how does culture influence gender roles in society essay

Stereotypes and Gender Roles

Many of our gender stereotypes are strong because we emphasize gender so much in culture (Bigler & Liben, 2007). For example, children learn at a young age that there are distinct expectations for boys and girls. Gender roles refer to the role or behaviors learned by a person as appropriate to their gender and are determined by the dominant cultural norms. Cross-cultural studies reveal that children are aware of gender roles by age two or three and can label others’ gender and sort objects into gender categories. At four or five, most children are firmly entrenched in culturally appropriate gender roles (Kane, 1996). When children do not conform to the appropriate gender role for their culture, they may face negative sanctions such as being criticized, bullied, marginalized or rejected by their peers. A girl who wishes to take karate class instead of dance lessons may be called a “tomboy” and face difficulty gaining acceptance from both male and female peer groups (Ready, 2001). Boys, especially, are subject to intense ridicule for gender nonconformity (Coltrane and Adams, 2008; Kimmel, 2000)

By the time we are adults, our gender roles are a stable part of our personalities, and we usually hold many gender stereotypes. Men tend to outnumber women in professions such as law enforcement, the military, and politics. Women tend to outnumber men in care-related occupations such as child care, health care, and social work. These occupational roles are examples of typical Western male and female behavior, derived from our culture’s traditions. Adherence to these occupational gender roles demonstrates fulfillment of social expectations but may not necessarily reflect personal preference (Diamond, 2002).

Gender stereotypes are not unique to American culture. Williams and Best (1982) conducted several cross-cultural explorations of gender stereotypes using data collected from 30 cultures. There was a high degree of agreement on stereotypes across all cultures which led the researchers to conclude that gender stereotypes may be universal. Additional research found that males tend to be associated with stronger and more active characteristics than females (Best, 2001); however recent research argues that culture shapes how some gender stereotypes are perceived. Researchers found that across cultures, individualistic traits were viewed as more masculine; however, collectivist cultures rated masculine traits as collectivist and not individualist (Cuddy et al., 2015). These findings provide support that gender stereotypes may be moderated by cultural values.

There are two major psychological theories that partially explain how children form their own gender roles after they learn to differentiate based on gender. Gender schema theory argues that children are active learners who essentially socialize themselves and actively organize others’ behavior, activities, and attributes into gender categories, which are known as schemas . These schemas then affect what children notice and remember later. People of all ages are more likely to remember schema-consistent behaviors and attributes than schema-inconsistent behaviors and attributes. So, people are more likely to remember men, and forget women, who are firefighters. They also misremember schema-inconsistent information. If research participants are shown pictures of someone standing at the stove, they are more likely to remember the person to be cooking if depicted as a woman, and the person to be repairing the stove if depicted as a man. By only remembering schema-consistent information, gender schemas strengthen more and more over time.

A second theory that attempts to explain the formation of gender roles in children is social learning theory which argues that gender roles are learned through reinforcement, punishment, and modeling. Children are rewarded and reinforced for behaving in concordance with gender roles and punished for breaking gender roles. In addition, social learning theory argues that children learn many of their gender roles by modeling the behavior of adults and older children and, in doing so, develop ideas about what behaviors are appropriate for each gender. Social learning theory has less support than gender schema theory but research shows that parents do reinforce gender-appropriate play and often reinforce cultural gender norms.

Gender Roles and Culture

Hofstede’s (2001) research revealed that on the Masculinity and Femininity dimension (MAS), cultures with high masculinity reported distinct gender roles, moralistic views of sexuality and encouraged passive roles for women. Additionally, these cultures discourage premarital sex for women but have no such restrictions for men. The cultures with the highest masculinity scores were: Japan, Italy, Austria and Venezuela. Cultures low in masculinity (high femininity) had gender roles that were more likely to overlap and encouraged more active roles for women. Sex before marriage was seen as acceptable for both women and men in these cultures. Four countries scoring lowest in masculinity were Norway, Denmark, Netherlands and Sweden. The United States is slightly more masculine than feminine on this dimension; however, these aspects of high masculinity are balanced by a need for individuality.

Culture and Psychology Copyright © 2020 by L D Worthy; T Lavigne; and F Romero is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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9 Gender and Culture

• Published: July 2019
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Culture and gender are closely intertwined with biological factors creating predispositions for sex and gender development. However, sociocultural factors are critical determinants leading to gender differences in roles and behaviors that may be modest but culturally important. Culture has profound effects on gender-related behavior, values, identity, roles, and how these are regarded in various social contexts. Culture governs the socialization of children, the tasks children are taught, the roles adult men and women adopt, and the expectations that govern women’s and men’s attitudes and behaviors. Culture provides the context in which gender roles, identity, and stereotypes unfold as well as parameters regarding sexual behavior. Culture affects variation in gender-related behaviors between individuals within a cultural group as well as variation between cultures. Culture can maximize, minimize, or even eliminate gender differences in social behaviors and cognitions. Indeed, it is impossible to separate gender and culture.

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Gender Roles in Society Essay

This essay will discuss the evolution and current state of gender roles in society. It will examine how gender roles are socially constructed, their impact on individuals and communities, and the progress towards gender equality. The piece will analyze the influence of culture, media, and education on gender roles. At PapersOwl too, you can discover numerous free essay illustrations related to Gender.

How it works

Gender is a critical aspect of social inequality. Gender has been defined as a means to “serve to reduce assumed parallels between biological and psychological sex or at least make explicit any assumptions of such parallels (Unger 1976, p. 1086). Gender inequality is a prevalent issue in society as a whole, and America is no exception. It is a sociological construct which carves the path in which men and women will live their lives, affecting a broad range of choices and availability of resources (Macionis, 2018).

Gender inequality exists due to the fact that women and men are clearly defined as distinctive types of people (Macionis, 2018).

Gender inequality primarily impacts women. For instance, women often encounter a “glass ceiling” which defines the maximum potential for promotions in their often male dominated professions. Alison Bechdel demonstrated gender inequality in the form of a simple cartoon which depicted a test where a movie passed if it met this criteria: there are at least two female characters with names, those characters interact with one another, and their discussions include something other than men (Macionis, 2018). Applying this test to recent films, analysts claim that around half do not pass this test (Macionis, 2018). This simple test depicts the way in which men dominate society, and while some women do rise above, many hit the “glass ceiling.” In fact, due to the presence of several forms of gender inequalities, the workplace has been claimed at times to be inhospitable for women (Abrams, 1991).

Additionally, books and media influence children by presenting stereotypical roles of men and women, with women lacking representation in traditionally male roles (Purcell and Stuart 1990). More over, these influences continue later in life and spread to other means, such as video games, social media and celebrities. Even advertisements perpetuate gender bias and reinforce gender norms, with men in advertisements shown to focus on the product they’re representing, while women focus on the men (Goffman, 1979). In fact, gender is instilled into children even before they are born by parents carefully selecting gender appropriate clothing, such as pink for newborn girls and blue for newborn boys (Zosuls et al., 2001).

Why is it that gender exists at all? In earlier times, the use of gender and the roles each sex played were more abundant than in today’s time. The differences in biological make up that each sex carried were far more important (Macionis, 2018). For instance, in the time of hunters and gatherers, there was no means of controlling pregnancy and reproduction, which burdened women as being caretakers of their many children (Macionis, 2018). Because women were bound to their homes and their children, women were forced to construct their roles around the home (Macionis, 2018). Thus, women often took on such jobs as planting and gathering vegetation to provide food for themselves and their family (Macionis, 2018). Men, on the other hand, boasting their stronger and larger size due to the biological differences in their genetic make up, often took on the role of hunting or warfare, which left the women, again, with no choice but to be bound to their homes (Macionis, 2018).

As time continued on, gender roles became less and less fundamental. When the Industrial Revolution took place, there were effective means of preventing pregnancy (Macionis, 2018). The ability to decide when and if to get pregnant gave women more of a choice in their home-maker status. Additionally, the Industrial Revolution developed more advanced technology that diminished the need for physical strength in the workplace and for economic production as a whole (Macionis, 2018). Many advances in technology and changes to society that have followed in the time after the Industrial Revolution have led to gender roles becoming less and less of a determinant for what kind of job one may possess.

With the need for gender to exist diminishing more and more with each step society and technology takes, what is it that makes gender still relevant? One may turn to sociological perspectives in order to gain insight on such a question. According to the structural-functional theory, gender is “society’s recognition that women and men differ in some respects” (Macionis, 2018, p. 118). Gender is viewed as complementarity, meaning the differences between men and women are limited but important (Macionis, 2018). Gender, according to the structural-functional approach, defines the different obligations each sex is required to perform (Macionis, 2018). Due to these differences, the genders are complementary in the way in which both sexes rely on one another to perform their duties, which is said to bring unity to families and in a broader sense, communities as a whole (Macionis, 2018).

Talcott Parsons, who was born in 1902 and passed away in 1979, was an American sociologist. Parsons developed the most well known theory of gender in the realm of structural functional outlooks (Macionis, 2018). According to Parsons, the differences in gender continue to grow smaller as time moves forward, yet are still encouraged by modern societies as they are a useful integration tool and encourage the sexes to work together (Macionis, 2018). The main point of specification of this is that gender is defined in a complementary way that encourages both men and women to rely on one another and see one another as an asset (Macionis, 2018). For example, women are child bearers, and the biological drive in men to produce offspring brings the two genders together. Due to this reliance, both genders see benefits in forming a relationship and, more importantly, a family (Macionis, 2018).

Despite the diminishing differences in women and men, women are traditionally still deemed as the primary caretaker of the household, while men are seen as the primary wealth holder and are deemed responsible for the economic advancement of the family (Macionis, 2018). In order to achieve a society in which the genders work complementarily, gender differences are engrained into a person starting from a young age (Macionis, 2018). For example, masculinity is an “instrumental orientation, emphasizing rationality, competition, and a focus on goals” (Macionis, 2018, p. 118). Femininity, on the other hand, involves “an opposing expressive orientation: emotional responsiveness, cooperation, and concern for other people and relationships” (Macionis, 2018, p. 118). These inherent differences in upbringing result in women smiling more, and maintaining politeness in situations where they would rather not. Societies pressures to fill these gender roles lead to disapproval of those who go against their gender norms, who often find loss of sex appeal amongst the disapproval (Macionis, 2018).

Today, the structural-functional theory is seen as less influential than when it was initially introduced fifty years ago (Macionis, 2018). This is partly due to the theories approach in reinforcing and rationalizing traditional gender roles, with some seeing complementary roles as a weakly disguised vail for male domination (Macionis, 2018). Additionally, the approach does not fully explain all roles that genders take and ignores those that do not fit into a clear cutting block. For instance, women and men do not need to see value in their gender differences to interact with one another. Moreover, their interactions may not fit into the traditional gender norm laid out by Parsons, as work roles (instrumental) are often not the same role one takes on in a relationship (expressive) (Macionis, 2018). Finally, the theory is said to ignore the issues caused by gender roles and norms, which falls heavily on the shoulders of those who stray from traditional roles in their lives. This fault has been made apparent in recent years as transgender or non-binary individuals continue to suffer from the insensitivities of persons who see gender roles as unchanging.

