Mary Driver Leinbach

Are People's Notions of Maleness More Stereotypically Framed than Their Notions of Femaleness?.

In the present research, 400 undergraduates were asked to describe their various construals of the male and female stereotypes using a modified form of the Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ; Spence, Helmreich, & Stapp, 1974). Half of these subjects described their construals in terms of personality trait-adjectives and half described their construals in terms of appearance trait-adjectives. One-fourth of each subject pool were females describing males, one-fourth were females describing females, one-fourth were males describing females, and one-fourth were males describing males. All construals were scored such that each was depicted by a single score of stereotypicality ranging from nonstereotypic to extremely stereotypic. The scores from the various construals of the male and female stereotypes were averaged within subject and target groups, and the group means were compared for significant patterns of difference. Regardless of whether the subjects described the stereotypes in terms of personality trait-adjectives or in terms of appearence trait-adjectives, construals of maleness were framed more stereotypically than were construals of femaleness. In addition, construals of maleness were framed in particularly more stereotypic terms by females when the descriptions were phrased in terms of appearance trait-adjectives. Finally, the social construal of the male stereotype (“How does society view males?”) was more stereotypically framed by females using both personality and appearance adjectives, while the ideal construal male stereotype (“Describe your ideal male”) was more stereotypically framed by males using both personality and appearance adjectives.

Acquisition of Gender Labels: A Test for Toddlers.

A test of gender discrimination in response to familiar labels was developed and given to 17- to 42-month-old children. A pretest employing pictures of familiar objects was presented first to ensure that subjects could perform a discrimination task, followed by separate gender tests comprised of photographs of stereotypically masculine and feminine children and adults. There were no sex differences in performance for the gender tests, but among the youngest children, more boys than girls could not be tested. Psychometric aspects of the tests were investigated and found adequate. The tests allow individual children to be classified as to gender-labeling ability and provide a useful tool for investigating gender knowledge.

Gender knowledge in egalitarian and traditional families

In the present paper, a small sample of 27 two-parent families who were self-identified as sharing parenting equally are compared with a more traditional set of 42 two-parent families. Both samples were primarily Caucasian. Children from the egalitarian families adopted gender labels later during the second year of life and showed less sex role knowledge at age 4 than the children in the more traditional families. Fathers in the egalitarian sample were more liberal on the Attitudes Toward Women Scale than fathers in the F-L study. Fathers in the egalitarian sample interacted with their child 50% of the time (on an equal basis with the mothers), while fathers in the F-L sample contributed only 25% of the parent—child interaction. Boys in the F-L sample received more negative reactions, but this was not true in the egalitarian families. The point is made that it is fathers who are behaving differently in the egalitarian sample; the mothers in both samples were very similar in both attitudes and behaviors.

Bears Are for Boys: Metaphorical Associations in Young Children's Gender Stereotypes.

Abstract Objects may be gender typed by virtue of their use by or association with one sex or the other or because they embody qualities that show a nonliteral or metaphorical correspondence to characteristics of or beliefs about males and females. For Study 1, we developed the Gender Stereotyping Test, a sorting task with which we determined that 4-, 5-, and 7-year-olds make use of both types of information in assigning objects or qualities to each sex. Study 2 replicated results with a new group of 4-year-olds and found that children whose test scores indicated at least some knowledge of gender identity were more likely to gender type metaphorical, but not conventional, items than those whose scores failed to indicate stable and constant knowledge of gender identity. In Study 3, which used a truncated version of the sorting task, children at age 3 made minimal use of either type of information. Gender stereotypes are considered in terms of recent theories of metaphor as a conceptual mechanism by which what is known in or about one domain is projected to another domain for the purpose of understanding.

Gender identity: Some thoughts on an old concept.

This paper presentes some issues in defining and researching gender identity. The status of psychological theories of gender identity is discussed.

Is there coherence among the cognitive components of gender acquisition

This study examined the relationships among five measures that assess various cognitive components of the childs acquisition of gender. At around 2 years of age, children were given a task assessing their ability to accurately label as “a boy” or “a girl” some head-and-shoulders pictures of boys and girls. At 4 years of age, these children were given tasks measuring (1) the degree to which they found gender a salient parameter of categorization, (2) the amount of gender-related knowledge they could display (SERLI-SRD), (3) the degree to which their preferences were gender-typed (SERLI-SRP) and (4) the accuracy of their memory for gender-typed information. There was no consistent pattern of relationship among the childrens scores on these five tools for measuring gender acquisition. Our findings suggest that gender is a multidimensional construct in childrens development, and thus these results challenge the undimensional manner in which gender is repeatedly addressed in developmental theory and research.

Qualities underlying the definitions of gender

Dimensions underlying the definition of items as feminine and masculine were examined in a set of three studies. Items chosen by children as belonging to males or females were used as the initial stimuli. These included traditionally stereotyped items such as a hammer and an iron, as well as more metaphorically related items such as bears and flowers. The raters in all three studies were undergraduates (70% White, 30% minorities). In Study 1, the items were rated using a set of 40 common adjectives. Three factors resulted: two related to masculine items and one to feminine items. In Study 2, a subset of the adjectives were used to rate abstract paintings that had been designated feminine or masculine by another group of adults. In Study 3, a set of stimuli were developed using the adjectives from the previous two studies. The items were rated as feminine or masculine and matched the initial coding of the adjective. The new items were also rated on the same adjectives by another set of adults. Again, the masculine adjectives were assigned to masculine items and feminine to feminine items. There was excellent agreement across three different sets of stimuli on the underlying dimensions of gender definition, even using items that were not traditionally stereotyped.