Androgyny

Question 1

What is androgyny?

Answer 1

A personality type that shows a balance of masculine and feminine characteristics.

Question 2

Give an example of androgyny

Answer 2

Could include a person (male or female) who is both competitive and aggressive at work, but a caring and sensitive parent as well.

Question 3

Who came up with androgyny?

Answer 3

Sandra Bem

Question 4

What did Sandra Bem do?

Answer 4

challenged the concept that there were ‘masculine men’ and ‘feminine women’ by suggesting more than just two gender types
She added androgynous to the masculine and feminine identities

Question 5

What method did Bem invent for measuring androgyny?

Answer 5

BSRI – Bem Sex Role Inventory (1974)

Question 6

Describe Bem’s sex role inventory

Answer 6

This was the first systematic attempt to measure androgyny using a rating scale of 60 traits (20 masculine, 20 feminine and 20 neutral) to produce scores across two dimensions:
- masculinity-femininity
- androgynous-undifferentiated

Question 7

Explain the results of teh BSRI

Answer 7

scroring high on both masculine and feminine - androgynous
scoring low on both leads to a classification leads to a classification of ‘undifferentiated’.

Question 8

What did Bem find?

Answer 8

Bem found that more people were androgynous than at the extremes
- androgynous people were more psychologically healthy

Question 9

Why did Bem (1974) find that androgynous people were more psychologically healthy?

Answer 9

• Bem suggested that androgynous people are more comfortable with who they are.
• This is because there are not expectations forced upon them about how they should behave.
• e.g. Bem argues that it has been usual in Western culture to judge individuals who show traits of the other gender as ‘abnormal’ (e.g. effeminate).
• An advantage of androgyny is that it allows people to handle situations in flexible ways.