The social-conflict theory is another tool for analyzing gender in society. Rather than view genders as being complementary, the theory views the issue of gender inequality “vertically” (Macionis, 2018). The social-conflict theory asserts that gender is a divisive part of society, rather than a means of unification like the structural functional approach suggests. Friedrech Engels, who was born in 1820 and passed away in 1895, was a friend of Karl Marx and thus was very familiar with Marx’s thinking (Macionis, 2018). Engels believed capitalism to lead to the dominant position men hold over women, and the basis of this assertion is laid out by examining the evolution of society from hunting and gathering, to capitalism (Macionis, 2018).

Looking back at the time of hunters and gatherers, the social-conflict theory asserts that while men and women took on different roles, both roles were necessary and vital (Macionis, 2018). For instance, women played just as crucial a role by providing vegetation as men did when they were hunting (Macionis, 2018). Due to the necessity and importance of both roles, the social-conflict theory claims that simple societies such as those of the hunter-gatherers were close to achieving gender equality.

However, as time passed and industrial advancements were made (such as raising livestock and gardening), the availability of goods rose and some individuals or families were able to obtain a surplus of goods (Macionis, 2018). This addition of surplus goods led to the rise of social classes, with those enjoying the majority of the surplus becoming wealthy (Macionis, 2018). With the formation of social classes came the idea of private property, which was used as a means of the wealthy retaining their surplus of goods (Macionis, 2018). The idea of private property then led to the dominance of men over women, as men wished to carry on their legacies through their sons, rather than their partners (Macionis, 2018). Again, women were soon seen as their beneficial role being that of the caretaker of their homes and children.

As time passed on and technological advancements grew, capitalism came to rise and so did the male-dominated capitalist class (Macionis, 2018, p. 120). In order to continue the patriarchal society formed with capitalism, women were led to discover happiness in the form of male partnership, and domestic life and duties, while men were driven to factories to work long hours (Macionis, 2018). Women were taught to seek a man in order to prosper and survive, rather than forming their own financial independence by obtaining jobs. Both gender norms coincided to reinforce the ideal that women were responsible for the entirety of the housework, again reinforcing gender inequality.

However, the social- conflict theory is not without its own critics. Critics assert that families, despite being patriarchal, are still a necessity as they provide a means of both having and raising children (Macionis, 2018). Additionally, the theory fails to account for the fact that not all differences between men and women are seen as unjust (Macionis, 2018). For example, even in today’s society there are many people of both genders who are happy to take on the role of caregiver to their children while their partner provides economically. Finally, critics point out that Engels assertion of capitalism as the route of gender stratification does not hold true in the world today, as many socialist nations still have patriarchal societies (Macionis, 2018).

As previously asserted, gender does in fact impact society and furthermore the lives that make up such a society. Gender typically is connected to varying levels of power, with men often enjoying more freedom to behave in different ways (Macionis, 2018). For example, men in Hollywood often still portray sexier roles on screen as they age and society accepts this, even if their counterpart in the illustrious relationship is far younger. However, as women age in Hollywood we do not see the same hold true for them. Furthermore, women are judged more harshly for traits like assertiveness, and more often take on softer traits that rely on politeness (Smith-Lovin & Brody, 1989). The symbolic-interaction theory investigates gender roles in a smaller lens than that of the structural function approach, focusing on these daily interactions in everyday life (Macionis, 2018).

The symbolic-interaction theory asserts that gender norms are engrained into our society by the means that we use it every day, and thus is a vital part of our society. For example, gender influences the relative freedom one may feel to make certain decisions, facial expressions, or clothing choices. Women are judged more heavily on their facial expressions, and the desire to be polite has led them to smile more (Macionis, 2018). Additionally, women typically are judged more harshly for taking up more space, as “daintiness” is seen as a feminine trait, while men are more likely to be seen as masculine for taking up more space (Macionis, 2018). It is also generally expected in society that a woman will take a mans last name when married (Macionis, 2018). While the symbolic-interaction theory allows insight into the daily ways in which gender influences society, it fails to account for a broader stance on how gender actually shapes society as a whole (Macionis, 2018).

It is unlikely that the source of gender inequality will ever be agreed upon. However, it is abundantly clear the gender does perform a role in society. As society continues to advance, it is likely the world will continue to see gender roles redefined. With the emergence of new genders, and sexual orientations, gender roles will continue to change. In fact, there are already notable differences in gender traits (masculinity, femininity) in those of straight white women versus their counterparts of other sexual orientations (Kachel, Steffens, & Niedlich, 2016).

What is not apparent, is whether or not gender equality will be reached. Today, women are still viewed as being primarily responsible for routine housework, while men are expected to do non-routine chores (Geist, 2018). This is in part due to the fact that women can produce children, and the role of becoming a mother often leads to women falling behind men in their careers, contributing to the gender wage gap (Slaughter, 2012).

What remains unclear is whether or not gender equality will be achieved, and if it is, will everyone agree on it? The social-conflict theory claims gender equality was close to being achieved at the time of hunter-gatherers, however, whether men and women felt that way at the time is debatable. The structural functional approach claims that gender roles are necessary for unification between men and women, and while this may hold some merit, in a broader sense this ideal is flawed for not recognizing the inequality in value held for both necessary roles (male and female). For society to unlearn the societal norms that have led to the clear division between men and women gender roles will take a notable effort from society as a whole, as well as vast amounts of time.    

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The Impacts of Gender Role Socialization on Health and Culture

Christopher Liang and Nicole L. Johnson explore how socialized gender roles can impact men’s and women’s health, contribute to rape culture and amplify cultural problems.

Mary Ellen Alu

• Christopher Liang
• Nicole Johnson
• counseling psychology

What does it mean to be a man today? And what does it mean to be a woman?

Even as societal views shift in the era of the #MeToo movement, men and women face pressures on how to behave, and how not to. Expectations are often reinforced in popular culture, in the way men and women are portrayed in movies, TV shows and advertisements.

More critically, researchers say, gender roles are learned at an early age through socialization with caregivers at home, school and elsewhere—and that can amplify health and cultural problems as boys and girls grow into adulthood.

“People learn how to perform,” says Christopher Liang , associate professor of counseling psychology . “They learn what the expectations are for their sex. So if you are born a biological male, you might be taught a certain way of dealing with your emotions. Don’t show your sadness, don’t show that you’re hurt, don’t show that you’re weak. Be strong. Be tough.”

Conversely, those born as a biological female might be taught to be nice, nurturing and giving.

“Women have this invisible burden of caretaking that’s often ignored or devalued,” says Nicole L. Johnson , assistant professor of counseling psychology. “Women are taught to sort of stifle their experience, to be appeasing or attractive to men.”

While socialized behaviors might not be unhealthy unto themselves, the researchers say, problems can develop or persist when men and women are rigid in their conformity to those expectations, resulting in health issues for individuals or fueling violence against women.

“We know that women are overwhelmingly victims [of sexual violence], and we know that men are overwhelmingly perpetrators,” says Johnson. “What about being a man increases that? We teach our boys to be strong and aggressive and not to take ’no’ for an answer, and then we teach our girls to be passive and pretty and nice and not to be assertive.

“In my mind this kind of creates this perfect scenario for sexual assault to happen, because if we’re teaching our boys not to take ’no’ for an answer, and we’re teaching our girls to be seen and not heard, that creates a really hard situation on both sides. ... There’s this socialization that occurs that makes sexual assault normative.”

Liang has conducted extensive research into men and masculinity, including the impact on health outcomes and gender role conflict among minority men, as he seeks to help men engage in healthier behaviors and improve their overall mental and physical health. He is among a team of scholars who helped draft the American Psychological Association’s first-ever set of “ Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Boys and Men .” The newly released document, based on a synthesis of empirical and scholarly works, is meant to guide psychologists and researchers in their work with boys and men on masculinity issues.

Separately, Johnson has conducted extensive research and programming on rape culture. She co-authored the fifth edition of Women and Gender , a textbook released in November 2018 that explores women’s relationships, physical and mental health, and violence against women, among other areas. The book addresses the social construction of gender and explores ways to effect change, including through political advocacy.

In their work, both Liang and Johnson emphasize the need to understand gender differences.

“We need to interrogate gender, really unpack it, figure out what it means and how it contributes to people’s well-being—both men and women, and people who don’t identify as men or women,” Liang says. “[We need to] put it at the forefront, understand that gender-role ideology influences a lot of our behavior, influences a lot of our thinking and influences our perceptions.”

How Men Experience Masculinity

In helping to draft the American Psychological Association (APA)’s new “Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Boys and Men,” Liang drew on his extensive research into men’s experiences with masculinity and racism, especially those of men of color. He also has served as president of the APA’s Division 51, the Society for the Study of Men and Masculinities. He has done additional research into sexual violence prevention.

Liang worked on the APA guidelines in collaboration with other scholars over the past seven years, though efforts began earlier. In drawing on more than 40 years of research, the scholars also sought rounds of feedback from other experts and the public as they refined the document, which aims to help practitioners work more effectively with boys and men.

“Unfortunately psychology for a long, long time was looking at its constructs and engaging in its studies in a very androcentric way—so focusing on men but not really understanding men, centering psychological experiences based on men’s experiences, but not really understanding what men’s experiences are as it concerns gender,” Liang says.

The document recognizes the need to help boys and men—as well as their parents, teachers and coaches—gain awareness in how masculinity is defined in the context of life circumstances and how those social forces can be a detriment to mental health.

“Psychologists strive to recognize that masculinities are constructed based on social, cultural and contextual norms,” the first guideline states. The other nine guidelines address the impact of power and privilege, family relationships, education and public-health issues.

“One of the key things to come from the document is the importance of looking at something like masculinity,” Liang says. “Oftentimes, we think of gender as this immutable thing, that you’re born with it.” But, he adds, “You’re born with a sex, then you learn how to do gender.”

The new APA guidelines encourage researchers and practitioners to focus more attention on some of the ways that men engage in unhealthy forms of masculinity. They also encourage an understanding of how to capitalize on the more positive aspects of masculinity and how to engage in more positive health-related behaviors, such as a willingness to ask for help.

Men who have been socialized to appear tough but who are hurting might feel greater stigma if they were to seek help from a professional, Liang says. Instead, they might opt to deal with their pain by abusing substances or by hurting themselves or their partners.

“A man who is feeling some loss of power at work may cope with their loss of power by reasserting power at home,” he says. “It could be through physical violence or sexual violence.”

Though boys and men, as a group, tend to hold power and privilege, they also disproportionately face mental health issues, academic challenges and other health-related problems, the APA says in the document. Men account for three-quarters of all suicides, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

“Men on average die six years earlier than women,” says Liang. “Some of this can be attributed to higher completed suicides, but it’s also telling that men are more at risk for heart disease and stress-related illnesses. Instead of saying, ‘well, that’s how men are,’ we need to figure out why. Maybe if they engaged in help-seeking earlier, they’d be better off.” If they didn’t feel pressure to meet gender-role expectations or fear losing an opportunity at work, he says, they might take the time to go to a mental health practitioner or doctor.

Individuals need to be cognizant of gender, much like being aware of their racial biases, Liang says. With concerns over men’s suicide rates and drug addictions rising, “we need to understand how men are coping with job loss, with underemployment,” he says. “If we were to center gender, then we might be able to help these men in different ways.”

Although examining gender can be useful in identifying possible disparities between men and women in such areas as health, education and the justice system, Liang says, the guidelines underscore the importance of moving away from gender as an independent variable in studies.

“We know that gender-based violence—sexual violence in particular, intimate partner violence—disproportionately impacts women more than men,” he says as an example. “And we know that because our data tells us that. But that’s all it tells us—that there are differences. The next layer is, why are there these differences?”

