Gender Flashcards
Lecture 8
What is gender?
Gender:
- “socially constructed roles, behaviours, expectations, and attributes that a society or culture deems appropriate for men and women”.
Sex:
- “biological and physiological characteristics that historically have been used to define men and women”.
Gender identity:
- What gender a person characterises and describes themselves as.
Gender research
Research is just now beginning to accumulate across diverse gender identities.
This research is exremely important, but its in its infancy relative to research that for more than a century used almost exclusively a gender binary.
This is for social-cultural reasons, but also a higher level of difficulty doing studies on gender and sexual minorities (research often relies on stats, stats rely on large number of participants; there are fewer people in these groups which make them harder to study).
Gender stereotypes
Alice Eagly’s research:
- Men are stereotypes as higher on ‘agentic’ traits (intelligence, physical power, capability, dominance).
- Women are stereotyped as higher on ‘communal’ traits (others before self, warmth, kindess, cooperation).
Stereotypes are widely held beliefs.
They do not necessarily reflect the beliefs of any one person.
Types of sexism
Benevolent sexism: not as directly averse views of women that promote inequality e.g.
“women should be protected by men”, “a good women should be set on a pedestal by her man”.
Hostile sexism: more clear, direct, negative views of women, e.g. “women exaggerate the problems they have at work”, “once a women gets a man to commit to her, she usually puts him on a right leash”.
Ambivalent sexism: mixed valence about women that both serve to promote gender inequality.
How are positive beliefs a problem in the case of benevolent sexism?
The problem isn’t the desire, or the willingness, to - for instance - put women on pedestal or try and product women even.
The problem lies in the expectation, that it is completely necessary, or that this is a man’s responsibility to do this for a woman because she can’t do this for herself.
Benevolent sexism is often patronising.
Benevolent sexism is also associated with traditional gender role beliefs and with less willingness to hire women for certain occupations.
What is the stereotype content model?
Groups of people are stereotypes on two primary dimensions: warmth and competence.
Women are evaluated as higher in warmth, and lower on competence than men.
Men are evaluated as lower in warmth, and higher in competence than women,
High warmth/low competence is a stereotype associated with pity/sympathy.
Consistent with the idea that views of women are often a bit patronising.
Research on women at work (and stereotypes of women at work)
Rudman and Glick (2001):
- Asked people who they would hire.
- One woman was described as highly talented and capable in terms of intelligence and skulls and also as friendly.
- One woman was described as just kind and friendly.
- “when the job called for kindness and friendliness, the woman being described as intelligent and highly skilled was less likely to get the job, even when described as friendly as well”.
Parks-Stamm:
- In this research, women who were described as successful at work were later regarded as less friendly and kind (by other women).
- This resulted in the women (the raters, the critcisers) having higher levels of self-esteem.
Heilman and Okimoto:
- In this research, women were described as either vey business oriented (with a family) or as just having a family.
- Women who were described as business oriented were later rated as less friendly.
Similar results have not been found for men.
Precarious manhood
Vandello and Bosson:
- Manhood is tenuous, and requires constant social approval.
- Thus, men are motivated to maintain their sense of masculinity, especially when it comes under question.
- Masculinity is associated with agentic/power qualities, with a lack off feminine traits.
The tendency to distance from the traits associated with the opposite gender was much stronger among men than women.
Masculinity is threatened when:
- Gender knowledge test.
- Playing with a doll (braiding hair vs playing with rope).
- Chance to affirm hetereosexuality or not.
- Scoring low on a strength test.
What do these threats do?
- Evaluated risk taking on gambling task.
- Increased likelihood of a man choosing to display aggression.
- Increased force with which they show aggression.
- Increased prejudice towards effeminate men.
- Increased anxiety and stress levels (particularly for men who do not identify as high in masculinitiy, Caswell, 2013).
- More discomfort with a hypothetical partner making more money than them (even if it means making more money in total, so men would rather make £20,000 and she make £15,000 than the man make £50,000 and she makes £70,000, for instance).
Gender non-conformity
Evidence that homosexuality disgust more readily than heterosexual sex:
- Particularly towards the guy in the “receiver” role.
- Particularly towards gay male sex as well.
Evidence that women with hair armpits/legs elicit more disgust that women without hair.
Evidence that transgender people face even more prejudice than homosexual and bisexual people.
Social consensus
Heflick and Ferguson:
- Men and women saw a women on the screen with hairy legs.
- They were told the study was gauging British attitudes towards various moral topics.
- As such, they were provided with - actually faked - data the either 73% or 37% of people think that this image is disgusting.
- They were then asked to rate the woman on a variety of things:
- How much they think she is warm and competent.
- How much they would want to hang out with her.
- When people thought that others thought it was disgusting, they rated the women worse -> social consensus determined the views of gender non-conformity (so long as the people identified with British culture).
Aggression and social perception
Vandello:
- Asked hundreds of university students to rate men’s behaviour in hypothetical situations in which they displayed various levels of aggression or peacekeeping.
- Men rated how they thought women would rate the man’s aggression.
- Women rated their views on the man’s behaviour.
- Men thought aggression was more attractive to women then it actually is.
Across all cultures, men are more physically aggressive and violent than women are.
But, women tend to score higher on indirection aggression (e.g. negative talk about others).
Gender and emotional expression
Anger is perceived of as more masculine than feminine.
Women (for instance leaders) are evaluated more negatively for expressing anger than men are.
In identical contexts, anger is also attributed more to internal traits about the woman than it is when men do it (it is less normative in people’s minds, therefore it is more a trait of the person when it is a women).
Sadness is more socially accepted for women than men.
Overall, in all cultures, men tend to be viewed as less emotional than women (anger excluded).
Why smile?
Women smile more often than men in cross-cultural studies.
LaFrance and Hecht:
- Proposed that low status/power groups tend to have stricter rules in how they can be emotionally.
- Hence, womenm as typically having less power/status, are more likely to smile as a social expectation (as opposed to a sign of actual joy).
One evolutionary view:
- Women smile more because they (as smaller on average) need to signal warmth and cooperation as part of their survival.
Gender and grieving
Men tend to grieve the lose of a spouse more intensely and chronically than women -> this is due to a lack of social support, as well as norms urging men to be strong and not express emotions associated with a lack of control/dominance.
Women tend to grieve the loss of a newborn child and miscarriage more intensely than men do.
Gender, altrusim, and reading emotion
Women tend to be more accurate at interpreting facial cues and emotion in voices:
- Possibly evolved as a means of physical protection. When smaller, knowing who will harm/help is more important to survival.
Women also tend to score higher on empathy.
Women are more altruistic in private scenarios, and in long term care scenarios.
Men are more altrusitc in sitations in which they can be perceived of as heroic and strong.
