self-disclosure and closeness, the need for physical gratification in sex and the need for emotional gratification in sex). The findings indicate that the model is a good predictor of the sexual activity of adolescent males for whom dependency is an important determinant of sexual behavior. When the model is estimated separately for the Black and white teenagers, distinct patterns are observed for the Black females. Black females' participation in unwanted sex is far below the average for the other subgroups, and the most influential factor in decreasing coercion for Black females is nontraditional gender role attitudes.

The Family Background and Attitudes of Teen Fathers

A greater percentage of teen fathers than of teenagers who are not fathers come from poor and unstable households whose members are less educated. Generally speaking, for Whites, being a teenage father is associated with having a low self-esteem, an external locus of control, and conservative sex-role attitudes, whereas for Blacks, it is not. Data are from the National Longitudinal Survey of Labor Market Experiences—Youth Cohort.

Beyond the Superwoman Syndrome: Work Satisfaction and Family Functioning among Working-Class, Mexican American Women

The "superwoman syndrome" developed as a result of the mistaken belief that women's participation in outside employment was not to come at a cost to their homemaker responsibilities. The purpose of this investigation was to determine whether a "superwoman mentality" existed among working-class, Mexican American women in dualearner families. The present study investigated the interaction of sex-role attitudes, the division of household and child-care responsibilities, role strain, work satisfaction, and family functioning among working-class Mexican American women in dual-earner families. Findings from the present study indicate that Mexican American women do not subscribe to the superwoman myth. Instead, they seem to endorse an expansion of the husbands' roles to include housework and child care. The economic and social changes of the past several decades have influenced patterns of work and family. Married women have entered the labor force en masse. Their employment outside the home has resulted in both financial gains for families and increased opportunities for women. Previously, women's contributions to the family and society came primarily through their homemaker responsibilities. Wives' participation in the labor force has allowed them to contribute economic resources as well. Outside employment permits women to expand their roles to include those of the working and professional woman.

Changing the rape-supportive attitudes of traditional and nontraditional male and female college students.

This study tested whether individuals possessing traditional sex role attitudes could have their rape-related attitudes influenced by a psychoeducational intervention that has been effective with less traditional individuals. Male and female undergraduates (N = 245) were classified on the basis of their sex role traditionality and received the intervention or served as no-treatment controls. A multivariate analysis of variance revealed that intervention recipients adhered less to rape myths and expressed less rape-supportive attitudes than did controls. Participants were subsequently contacted with a phone appeal regarding women's safety projects that they thought was unrelated to the experiment. On 1 phone appeal measure, experimental participants «responses were significantly less rape-supportive than were control participants» responses

Cultural differences in gender role attitudes between Chinese and American students

A total of 665 Chinese college students in Taiwan and Caucasian college students in eastern North Carolina were administered several sex role attitude scales developed by Spence et al. (1978, 1980). The scales were translated into Chinese for Chinese subjects. Results indicated cultural differences in attitudes toward Marital Roles, Expressivity, Social Interaction, and Preference for males. In both cultures, females were found to be significantly more liberal, as shown in Attitudes Toward Women, Marital Roles, and Social Interaction. These results are consistent with previous research. Cultural differences were also as expected, with Chinese holding more conservative views.

Self-esteem and attitudes toward gender roles: Contributing factors in adolescents

A study involving 333 adolescents aged from 13 to 17 was carried out to investigate whether or not self-esteem mediates the relationship between sex and gender role attitudes, and to investigate several factors which might be related to self-esteem and to attitudes toward gender roles. Gender-role self-attributions and socio-demographic factors were considered. Young female adolescents with low levels of positive feminine attributes and high levels of negative feminine attributes were most likely to have low self-esteem; young male adolescents with low levels of feminine characteristics were most likely to hold stereotyped attitudes to gender roles. Self-esteem was not found to be a moderator of gender role attitudes, and gender roles made a considerable contribution to the variance in self-esteem. The results are discussed with regard to the contribution of negative gender characteristics to well-being, and the lack of discrimination between females and males shown by these negative scales. It is suggested that negative “feminine” characteristics are equally undesirable for girls and boys, and that it is no longer appropriate to give them a gender label.

Sex-role Attitudes Among Northern Australians

SynopsisThis paper presents the results of a recent study of attitude towards sex-role differentiation among a sample of 183 (90 males and 93 females), all Anglo-Australians, resident in Darwin, in the Northern Territory. The questionnaire consisted of a number of items (drawn from three American studies) which covered aspects such as sharing decision-making and household chores, the effect on children and the quality of relationships if the mother was employed outside the home and the importance of a career for women. The results suggest that overall men and women seem to be more egalitarian in the 1990s, although women seem to be much more egalitarian than men. There appears to be some congruence between men and women about issues which are likely to raise concern. It is possible that since overall attitude seems to be more egalitarian in the 90s, other factors such as age, level of education, marital status, number of children and religious affiliation do not seem to have any significant effect on atti...