Understanding Rape Culture

Johnson focuses her research and programs on rape culture, an area that first piqued her interest while she was working in rape prevention as an undergraduate.

“The original set of rape prevention programming was really focused on, ‘men, here’s how not to rape. Women, here’s how not to get raped.’” But in reviewing the programming’s effectiveness, she says, researchers found a rebound effect—that participants, instead of benefiting from the program, were later found to be perpetrators and victims at higher rates than non-participants and were more likely to accept rape myths.

Johnson wondered, how could talking about rape cause someone to actually be more likely to have those experiences or hold more strongly to their beliefs?

As a protective mechanism, Johnson says, some people might discard sexual assault data, if, for example, it occurs more often than they thought and if the numbers seem overwhelming. Instead, she says, those individuals will hold steadfast to cultural beliefs that only certain types of people commit such acts or that certain types of people are victims.

“I was fascinated with, how do we get through that, how do we disrupt that narrative or that idea?” Johnson says. “And I think it goes to more deeply ingrained ideas. So I started to study, what are the factors that predict sexual violence or predict acceptance of these rape myths?”

Approaching her work from the standpoint of perpetrators, Johnson continued her studies at the University of Akron. Her advisor in the master’s and doctoral program focused on victims.

“Our work melded together well, because she was coming from the victims’ side, which is very important, and I had a lens of perpetrators,” she says. In intimate partner violence, victims often have strong feelings for their attackers, she points out. “I think being able, in some way, to not demonize the perpetrator was really helpful in my work.

“I kind of come from the standpoint that great people can do really terrible things,” she says. “It’s a hard line to walk, though, because you don’t want to be a rape apologist. At the same time, in this narrative where we keep saying, ‘they’re terrible, they’re horrible,’ we’re not going to get anywhere in society, because people are going to hold strong to those beliefs.”

Johnson started looking at factors that can lead to problem behaviors, such as alcohol misuse, and circumstances, such as proximity to military and college campuses, where young people are coming into early adulthood and experiencing many freedoms for the first time.

She considered: “What role does culture play in creating this behavior or making these behaviors acceptable—these behaviors being rape, domestic violence, violence against LGBTQ individuals and the targeting of certain people? What about our society allows that to happen or excuses that when it does happen?”

She pointed to the APA’s newest guidelines, which address the negative effects of toxic masculinity on boys and men, as well as the fact that men are more likely to be victims of a violent crime, more likely to be perpetrators of violent crimes and more likely to use more lethal means of suicide. “That’s really important for us to think about,” she says.

On the other hand, Johnson says, toxic masculinity leads to “really devastating consequences” for women and girls, including increased rates of intimate partner violence, as it continues to perpetuate an unequal balance in society, where women are perceived as less than men.

The APA’s 11 “ Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Girls and Women ,” released about a decade ago, noted that psychologists, in their work, should consider the effects of socialization and stereotyping on women and girls.

“We see a lot of research and statistics showing that women and girls are at higher risk for mental health diagnoses,” Johnson says. “They tend to have higher rates of depression, higher rates of suicide attempts and higher rates of anxiety disorders, including post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s really easier to pathologize women, and say, well, there must be something wrong with women, or something wrong about being a woman that creates this increased risk and these increased rates.

“The guidelines really go to say that the reason these rates are different is not because of being a woman but because of the societal consequences of being a woman,” she says. “Within our society, we tend to devalue women and not believe in their competence, not believe in their ability, which leads them to have less resources and access to support, which then results in these increased rates of mental health diagnoses.”

In a 2017 study, Johnson investigates a proposed model of rape culture that incorporates traditional gender roles, sexism, adversarial sexual beliefs, hostility towards women and acceptance of violence. The 2017 study, “ An Empirical Exploration into the Measurement of Rape Culture ,” finds support for that model of rape culture, demonstrating the importance of targeting these factors in rape prevention programming. The study, co-authored by Dawn M. Johnson, was published in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence .

In a theoretical study published in 2017 in the Journal of Bisexuality , Johnson seeks to understand why bisexual women are more vulnerable to sexual assaults. (Research indicates that 75 percent of bisexual women experience sexual violence at one point in their lives.) She and co-author MaryBeth Grove offer several possible reasons, including substance misuse, hypersexualization and biphobia, in which bisexuals are feared or disliked because of their attraction to more than one gender.

With an aim to get people to own their behaviors so that they can move forward and help create a safer society, Johnson designs and implements programs to raise consciousness around rape culture and teach strategies to directly, or indirectly, intervene to prevent assaults.

She is leading a program at Lehigh called “Define It,” which is centered on rape prevention in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer/Questing community on campus. She received a Faculty Research Grant to develop the program, which examines bystander behavior, rape culture, substance use, social influence and sexual/gender identity in sexual assaults among the LGBTQ college community. Johnson hopes to add to the limited research on rape culture and bystander behavior in the LGBTQ community.

Along with Lucy Napper , assistant professor of psychology, Johnson also is helping to develop a multi-tiered program to address alcohol abuse, sexual assault and sexual risk behavior on college campuses. The work is funded through a grant from the National Institutes of Health.

Exploring Sexual Consent

In research that dovetails with Johnson’s work, Liang focuses on gender-based violence and men and masculinity, especially how men of color experience masculinity. In addition to his research informing the new guidelines of the American Psychological Association, Liang creates programs to help young men develop strategies to succeed in school and beyond.

In a study titled “ Exploring Sexual Consent and Hostile Masculine Norms Using the Theory of Planned Behavior ,” Liang and co-authors Christina Hermann and Brooke E. DeSipio examine the role of masculine norms in explaining men’s intentions to have consensual sex.

The study, published in 2018 in the journal Psychology of Men & Masculinity , notes that sexual victimization rates are high on college campuses, with about 15 percent of undergraduate women experiencing rape or attempted rape their first year. By sophomore year, the study noted, 37 percent of undergraduate women experience sexual violence.

As part of the study, undergraduate men were asked to complete surveys on whether they conformed to violence and power over women or rejected that kind of behavior. They also were surveyed about their attitudes in asking for consent and whether they read body language to determine consent. Men who endorsed hostile masculine norms reported a greater lack of control over asking for consent, the study shows.

“Our greater understanding of how men’s endorsement of masculine norms influences their sexual behavior also provides an important source of intervention and prevention,” Liang and the co-authors write. “Educators may seek to incorporate a discussion of masculine norms and gender roles into sexual violence prevention programs aimed at young men.”

Liang also looks at how ethnic minority men experience racism and the pressures they face to conform to gender roles. Though the field has improved, he says, he has been critical of research that uses a narrow lens to study masculinity, by primarily looking at middle-class, college-educated or college-attending white men.

“That’s an important area to study, but it’s dangerous to generalize from those studies to the experiences of men of color,” he says. “My push and approach has been to look at masculinity from a more intersectional experience. What that means is, that instead of saying, ‘everyone experiences masculinity in this way,’ it’s, well, ‘what is masculinity for black men,’” as well as for Latinos and Asian American men.

Men of color don’t necessarily experience “male privilege,” or economic and social advantages, solely on the basis of their sex, he says. Based on how race operates, men of color are going to experience and perform their gender differently, he says.

In a study published in Psychology of Men & Masculinity , Liang and co-authors Jime Salcedo and Holly A. Miller of the University of La Verne explore whether racism exacerbates or buffers the relationships between Latino masculinity ideologies (caballerismo and machismo) and gender role conflict. The researchers surveyed 148 Latino men recruited through e-mail.

The findings suggest that Latino men who feel a responsibility to protect and provide for their family and who perceive racism on the job or in other settings may feel a heightened need to demonstrate success. The study results direct clinicians to analyze gender, race and racism experiences in their work.

In another study, also published in Psychology of Men & Masculinity , Liang and co-author Lizette Ojeda of Texas A&M University examine the role of bicultural stress, ethnic identity and Latino ideologies of machismo and caballerismo on multiple coping strategies among 93 Mexican American adolescent men. The study suggests that adolescent men who experience bicultural stress cope by giving up, laughing it off or leaving the matter to a higher power. The findings also suggest that when Mexican American adolescent men feel positive about their ethnicity, they are less likely to cope with life’s problems by using substances.

Putting Gender Symmetry in Context

As part of her research, Johnson explores the controversial issue of gender symmetry, which holds that women carry out violence against their partners at roughly the same rate as men.

In a theoretical study titled “ It is and It is Not: The Importance of Context when Exploring Gender Differences in Perpetration of Physical Partner Violence ,” published in 2016 in the Journal of Family Violence , Johnson and co-authors Samantha C. Holmes and Dawn M. Johnson accept gender symmetry while acknowledging the complexity of the issue.

Johnson says opposing camps waste time by arguing over whether gender symmetry exists and should focus instead on what to do about intimate partner violence.

“It can be that if we look at the population at large, and we count shoving a partner or calling a partner names as violence, then sure, women are just as likely to swear at their partner, call them names, shove them,” she says. “It’s like this cultural norm. That happens, and I think that’s an issue. We need to start thinking about, why are we okay with degrading our partners and putting our hands on our partners? Why has that become acceptable?”

She says programming could focus on respect, consent and how to handle a disagreement.

Still, she adds, women are significantly more likely to be killed or hospitalized at the hands of abusive partners, and that issue, too, needs to be addressed.

As comparison, the study raises the disparity in jail rates among young minority men arrested for drug crimes. Knowing only that black men are jailed at much higher rates than their white counterparts can lead to the assumption that black men commit drug crimes at higher rates. However, the study says, literature has shown that discriminatory policies, not race, account for the disparate jail rates.

“My argument,” says Johnson, “is, we should stop arguing about [gender symmetry] and acknowledge, ‘okay, yeah, these are both true. But what can we do? What next?’”

In a 2016 study published in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence , Johnson and several co-authors investigated the prevalence and predictors of intimate partner violence, sampling 227 women residing in shelters for battered women. The study found that while most of the women reported engaging in some form of violence against their partner, few of the women (5.3 percent) endorsed violence that was not mutual.

The study, “ Prevalence and Predictors of Bidirectional Violence in Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence Residing at Shelters ,” also showed the women experienced more severe abuse at the hands of their partners than they committed.

“We found that almost all instances of women’s use of violence was bi-directional, which means that they were not acting independently of violence,” and in many cases, they acted in self-defense, Johnson says. “You might have shoved them to get them off from beating you.”

The study, she says, underscores the importance of context in talking about gender symmetry.

Raising Awareness

As they conduct separate but related research, Liang and Johnson recognize the importance of raising awareness about gender socialization, rape culture, and the impact of gender-role ideology on men’s and women’s health and well-being.

Specifically, Liang hopes that the release of the APA’s “Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Boys and Men” leads to more people having more compassion for the challenges that boys and men experience in daily life.

“I hope policy makers consider devoting more funding to further support research to study how masculinity ideologies may be helpful and harmful to the health and well-being of men and boys, as well as the people with whom they interact,” he says.

He also hopes that schools consider the behaviors of boys, particularly boys of color, with more compassion. “School disciplinary policy, for instance, could be more sensitive to how boys’ behavior may be symptomatic of other problems,” he says. “Their greater likelihood of engaging in externalizing behaviors results in more of them receiving more harsh discipline when they may actually need more mental health support.”

Concerning rape culture, Johnson emphasizes the need to make women and men more aware of how they are socialized to be and how that can impact their relationships. She says schools, even on the elementary level, could introduce programming that fosters discussion of healthy relationships and issues of consent. The earlier that prevention work starts, Johnson says, the more effective it can be.

“There are sex education programs that are appropriate for elementary school kids,” she says. “Start that track so hopefully we won’t eventually need rape prevention programs in college.”

Illustrations by Jacob Haupt

This story originally appeared as "Centering Gender" in the 2019 Lehigh Research Review .

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Article contents

Gender in a social psychology context.

• Thekla Morgenroth Thekla Morgenroth Department of Psychology, University of Exeter
•  and  Michelle K. Ryan Michelle K. Ryan Dean of Postgraduate Research and Director of the Doctoral College, University of Exeter
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190236557.013.309
• Published online: 28 March 2018

Understanding gender and gender differences is a prevalent aim in many psychological subdisciplines. Social psychology has tended to employ a binary understanding of gender and has focused on understanding key gender stereotypes and their impact. While women are seen as warm and communal, men are seen as agentic and competent. These stereotypes are shaped by, and respond to, social contexts, and are both descriptive and prescriptive in nature. The most influential theories argue that these stereotypes develop in response to societal structures, including the roles women and men occupy in society, and status differences between the sexes. Importantly, research clearly demonstrates that these stereotypes have a myriad of effects on individuals’ cognitions, attitudes, and behaviors and contribute to sexism and gender inequality in a range of domains, from the workplace to romantic relationships.

• gender stereotypes
• gender norms
• social psychology
• social role theory
• stereotype content model
• ambivalent sexism
• stereotype threat

Introduction

Gender is omnipresent—it is one of the first categories children learn, and the categorization of people into men and women 1 affects almost every aspect of our lives. Gender is a key determinant of our self-concept and our perceptions of others. It shapes our mental health, our career paths, and our most intimate relationships. It is therefore unsurprising that psychologists invest a great deal of time in understanding gender as a concept, with social psychologists being no exception. However, this has not always been the case. This article begins with “A Brief History of Gender in Psychology,” which gives an overview about gender within psychology more broadly. The remaining sections discuss how gender is examined within social psychology more specifically, with particular attention to how gender stereotypes form and how they affect our sense of self and our evaluations of others.

A Brief History of Gender in Psychology

During the early years of psychology in general, and social psychology in particular, the topic gender was largely absent from psychology, as indeed were women. Male researchers made claims about human nature based on findings that were restricted to a small portion of the population, namely, white, young, able-bodied, middle-class, heterosexual men [see Etaugh, 2016 ; a phenomenon that has been termed androcentrism (Hegarty, & Buechel, 2006 )]. If women and girls were mentioned at all, they were usually seen as inferior to men and boys (e.g., Hall, 1904 ).

This invisibility of women within psychology changed with a rise of the second wave of feminism in the 1960s. Here, more women entered psychology, demanded to be seen, and pushed back against the narrative of women as inferior. They argued that psychology’s androcentrism, and the sexist views of psychologists, had not only biased psychological theory and research, but also contributed to and reinforced gender inequality in society. For example, Weisstein ( 1968 ) argued that most claims about women made by prominent psychologists, such as Freud and Erikson, lacked an evidential grounding and were instead based on these men’s fantasies of what women were like rather than empirical data. A few years later, Maccoby and Jacklin ( 1974 ) published their seminal work, The Psychology of Sex Differences , which synthesized the literature on sex differences and concluded that there were few (but some) sex differences. This led to a growth of interest in the social origins of sex differences, with a shift away from a psychology of sex (i.e., biologically determined male vs. female) and toward a psychology of gender (i.e., socially constructed masculine vs. feminine).

Since then, the psychology of gender has become a respected and widely represented subdiscipline within psychology. In a fascinating analysis of the history of feminism and psychology, Eagly, Eaton, Rose, Riger, and McHugh ( 2012 ) examined publications on sex differences, gender, and women from 1960 to 2009 . In those 50 years, the number of annual publications rose from close to zero to over 6,500. As a proportion of all psychology articles, one can also see a marked rise in popularity in gender articles from 1960 to 2009 , with peak years of interest in the late 1970s and 1990s. In line with the aforementioned shift from sex differences to gender differences, the largest proportion of these articles fall into the topic of “social processes and social issues,” which includes research on gender roles, masculinity, and femininity.

However, as interest in the area has grown, the ways in which gender is studied, and the political views of those studying it, have become more diverse. Eagly and colleagues note:

we believe that this research gained from feminist ideology but has escaped its boundaries. In this garden, many flowers have bloomed, including some flowers not widely admired by some feminist psychologists. (p. 225)

Here, they allude to the fact that some research has shifted away from societal explanations, which feminist psychologists have generally favored, to more complex views of gender difference. Some of these acknowledge the fact that nature and nurture are deeply intertwined, with both biological and social variables being used to understand gender and gender differences (e.g., Wood & Eagly, 2002 ). Others, such as evolutionary approaches (e.g., Baumeister, 2013 ; Buss, 2016 ) and neuroscientific approaches (see Fine, 2010 ), focus more heavily on the biological bases of gender differences, often causing chagrin among feminists. Nevertheless, much of the research in social psychology has, unsurprisingly, focused on social factors and, in particular, on gender stereotypes. Where do they come from and what are their effects?

Origins and Effects of Gender Stereotypes

A stereotype can be defined as a “widely shared and simplified evaluative image of a social group and its members” (Vaughan & Hogg, 2011 , p. 51) and has both descriptive and prescriptive aspects. In other words, gender stereotypes tell us what women and men are like, but also what they should be like (Heilman, 2001 ). Gender stereotypes are not only widely shared, but they are also stubbornly resistant to change (Haines, Deaux, & Lofaro, 2016 ). Both the origin and the consequences of these stereotypes have received much attention in social psychology. So how do stereotypes form? The most widely cited theories on stereotype formation—social role theory (SRT; Eagly, 1987 ; Eagly, Wood, & Diekman, 2000 ) and the stereotype content model (SCM; Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, & Xu, J., 2002 )—answer this question. Both of these models focus on gender as a binary concept (i.e., men and women), as does most psychological research on gender, although they could potentially also be applied to other gender groups. Both theories are considered in turn.

Social Role Theory: Gender Stereotypes Are Determined by Roles

SRT argues that gender stereotypes stem from the distribution of men and women into distinct roles within a given society (Eagly, 1987 ; Eagly et al., 2000 ). The authors note the stability of gender stereotypes across cultures and describe two core dimensions: agency , including traits such as independence, aggression, and assertiveness, and communion , including traits such as caring, altruism, and politeness. While men are generally seen to be high in agency and low in communion, women are generally perceived to be high in communion but low in agency.

According to SRT, these gender stereotypes stem from the fact that women and men are over- and underrepresented in different roles in society. In most societies, even those with higher levels of gender equality, men perform less domestic work compared to women, including childcare, and spend more time in paid employment. Additionally, men disproportionately occupy leadership roles in the workforce (e.g., in politics and management) and are underrepresented in caretaking roles within the workforce (e.g., in elementary education and nursing; see Eagly et al., 2000 ). Eagly and colleagues argue that this gendered division of labor leads to the formation of gender roles and associated stereotypes. More specifically, they propose that different behaviors are seen as necessary to fulfil these social roles, and different skills, abilities, and traits are seen as necessary to execute these behaviors. For example, elementary school teachers are seen to need to care for and interact with children, which is seen to require social skills, empathy, and a caring nature. In contrast, such communal attributes might be seen to be less important—or even detrimental—for a military leader.

To the extent that women and men are differentially represented and visible in certain roles—such as elementary school teachers or military leaders—the behaviors and traits necessary for these roles become part of each respective gender role. In other words, the behaviors and attributes associated with people in caretaking roles, communion, become part of the female gender role, while the behaviors and attributes associated with people in leadership roles, agency, become part of the male gender role.

Building on SRT, Wood and Eagly ( 2002 ) developed a biosocial model of the origins of sex differences which explains the stability of gendered social roles across cultures. The authors argue that, in the past, physical differences between men and women meant that they were better able to perform certain tasks, contributing to the formation of gender roles. More specifically, women had to bear children and nurse them, while men were generally taller and had more upper body strength. In turn, tasks that required upper body strength and long stretches of uninterrupted time (e.g., hunting) were more often carried out by men, while tasks that could be interrupted more easily and be carried out while pregnant or looking after children (e.g., foraging) were more often carried out by women.

Eagly and colleagues further propose that the exact tasks more easily carried out by each sex depended on social and ecological conditions as well as technological and cultural advances. For example, it was only in more advanced, complex societies that the greater size and strength of men led to a division of labor in which men were preferred for activities such as warfare, which also came with higher status and access to resources. Similarly, the development of plough technology led to shifts from hunter–gatherer societies to agricultural societies. This change was often accompanied by a new division of labor in which men owned, farmed, and inherited land while women carried out more domestic tasks. The social structures that arose from these processes in specific contexts in turn affected more proximal causes of gender differences, including gender stereotypes.

It is important to note that this theory focuses on physical differences between the genders, not psychological ones. In other words, the authors do not argue that women and men are inherently different when it comes to their minds, nor that men evolved to be more agentic while women evolved to be more communal.

Stereotype Content Model: Gender Stereotypes Are Determined by Group Relations

The SCM, formulated by Fiske and colleagues ( 2002 ), was not developed specifically for gender, but as an explanation of how stereotypes form more generally. Similar to SRT, the SCM argues that gender stereotypes arise from societal structures. More specifically, the authors suggest that status differences and cooperation versus competition determine group stereotypes—among them, gender stereotypes. This model also suggests two main dimensions to stereotypes, namely, warmth and competence. The concept of warmth is similar to that of communion, previously described, in that it refers to being kind, nice, and caring. Competence refers to attributes such as being intelligent, efficient, and skillful and is thus different from the agency dimension of SRT.

The SCM argues that the dimensions of warmth and competence originate from two fundamental dimensions—status and competition—which characterize the relationships between groups in every culture and society. The degree to which another group is perceived to be warm is determined by whether the group is in cooperation or in competition with one’s own group, which is in turn associated with perceived intentions to help or to harm one’s own group, respectively. While members of cooperating groups are stereotyped as warm, members of competing groups are stereotyped as cold. Evidence suggests that these two dimensions are indeed universal and can be found in many cultures, including collectivist cultures (Cuddy et al., 2009 ). Perceptions of competence, however, are affected by the status and power of the group, which go hand-in-hand with the group’s ability to harm one’s own group. Those groups with high status and power are stereotyped as competent, while those that lack status and power are stereotyped as incompetent.

Groups can thus fall into one of four quadrants of this model. Members of high status groups who cooperate with one’s own group are seen as unequivocally positive—as warm and competent—while those of low status who compete with one’s own group are seen as unequivocally negative—cold and incompetent. More interesting are the two groups that fall into the more ambivalent quadrants—those who are perceived as either warm but incompetent or competent but cold. Applied to gender, this model suggests—and research shows—that typical men are stereotyped as competent but cold, the envious stereotype, while typical women are stereotyped as warm but incompetent, the paternalistic stereotype.

However, these stereotypes do not apply equally to all women and men. Rather, subgroups of men and women come with their own stereotypes. Research demonstrates, for example, that the paternalistic stereotype most strongly applies to traditional women such as housewives, while less traditional women such as feminists and career women are stereotyped as high in competence and low in warmth. For men, there are similar levels of variation—the envious stereotype applies most strongly to men in traditional roles such as managers and career men, while other men are perceived as warm but incompetent (e.g., senior citizens), as cold and incompetent (e.g., punks), or as warm and competent (e.g., professors; Eckes, 2002 ). The section “Gender Stereotypes Affect Emotions, Behavior, and Sexism” discusses the consequences of these stereotypes in more detail.

The Effects of Gender Stereotypes

SRT and the SCM explain how gender stereotypes form. A large body of work in social psychology has focused on the consequences of these stereotypes. These include effects on the gendered perceptions and evaluations of others, as well as effects on the self and one’s own self-image, behavior, and goals.

Gendered Perceptions and Evaluations of Others

Our group-based stereotypes affect how we see members of these groups and how we judge those who do or do not conform to these stereotypes. Gender differs from many other group memberships in several ways (see Fiske & Stevens, 1993 ), which in turn affects consequences of these stereotypes. First, argue Fiske and Stevens, gender stereotypes tend to be more prescriptive than other stereotypes. For example, men may often be told to “man up,” to be tough and dominant, while women may be told to smile, to be nice, and to be sexy (but not too sexy). While stereotypes of other groups also have prescriptive elements, it is probably less common to hear Asians be told to be better at math or African Americans to be told to be more musical. The consequences of these gendered prescriptions are discussed in the section “Gender Stereotypes Affect the Evaluation of Women and Men.” Second, relationships between women and men are characterized by an unusual combination of power differences and close and frequent contact as well as mutual dependence for reproduction and close relationships. The section “Gender Stereotypes Affect Emotions, Behavior, and Sexism” discusses the effects of these factors.

Gender Stereotypes Affect the Evaluation of Women and Men

The evaluation of women and men is affected by both descriptive and prescriptive gender stereotypes. Research on these effects has predominantly focused on those who occupy counterstereotypical roles such as women in leadership or stay-at-home fathers.

Descriptive stereotypes affect the perception and evaluation of women and men in several ways. First, descriptive stereotypes create biased perceptions through expectancy confirming processes (see Fiske, 2000 ) such that individuals, particularly those holding strong stereotypes, seek out information that confirms their stereotypes. This is evident in their tendency to neglect or dismiss ambiguous information and to ask stereotype-confirming questions (Leyens, Yzerbyt, & Schadron, 1994 ; Macrae, Milne, & Bodenhausen, 1994 ). Moreover, people are more likely to recall stereotypical information compared to counterstereotypical information (Rojahn & Pettigrew, 1992 ) Second, descriptive gender stereotypes also bias the extent to which men and women are seen as suitable for different roles, as described in Heilman’s lack of fit model ( 1983 , 1995 ) and Eagly and Karau’s role congruity theory ( 2002 ). These approaches both suggest that the degree of fit between a person’s attributes and the attributes associated with a specific role is positively related to expectations about how successful a person will be in said role. For example, the traits associated with successful managers are generally more similar to those associated with men than those associated with women (Schein, 1973 ; see also Ryan, Haslam, Hersby, & Bongiorno, 2011 ). Thus, all else being equal, a man will be seen as a better fit for a managerial position and in turn as more likely to be a successful manager. These biased evaluations in turn lead to biased decisions, such as in hiring and promotion (see Heilman, 2001 ).

Prescriptive gender stereotypes also affect evaluations, albeit in different ways. They prescribe how women and men should behave, and also how they should not behave. The “shoulds” generally mirror descriptive stereotypes, while the “should nots” often include behaviors associated with the opposite gender. Thus, what is seen as positive and desirable for one gender is often seen as undesirable for the other and can lead to backlash in the form of social and economic penalties (Rudman, 1998 ). For example, women who are seen as agentic are punished with social sanctions because they violate the prescriptive stereotype that women should be nice, even in the absence of information indicating that they are not nice (Rudman & Glick, 2001 ). These processes are particularly problematic in combination with the effects of descriptive stereotypes, as individuals may face a double bind—if women behave in line with gender stereotypes, they lack fit with leadership positions that require agency, but if they behave agentically, they violate gender norms and face backlash in the form of dislike and discrimination (Rudman & Glick, 2001 ). Similar effects have been found for men who violate prescriptive masculine stereotypes, for example, by being modest (Moss-Racusin, Phelan, & Rudman, 2010 ) or by requesting family leave (Rudman & Mescher, 2013 ). Interestingly, however, being communal by itself does not lead to backlash for men (Moss-Racusin et al., 2010 ). In other words, while men can be perceived as highly agentic and highly communal, this is not true for women, who are perceived as lacking communion when being perceived as agentic and as lacking agency when being perceived as communal.

Gender Stereotypes Affect Emotions, Behavior, and Sexism

Stereotypes not only affect how individuals evaluate others, but also their feelings and behaviors toward them. The Behavior from Intergroup Affect and Stereotypes (BIAS) map (Cuddy, Fiske, & Glick, 2007 ), which extends the SCM, describes the relationship between perceptions of warmth and competence of certain groups, emotions directed toward these groups, and behaviors toward them. Cuddy and colleagues argue that bias is comprised of three elements: cognitions (i.e., stereotypes), affect (i.e., emotional prejudice), and behavior (i.e., discrimination), and these are closely linked. Groups perceived as warm and competent elicit admiration while groups perceived as cold and incompetent elicit contempt. Of particular interest to understanding gender are the two ambivalent combinations of warmth and competence: Those perceived as warm, but incompetent—such as typical women—elicit pity, while those perceived as competent, but cold—such as typical men—elicit envy.

Similarly, perceptions of warmth and competence are associated with behavior. Cuddy and colleagues ( 2007 ) argue that the warmth dimension affects behavioral reactions more strongly than competence because it stems from perceptions that a group will help or harm the ingroup. This leads to active facilitation (e.g., helping) when a group is perceived as warm, or active harm (e.g., harassing) when a group is perceived as cold. Competence, however, leads to passive facilitation (e.g., cooperation when it benefits oneself or one’s own group) when the group is perceived as competent, and passive harm (e.g., neglecting to help) when the group is perceived as incompetent.

How these emotional and behavioral reactions affect women and men has received much attention in the literature on ambivalent sexism and ambivalent attitudes toward men (Glick & Fiske, 1996 , 1999 , 2001 ). According to ambivalent sexism theory (AST), sexism is not a uniform, negative attitude toward women or men. Rather, it is comprised of hostile and benevolent elements, which arises from status differences between, and intimate interdependence of, the two genders. While men possess more economic, political, and social power, they depend on women as their mothers and (for heterosexual men) as romantic partners. Thus, while they are likely to be motivated to keep their power, they also need to find ways to foster positive relations with women.

Hostile sexism combines the beliefs that (a) women are inferior to men, (b) men should have more power in society, and (c) women’s sexuality poses a threat to men’s status and power. This form of sexism is mostly directed toward nontraditional women who directly threaten men’s status (e.g., feminists or career women), and women who threaten the heterosexual interdependence of men and women (e.g., lesbians)—in other words, toward women perceived to be competent but cold.

Benevolent sexism is a subtler form of sexism and refers to (a) complementary gender differentiation , the belief that (traditional) women are ultimately the better gender, (b) protective paternalism , where men need to cherish, protect, and provide for women, and (c) heterosexual intimacy , the belief that men and women complement each other such that no man is truly complete without a woman. This form of sexism is directed mainly toward traditional women.

While benevolent sexism may seem less harmful than its hostile counterpart, it ultimately provides an alternative mechanism for the persistence of gender inequality by “keeping women in their place” and discouraging them from seeking out nontraditional roles (see Glick & Fiske, 2001 ). Exposure to benevolent sexism is associated with women’s increased self-stereotyping (Barreto, Ellemers, Piebinga, & Moya, 2010 ), decreased cognitive performance (Dardenne, Dumont, & Bollier, 2007 ), and reduced willingness to take collective action (Becker & Wright, 2011 ), thus reinforcing the status quo.

With perceptions of men, Glick and Fiske ( 1999 ) argue that attitudes are equally ambivalent. Hostile attitudes toward men include (a) resentment of paternalism , stemming from perceptions of unfairness of the disproportionate amounts of power men hold, (b) compensatory gender differentiation , which refers to the application of negative stereotypes to men (e.g., arrogant, unrefined) so that women can positively distinguish themselves from them, and (c) heterosexual hostility , stemming from male sexual aggressiveness and interpersonal dominance. Benevolent attitudes toward men include maternalism , that is, the belief that men are helpless and need to be taken care of at home. Interestingly, while such attitudes portray women as competent in some ways, it still reinforces gender inequality by legitimizing women’s disproportionate amount of domestic work. Benevolent attitudes toward men also include complementary gender differentiation , the belief that men are indeed more competent, and heterosexual attraction , the belief that a woman can only be truly happy when in a romantic relationship with a man.

Cross-cultural research (Glick et al., 2000 , 2004 ) suggests that ambivalent sexism and ambivalent attitudes toward men are similar in many ways and can be found in most cultures. For both constructs, the benevolent and hostile aspects are distinct but positively related, illustrating that attitudes toward women and men are indeed ambivalent, as the mixed nature of stereotypes would suggest. Moreover, ambivalence toward women and men are correlated and national averages of both aspects of sexism and ambivalence toward men are associated with lower gender equality across nations, lending support to the idea that they reinforce the status quo.

Gender Stereotypes Affect the Self

Gender stereotypes not only affect individuals’ reactions toward others, they also play an important part in self-construal, motivation, achievement, and behavior, often without explicit endorsement of the stereotype. This section discusses how gender stereotypes affect observable gender differences and then describes the subtle and insidious effects gender stereotypes can have on performance and achievement through the inducement of stereotype threat (Steele & Aronson, 1995 ).

Gender Stereotypes Affect Gender Differences

Gender stereotypes are a powerful influence on the self-concept, goals, and behaviors. Eagly and colleagues ( 2000 ) argue that girls and boys observe the roles that women and men occupy in society and accommodate accordingly, seeking out different activities and acquiring different skills. They propose two main mechanisms by which gender differences form. First, women and men adjust their behavior to confirm others’ gender-stereotypical expectations. Others communicate their gendered expectations in many, often nonverbal and subtle ways and react positively when expectations are confirmed and negatively when they are not. This subtle communication of expectations reinforces gender-stereotypical behavior as people generally try to elicit positive, and avoid negative, reactions from others. Importantly, the interacting partners need not be aware of these expectations for them to take effect.

The second process by which gender stereotypes translate into gender differences is the self-regulation of behavior based on identity processes and the internalization of stereotypes (e.g., Bem, 1981 ; Markus, 1977 ). Most people form their gender identity based on self-categorization as male or female and subsequently incorporate attributes associated with the respective category into their self-concept (Guimond, Chatard, Martinot, Crisp, & Redersdorff, 2006 ). These gendered differences in the self-concepts of women and men then translate into gender-stereotypical behaviors. The extent to which the self-concept is affected by gender stereotypes—and in turn the extent to which gendered patterns of behavior are displayed—depends on the strength and the salience of this social identity (Hogg & Turner, 1987 ; Onorato & Turner, 2004 ). For example, individuals may be more likely to display gender-stereotypical behavior when they identify more strongly with their gender (e.g., Lorenzi‐Cioldi, 1991 ) or when their gender is more likely to be salient, which is more likely to be the case for women (Cadinu & Galdi, 2012 ).

However, many different subcategories of women exist—housewives, feminists, lesbians—and thus what it means to identify as a woman, and behave like a woman, is likely to be complex and multifaceted (e.g., Fiske et al., 2002 ; van Breen, Spears, Kuppens, & de Lemus, 2017 ). Moreover, research demonstrates that the salience of gender in any given context also determined the degree to which an individual displays gender-stereotypical behavior (e.g., Ryan & David, 2003 ; Ryan, David, & Reynolds, 2004 ). For example, Ryan and colleagues demonstrate that while women and men act in line with gender stereotypes when gender and gender difference are salient, these differences in attitudes and behavior disappear when alternative identities, such as those based on being a student or being an individual, are made salient.

Gender Stereotypes Affect Performance and Achievement

The consequences of stereotypes go beyond the self-concept and behavior. Research in stereotype threat describes the detrimental effects that negative stereotypes can have on performance and achievement. Stereotype threat refers to the phenomenon whereby the awareness of the negative stereotyping of one’s group in a certain domain, and the fear of confirming such stereotypes, can have negative effects on performance, even when the stereotype is not endorsed. The phenomenon was first described by Steele and Aronson ( 1995 ) in the context of African Americans’ intellectual test performance, but has since been found to affect women’s performance and motivation in counterstereotypical domains such as math (Nguyen & Ryan, 2008 ) and leadership (Davies, Spencer, & Steele, 2005 ). This affect holds true even when minority group members’ prior performance and interest in the domain are the same as those of majority group members (Spencer, Steele, & Quinn, 1999 ). Moreover, the effect is particularly pronounced when the minority member’s desire to belong is strong and identity-based devaluation is likely (Steele, Spencer, & Aronson, 2002 ).

Different mechanisms for the effect of stereotype threat have been proposed. Schmader, Johns, and Forbes ( 2008 ) suggest that the inconsistency between one’s self-image as competent and the cultural stereotype about one’s group’s lack of competence leads to a physiological stress response that directly impairs working memory. For example, when made aware of the widely held stereotype that women are bad at math, a female math student is likely to experience an inconsistency. This inconsistency, the authors argue, is not only distressing in itself, but induces uncertainty: Am I actually good at math or am I bad at math as the stereotype would lead me to believe? In an effort to resolve this uncertainty, she is likely to monitor her performance more than others—and more than in a situation in which stereotype threat is absent. This monitoring leads to more conscious, less efficient processing of information—for example, when performing calculations that she would otherwise do more or less automatically—and a stronger focus on detecting potential failure, taking cognitive resources away from the actual task. Moreover, individuals under stereotype threat are more likely to experience negative thoughts and emotions such as fear of failure. In order to avoid the interference of these thoughts, they actively try to suppress them. This suppression, however, takes effort. All of these mechanisms, the authors argue, take working memory space away from the task in question, thereby impairing performance.

The aim of this article is to give an overview of gender research in social psychology, which has focused predominantly on gender stereotypes, their origins, and their consequences, and these are all connected and reinforce each other. Social psychology has produced many fascinating findings regarding gender, and this article has only just touched on these findings. While research into gender has seen a great growth in the past 50 years and has provided us with an unprecedented understanding of women and men and the differences (and similarities) between them, there is still much work to be done.

There are a number of issues that remain largely absent from mainstream social psychological research on gender. First, an interest and acknowledgment of intersectional identities has emerged, such as how gender intersects with race or sexuality. It is thus important to note that many of the theories discussed in this article cannot necessarily be applied directly across intersecting identities (e.g., to women of color or to lesbian women), and indeed the attitudes and behaviors of such women continue to be largely ignored within the field.

Second, almost all social psychological research into gender is conducted using an overly simplistic binary definition of gender in terms of women and men. Social psychological theories and explanations are, for the most part, not taking more complex or more fluid definitions of gender into account and thus are unable to explain gendered attitudes and behavior outside of the gender binary.

Finally, individual perceptions and cognitions are influenced by gendered stereotypes and expectations, and social psychologists are not immune to this influence. How we, as psychologists, ask research questions and how we interpret empirical findings are influenced by gender stereotypes (e.g., Hegarty & Buechel, 2006 ), and we must remain vigilant that we do not inadvertently seek to reinforce our own gendered expectations and reify the gender status quo.

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1. Psychology largely conceptualizes gender as binary. While this is problematic in a number of ways, which we touch upon in the Conclusion section, we largely follow these binary conventions throughout this article, as it is representative of the social psychological literature as a whole.

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Gender inequality persists in the world of culture, underlines a new report

Women have been particularly marginalized from cultural life. They face many barriers to access, contribute and participate equally in theatre, cinema, arts, music and heritage, which prevents them from developing their full potential and impedes social and inclusive sustainable development.

The UNESCO report on Gender Equality, Heritage and Creativity demonstrates the need to enhance debate, research and awareness-raising regarding equal rights, responsibilities and opportunities for women and men, girls and boys in the areas of heritage and creativity. The report points out symptoms encountered in other areas of socio-economic life: limited participation of women in decision-making positions; discrimination in certain activities; restricted opportunities for continuing education, capacity building and networking; women’s unequal share of unpaid care work, poor conditions of employment (e.g.,part-time, contract or informal work) as well as gender stereotypes and fixed ideas about culturally appropriate roles for men and women, not necessarily based on the consent of those involved.

Initiated by the Culture Sector of UNESCO, the report brings together for the first time research, policies, case studies and existing statistics on gender equality and empowerment of women, conducted by the Special Rapporteur of the United Nations in the field of cultural rights, Farida Shaheed, by government officials, research groups, think tanks, academics, artists and heritage professionals. This report includes recommendations in the areas of heritage and creativity for governments, policy makers and the larger international community.

• More information and recommendations of the report
• Download the report (PDF) 

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Module 9: Gender, Sex, and Sexuality

Gender and socialization, learning outcomes.

• Explain the influence of socialization on gender roles in the United States
• Explain and give examples of sexism

Figure 1.  Traditional images of U.S. gender roles reinforce the idea that women should be subordinate to men. (Photo courtesy of Sport Suburban/flickr)

Gender Roles

As we grow, we learn how to behave from those around us. In this socialization process, children are introduced to certain roles that are typically linked to their biological sex. The term gender role refers to society’s concept of how people are expected to look and behave based on societally created norms for masculinity and femininity. In U.S. culture, masculine roles are usually associated with strength, aggression, and dominance, while feminine roles are usually associated with passivity, nurturing, and subordination.

Gender role socialization begins at birth and continues throughout the life course. Our society is quick to outfit male infants in blue and girls in pink, even applying these color-coded gender labels while a baby is in the womb. This color differentiation is quite new—prior to the 1940s, boys wore pink and girls wore blue. In the 19th century and early 20th century, boys and girls wore dresses (mostly white) until the age of 6 or 7, which was also time for the first haircut. [1]

Figure 2.  Fathers tend to be more involved when their sons engage in gender-appropriate activities such as sports. (Photo courtesy of Shawn Lea/flickr)

Thus, gender, like race is a social construction with very real consequences. The drive to adhere to masculine and feminine gender roles continues later in life. Men tend to outnumber women in professions such as law enforcement, the military, and politics. Women tend to outnumber men in care-related occupations such as childcare, healthcare (even though the term “doctor” still conjures the image of a man), and social work. These occupational roles are examples of typical U.S. male and female behavior, derived from our culture’s traditions. Adherence to them demonstrates fulfillment of social expectations but not necessarily personal preference (Diamond 2002).

The phrase “boys will be boys” is often used to justify behavior such as pushing, shoving, or other forms of aggression from young boys. The phrase implies that such behavior is unchangeable and something that is part of a boy’s nature. Aggressive behavior, when it does not inflict significant harm, is often accepted from boys and men because it is congruent with the cultural script for masculinity. The “script” written by society is in some ways similar to a script written by a playwright. Just as a playwright expects actors to adhere to a prescribed script, society expects women and men to behave according to the expectations of their respective gender roles.

Socialization

Children learn at a young age that there are distinct expectations for boys and girls. Cross-cultural studies reveal that children are aware of gender roles by age two or three. At four or five, most children are firmly entrenched in culturally appropriate gender roles (Kane 1996). Children acquire these roles through socialization, a process in which people learn to behave in a particular way as dictated by societal values, beliefs, and attitudes.

Figure 3.  Although our society may have a stereotype that associates motorcycles with men, female bikers demonstrate that a woman’s place extends far beyond the kitchen in the modern United States. (Photo courtesy of Robert Couse-Baker/flickr)

For example, society often views riding a motorcycle as a masculine activity and, therefore, considers it to be part of the male gender role. Attitudes such as this are typically based on stereotypes, which are oversimplified notions about members of a group. Gender stereotyping involves overgeneralizing about the attitudes, traits, or behavior patterns of women or men. For example, women may be thought of as too timid or weak to ride a motorcycle.

Mimicking the actions of significant others is the first step in the development of a separate sense of self (Mead 1934). Recall that according to Mead’s theory of development, children up to the age of 2 are in the preparatory stage, in which they copy actions of those around them, then the play stage (between 2-6) when they play pretend and have a difficult time following established rules, and then the game stage (ages 7 and up), when they can play by a set of rules and understand different roles.

Like adults, children become agents who actively facilitate and apply normative gender expectations to those around them. When children do not conform to the appropriate gender role, they may face negative sanctions such as being criticized or marginalized by their peers. Though many of these sanctions are informal, they can be quite severe. For example, a girl who wishes to take karate class instead of dance lessons may be called a “tomboy,” and face difficulty gaining acceptance from both male and female peer groups (Ready 2001). Boys, especially, are subject to intense ridicule for gender nonconformity (Coltrane and Adams 2004; Kimmel 2000).

One way children learn gender roles is through play. Parents typically supply boys with trucks, toy guns, and superhero paraphernalia, which are active toys that promote motor skills, aggression, and solitary play. Daughters are often given dolls and dress-up apparel that foster nurturing, social proximity, and role play. Studies have shown that children will most likely choose to play with “gender appropriate” toys (or same-gender toys) even when cross-gender toys are available, because parents give children positive feedback (in the form of praise, involvement, and physical closeness) for gender normative behavior (Caldera, Huston, and O’Brien 1998). Charles Cooley’s concept of the looking-glass self applies to gender socialization because it is through this interactive, interpretive process with the social world that individuals develop a sense of gender identity.

Figure 4 . Childhood activities and instruction, like this father-daughter duck-hunting trip, can influence people’s lifelong views on gender roles. (Credit: Tim Miller, USFWS Midwest Region/flickr)

Gender socialization occurs through four major agents of socialization: family, schools, peer groups, and mass media. Each agent reinforces gender roles by creating and maintaining normative expectations for gender-specific behavior. Exposure also occurs through secondary agents such as religion and the workplace. Repeated exposure to these agents over time leads men and women into a false sense that they are acting naturally rather than following a socially constructed role.

Family is the first agent of socialization. There is considerable evidence that parents socialize sons and daughters differently. Generally speaking, girls are given more latitude to step outside of their prescribed gender role (Coltrane and Adams 2004; Kimmel 2000; Raffaelli and Ontai 2004). However, differential socialization typically results in greater privileges afforded to sons. For instance, sons are allowed more autonomy and independence at an earlier age than daughters. They may be given fewer restrictions on appropriate clothing, dating habits, or curfew. Sons are also often free from performing domestic duties such as cleaning or cooking and other household tasks that are considered feminine. Daughters are limited by their expectation to be passive and nurturing, generally obedient, and to assume domestic responsibilities.

Even when parents set gender equality as a goal, there may be underlying indications of inequality. For example, boys may be asked to take out the garbage or perform other tasks that require strength or toughness, while girls may be asked to fold laundry or perform duties that require neatness and care. It has been found that fathers are firmer in their expectations for gender conformity than are mothers, and their expectations are stronger for sons than they are for daughters (Kimmel 2000). This is true in many types of activities, including preference for toys, play styles, discipline, chores, and personal achievements. As a result, boys tend to be particularly attuned to their father’s disapproval when engaging in an activity that might be considered feminine, like dancing or singing (Coltraine and Adams 2008). Parental socialization and normative expectations also vary along lines of social class, race, and ethnicity. African American families, for instance, are more likely than Caucasians to model an egalitarian role structure for their children (Staples and Boulin Johnson 2004).

The reinforcement of gender roles and stereotypes continues once a child reaches school age. Until very recently, schools were rather explicit in their efforts to stratify boys and girls. The first step toward stratification was segregation. Girls were encouraged to take home economics or humanities courses and boys to take math and science. Studies suggest that gender socialization still occurs in schools today, perhaps in less obvious forms (Lips 2004). Teachers may not even realize they are acting in ways that reproduce gender differentiated behavior patterns. Yet any time they ask students to arrange their seats or line up according to gender, teachers may be asserting that boys and girls should be treated differently (Thorne 1993).

Schools subtly convey messages to girls indicating that they are less intelligent or less important than boys. For example, in a study of teacher responses to male and female students, data indicated that teachers praised male students far more than female students. Teachers interrupted girls more often and gave boys more opportunities to expand on their ideas (Sadker and Sadker 1994). Further, in social as well as academic situations, teachers have traditionally treated boys and girls in opposite ways, reinforcing a sense of competition rather than collaboration (Thorne 1993). Boys are also permitted a greater degree of freedom to break rules or commit minor acts of deviance, whereas girls are expected to follow rules carefully and adopt an obedient role (Ready 2001).

Mass media serves as another significant agent of gender socialization. In television and movies, women tend to have less significant roles and are often portrayed as wives or mothers. When women are given a lead role, it often falls into one of two extremes: a wholesome, saint-like figure or a malevolent, hypersexual figure (Etaugh and Bridges 2003). Gender inequalities are also pervasive in children’s movies (Smith 2008). Research indicates that in the ten top-grossing G-rated movies released between 1991 and 2013, nine out of ten characters were male (Smith 2008).

Television commercials and other forms of advertising also reinforce inequality and gender-based stereotypes. Women are almost exclusively present in ads promoting cooking, cleaning, or childcare-related products (Davis 1993). Think about the last time you saw a man star in a dishwasher or laundry detergent commercial. In general, women are underrepresented in roles that involve leadership, intelligence, or a balanced psyche. Of particular concern is the depiction of women in ways that are dehumanizing, especially in music videos. Even in mainstream advertising, however, themes intermingling violence and sexuality are quite common (Kilbourne 2000).

Watch the following video to think more about the social construct of gender.

Further Research

Watch this CrashCourse video to learn more about gender stratification .

Gender stereotypes form the basis of sexism. Sexism refers to prejudiced beliefs that value one sex over another. Like racism, sexism has been a part of U.S. culture for centuries. Here is a brief timeline of “firsts” in the United States:

• Before 1809—Women could not execute a will
• Before 1840—Women were not allowed to own or control property
• Before 1920—Women were not permitted to vote
• Before 1963—Employers could legally pay a woman less than a man for the same work
• Before 1973—Women did not have the right to a safe and legal abortion
• Before 1981—No woman had served on the U.S. Supreme Court
• Before 2009—No African American woman had been CEO of a U.S. Fortune 500 corporation
• Before 2016—No Latina had served as a U.S. Senator
• Before 2017—No openly transgender person had been elected in a state legislature

While it is illegal in the United States when practiced as overt discrimination, unequal treatment of women continues to pervade social life. It should be noted that discrimination based on sex occurs at both the micro- and macro-levels. Many sociologists focus on discrimination that is built into the social structure; this type of discrimination is known as institutional discrimination (Pincus 2008).

Figure 4.  In some cultures, women do all of the household chores with no help from men, as doing housework is a sign of weakness, considered by society as a feminine trait. (Photo courtesy of Evil Erin/flickr)

Like racism, sexism has very real consequences. Stereotypes about females, such as being “too soft” to make financial decisions about things like wills or property, have morphed into a lack of female leadership in Fortune 500 Companies (only 24 were headed up by women in 2018!). We also see gender discrepancies in politics and in legal matters, as the laws regarding women’s reproductive health are made by a largely male legislative body at both the state and federal levels.

The Pay Gap

One of the most tangible effects of sexism is the gender wage gap. Despite making up nearly half (49.8 percent) of payroll employment, men vastly outnumber women in authoritative, powerful, and, therefore, high-earning jobs (U.S. Census Bureau 2010). Even when a woman’s employment status is equal to a man’s, she will generally make only 81 cents for every dollar made by her male counterpart (Payscale 2020). Women in the paid labor force also still do the majority of the unpaid work at home. On an average day, 84 percent of women (compared to 67 percent of men) spend time doing household management activities (U.S. Census Bureau 2011). This double-duty keeps working women in a subordinate role in the family structure (Hochschild and Machung 1989).

Figure 5 . In 2017 men’s overall median earnings were $52,146 and women’s were $41,977. This means that women earned 80.1% of what men earned in the United States. (Credit: Women’s Bureau, U.S. Department of Labor)

The Glass Ceiling

The idea that women are unable to reach the executive suite is known as the glass ceiling. It is an invisible barrier that women encounter when trying to win jobs in the highest level of business. At the beginning of 2021, for example, a record 41 of the world’s largest 500 companies were run by women. While a vast improvement over the number twenty years earlier – where only two of the companies were run by women – these 41 chief executives still only represent eight percent of those large companies (Newcomb 2020).

Why do women have a more difficult time reaching the top of a company? One idea is that there is still a stereotype in the United States that women aren’t aggressive enough to handle the boardroom or that they tend to seek jobs and work with other women (Reiners 2019). Other issues stem from the gender biases based on gender roles and motherhood discussed above.

Another idea is that women lack mentors, executives who take an interest and get them into the right meetings and introduce them to the right people to succeed (Murrell & Blake-Beard 2017).

Women in Politics

One of the most important places for women to help other women is in politics. Historically in the United States, like many other institutions, political representation has been mostly made up of White men. By not having women in government, their issues are being decided by people who don’t share their perspective. The number of women elected to serve in Congress has increased over the years, but does not yet accurately reflect the general population. For example, in 2018, the population of the United States was 49 percent male and 51 percent female, but the population of Congress was 78.8 percent male and 21.2 percent female (Manning 2018). Over the years, the number of women in the federal government has increased, but until it accurately reflects the population, there will be inequalities in our laws.

Figure 6 . Breakdown of Congressional Membership by Gender. 2021 saw a record number of women in Congress, with 120 women serving in the House and 24 serving in the Senate. Gender representation has been steadily increasing over time, but is not close to being equal. (Credit: Based on data from Center for American Women in Politics, Rutgers University)

Global Sexism

Gender stratification through the division of labor is not exclusive to the United States. According to George Murdock’s classic work, Outline of World Cultures (1954), all societies classify work by gender. When a pattern appears in all societies, it is called a cultural universal. While the phenomenon of assigning work by gender is universal, its specifics are not. The same task is not assigned to either men or women worldwide. But the way each task’s associated gender is valued is notable. In Murdock’s examination of the division of labor among 324 societies around the world, he found that in nearly all cases the jobs assigned to men were given greater prestige (Murdock and White 1968). Even if the job types were very similar and the differences slight, men’s work was still considered more vital.

In parts of the world where women are strongly undervalued, young girls may not be given the same access to nutrition, healthcare, and education as boys. Further, they will grow up believing they deserve to be treated differently from boys (UNICEF 2011; Thorne 1993).

Think It Over

• In what way do parents treat sons and daughters differently? How do sons and daughters typically respond to this treatment?
• How is children’s play influenced by gender roles? Think back to your childhood. How “gendered” were the toys and activities available to you? Do you remember gender expectations being conveyed through the approval or disapproval of your playtime choice?
• What can be done to lessen the sexism in the workplace? How does it harm society?
• Maglaty, J. 2011. "When did girls first start wearing pink?" The Smithsonian. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/when-did-girls-start-wearing-pink-1370097/ . ↵
• Revision, Modification, and Original Content. Authored by : Sarah Hoiland and Lumen Learning. Provided by : Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution
• Gender. Authored by : OpenStax CNX. Located at : https://cnx.org/contents/[email protected]:IThELyrX@5/Gender . License : CC BY: Attribution . License Terms : Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/[email protected].
• Gender Equality: Now. Provided by : WorldFish. Located at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4viXOGvvu0Y . License : Other . License Terms : Standard YouTube License
• Gender Roles. Provided by : OpenStax. Located at : https://openstax.org/books/introduction-sociology-3e/pages/12-1-sex-gender-identity-and-expression . Project : Sociology 3e. License : CC BY: Attribution . License Terms : Access for free at https://openstax.org/books/introduction-sociology-3e/pages/1-introduction
• Is Gender Real? -8-bit Philosophy. Provided by : Wisecrack. Located at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkilQ87UUj8&index=50&list=PL93FF46F5BC6A27CF . License : Other . License Terms : Standard YouTube License

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Culture and Gender Roles in Society

by Chris Smit | Oct 21, 2016 | Masculinity & Femininity

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Gender Roles in Society

Different cultures deal differently with gender roles in society .

There are so-called  masculine cultures and there are feminine cultures .

The downside of these two names (masculine and feminine) is that there usually is an immediate association with gender.

In the original research work of Geert Hofstede , the intention was never there to trigger a strong association with gender-related issues in society.

But evidently, these associations are there and for a bigger part, they are not related.

So when it comes to culture and gender the words “ masculinity ” and “ femininity ” do not point to gender differences.

The cultural dimension Masculinity – Femininity says something about the expected behavior of men and women in any given society.

To simplify it: in high-scoring cultures, there seems to be relatively little role overlap; men are supposed to provide for their families, be the head of the family, and do manly tasks like taking the garbage out.

While in more feminine societies, there is more role overlap; here it is OK if a woman earns more than a man and the “ stay at home dad ” is more accepted than in masculine societies.

So when it comes to culture and gender this would be the closest link to gender differences and gender roles in society.

Take a look at the image below. This picture was taken during one of my trips to the Middle East (or read this article specifically about Dubai ). A sign like that would be impossible in a feminine country like Sweden, for instance.

What are the Gender Roles in Society Within one Culture?

In any country in the world, you will find so-called IntrA-cultural differences; differences within one country, say the American East Coast and the American West Coast. Or the differences between the North and the South of Spain.

Differences within one country are called IntrA-cultural differences.

Differences between countries are called IntER-cultural differences.

There are definitely differences in gender roles within one country. In other words, American women will be less masculine than their male countrymen.

The same will be true for the most feminine country in the world, Sweden; also there will men be more masculine than women.

A clear example is the following “ Word Cloud “, which illustrates the use of words in Social Media of English-speaking men and women.

What you can clearly see is that English-speaking men use more forceful language than English-speaking women.

However, when you compare English-speaking women with Swedish women, you will still see that there is a big significant difference is between those two countries/groups when you look at the scores of these countries on this masculinity and femininity dimension.

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“However, when you compare English-speaking women with Swedish women, you will still see that there is a big significant difference is between those two countries/groups when you look at the scores of these countries on this masculinity and femininity dimension.” Okay so what is that difference?

Thank you for your comment. What I’m talking about is comparing apples with apples and pears with pears. In this case, comparing Britsh women with Swedish women and British men with Swedish men. What differences will you see (and these are examples): British women will work more part-time than their male peers; Swedish women will even (!) work more part-time than British women. There will be more Swedish women who earn more than their husbands than there will be in the UK (there, men will earn more than women). British women are less career driven than British men, but British women will be more career driven than Swedish women. Etc.

Hope it makes sense.

Your article is extremely helpful, thank you. I am researching gender roles cross-culturally. I would like to cite your work, but cannot find the publisher of your content. Any feedback would be much appreciated. The paper is for an international business class and centers on Hofstede’s cultural dimension theory of Masculinity and Femininity.

Again, thank you for your time and response.

Thank you for your comment and compliment. I’m not sure what you mean with “ finding the source of my content “? Feel free to use my site as a reference. If you do use my work, I would appreciate you’d put a link to my site in any of your work.

Otherwise, there is always Google…

Kind regards, Chris

Hi! I am a student, and I am doing an essay about how gender and culture relate to each other, and your article can be beneficial for me, and I am a little unsure because I can’t find the article you used to support your idea. But anyway, I liked the whole idea of your article, and I hope you would interact with this comment.

Hi Ronaldo,

Thank you for your comment. Not sure how and with what I can help you?

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Putting science to work for the health of women

Gender as a Social and Cultural Variable and Health

Guest blog by drs. elizabeth barr and sarah temkin.

Consideration of sex and gender in research is critical to advancing the NIH mission of seeking knowledge to enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness and disability. In recognition of the importance of the influence of sex and gender on human health, the 2019–2023 Trans-NIH Strategic Plan for Women’s Health Research charges the NIH community with developing methods and leveraging data sources to consider sex and gender influences that enhance research for the health of women (Goal 2 of the strategic plan). Although “sex” is often conflated with “gender,” the terms describe different but interconnected constructs. 

Sex is a multidimensional construct based on a cluster of anatomical and physiological traits, that include external genitalia, secondary sex characteristics, gonads, chromosomes, and hormones. 1 The landmark 2016 Sex as a Biological Variable (SABV) policy articulates NIH’s expectation that sex, as a biological variable, be factored into research design, analyses, and reporting in human and vertebrate animal  studies. 

Gender is a social and cultural variable that encompasses several domains, each of which influences health: gender identity and expression, gender roles and norms , gender relations, structural sexism, power , and equality and equity . Gender socialization and norms of masculinity influence boys’ and men’s health-seeking behaviors. Structural gender inequalities limit girls’ and women’s access to health services and contribute to health inequities. Other social variables—including race , ethnicity , socioeconomic status , and State and Federal policies —may additionally interact with gender to influence health, highlighting the importance of an intersectional approach to health research .

Women’s symptoms can lead to diagnostic delays for diseases such as cancer and cardiovascular disease, most likely related to expected gender norms and power relations within patient–provider interactions. 2, 3 Clinical presentation of back pain, dizziness, or nausea during a heart attack—symptoms that are typical for women—has historically been labeled atypical ; while chest pain and diaphoresis, which are more common for men, have been considered “typical.” 4  

Following a diagnosis, women may face delays in referral for care or not be offered care at the same rate as men. For example, late referral for osteoarthritis in women results in worse function at the time of joint replacement surgery, affecting the level of function that women achieve after surgery. 5 Social stigma around menstrual disorders and other female-specific conditions, such as menopause, contributes to societal tolerance of inadequate treatments and limited research investment. 6 For diseases that afflict primarily one sex, NIH funding patterns demonstrate greater fiscal investment for conditions that predominantly affect males when compared to burden of the disease within the population. Relative to disease burdens in the population, NIH funding exceeds what would be expected for conditions that occur predominantly in men. 7

Disentangling the influence of either sex, gender, or both on health is a complex undertaking that has been limited to date. The current NIH requirement for research on human subjects is for collection of only one variable (sex or gender). Sex, whether self-reported by participants or extracted from medical records, has most frequently been the variable that is collected. Both sex and gender affect health, and should be collected and studied appropriately. Yet few best practices exist to measure gendered phenomena in health research , and additional research to validate instruments in the collection of information about gender is needed. Evolving social norms have shifted definitions and understandings of sex and gender, and few tools to measure sex and gender have been available and validated. 1

In recognition of the significant health effects of gender as a social and cultural variable, ORWH and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) convened a series of roundtable discussions for NIH staff members in the fall of 2021 These roundtables brought together scientific and program staff members from NICHD, ORWH, the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the National Institute on Aging (NIA), the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the Fogarty International Center, the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR), the Office of Disease Prevention, and the Sexual and Gender Minority Research Office and provided an opportunity to explore the current landscape of NIH research on gender as a social and cultural variable. Participants discussed the landscape of NIH-supported research on gender roles, gender norms, and gender inequity and identified opportunities in this space.  

We are excited to share an opportunity for additional dialogue and support on Wednesday, October 26, 2022: a scientific workshop titled Gender and Health: Impacts of Structural Sexism, Gender Norms, Relational Power Dynamics, and Gender Inequities . This virtual workshop is being convened in partnership with NICHD, NIA, NIAID, NCI, National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, the National Institute on Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the NIMH, National Institute on Drug Abuse, and OBSSR. 

In line with the ORWH mission of putting science to work for the health of women, this workshop will convene members of the scientific community to discuss methods and best practices in health research on gender roles, gender norms, gender inequity, and structural sexism. Opening plenaries from Drs. Nancy Krieger , Patricia Homan , and Typhanye Dyer will set the stage for an afternoon of concurrent sessions. We invite you to learn more and register for this event .

Another opportunity to advance research on gender and health is a recently launched ORWH signature program: the G alvanizing Health E quity T hrough N ovel and D iverse E ducational R esources (GENDER) research education program (R25). The GENDER R25 will help meet the need for sex- and gender-specific training in science, medicine, and allied health professions by supporting the development of sex- and gender-focused courses, curricula, and methods. Courses and curricula can be targeted to audiences at any career stage, including researchers, health care providers, students (undergraduate, graduate, medical, dental, veterinary, nursing, public health, and other allied health professions), postdoctoral researchers, community advocates, the public health workforce, and more. Funded projects will result in curricula, courses, and methods that can be utilized across disciplines and will be made available through the ORWH Interprofessional Education Portal to ensure wide dissemination. The first due date is October 27, 2022, for non-AIDS-related applications, and the due date for AIDS-related applications is January 7, 2023. We invite you to register for the 1-hour technical assistance webinar for the GENDER R25 on September 21, 2022, at 4:00 p.m. EDT.  

We are enthusiastic about these new programs and activities, which we see as important steps in building momentum, support, and capacity for the incorporation of Gender as a Social and Cultural Variable into the NIH research agenda. ORWH welcomes these and other opportunities to partner with our NIH colleagues and the extramural community to advance health-related research that rigorously considers the effects of gender roles, norms, power relations, and inequalities. Approaching gender’s influences on health with scientific rigor is critical to advancing health-related research for the health of women.

• National Academies of Sciences E, and Medicine,. Measuring Sex, Gender Identity, and Sexual Orientation. Measuring Sex, Gender Identity, and Sexual Orientation. 2022.
• Din NU, Ukoumunne OC, Rubin G, et al. Age and Gender Variations in Cancer Diagnostic Intervals in 15 Cancers: Analysis of Data from the UK Clinical Practice Research Datalink. PLoS One. 2015;10(5):e0127717. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0127717
• Maas AHEM, Appelman YEA. Gender differences in coronary heart disease. Netherlands Heart Journal. 2010/11/01 2010;18(12):598-603. doi:10.1007/s12471-010-0841-y
• Heart Attack Symptoms in Women. American Heart Association. Accessed October 7, 2021, https://www.heart.org/en/health-topics/heart-attack/warning-signs-of-a-heart-attack/heart-attack-symptoms-in-women  
• Templeton K. Musculoskeletal disorders: Sex and gender evidence in anterior cruciate ligament injuries, osteoarthritis, and osteoporosis. How Sex and Gender Impact Clinical Practice. Elsevier; 2021:207-227.
• As-Sanie S, Black R, Giudice LC, et al. Assessing research gaps and unmet needs in endometriosis. American journal of obstetrics and gynecology. 2019 Aug 2019;221(2):86–94. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajog.2019.02.033
• Mirin AA. Gender Disparity in the Funding of Diseases by the US National Institutes of Health. Journal of Women's Health. 2020;doi:10.1089/jwh.2020.8682
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Gender Socialization: Examples, Agents & Impact

Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc

Associate Editor for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education

Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.

Learn about our Editorial Process

Saul Mcleod, PhD

Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

Saul Mcleod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

On This Page:

Gender socialization is the process through which individuals learn the behaviors, expectations, and roles associated with their assigned gender within a society. Parents dressing their baby girl in pink and buying her dolls, while dressing their baby boy in blue and buying him toy trucks is an example of gender socialization.

What is Gender Socialization?

• Gender socialization is the process through which a culture’s gender-related rules, norms, and expectations are learnt.
• This process often begins from a very early age for most people. It is thought that children are aware of their gender by the time they are 3 years old, long before they come to recognize any other type of group they may belong to (Stockard, 2006).
• In gender socialization, it is important to distinguish between sex and gender. When referring to anatomical or reproductive differences between men and women, many social scientists use the term sex (Kretchmar, 2011). When referring to gender, this is a social construct which is believed to exist on a continuum and involves ideas about masculinity and femininity.
• The central idea of gender socialization is that societies have their own ideas of what gender is. People and cultures throughout the world recognize that there are different gender groups and they have assigned roles and responsibilities.
• Through gender socialization, people develop their own beliefs about gender and ultimately form their own gender identity. People may not be consciously aware of the gender norm decisions that they make. Gender roles and norms are often built into the script of what a man/woman should do or be.

Examples of Gender Socialization

An example of gender socialization is how toys are gendered, being marketed towards boys and girls. In many toy stores, there are often segregated ‘boy toys’ and ‘girl toys.’

The toys for boys may often be blue and come in the form of action figures, toy cars, and building blocks, whereas the toys for girls are often pink and come in the form of baby dolls, dress-up games, and toy cooking and cleaning sets.

The types of toys and activities are thought to reinforce what genders should do. For instance, the toys advertised to boys reinforce that to be male involves being adventurous, strong, and logic driven.

The toys advertised to girls reinforce that to be female means to be maternal, physically attractive, and to manage household tasks.

The advertising for these toys is also usually targeted at specific genders. The boxes for ‘girl toys’ for instance may be various shades of pink and display a young girl playing with the toy on the packaging.

Thus, if a girl sees this, she will likely understand that this toy is targeted for her, rather than packaging which is blue and displays a young boy playing with the toy.

Agents of Gender Socialization

We normally refer to the people responsible for our socialisation as agents of socialisation and, by extension, we can also talk about agencies of socialisation (such as our family, the education system, the media and so forth).

Gender socialization is a form of primary socialization which is the process by which children and infants learn the norms and behaviors associated with their gender. It is thought to occur within the family, peer groups, mass media and school curriculum (Bhattacharjee, 2021).

Parent socialization

Parents are often the first socialization of gender that children experience.

Gender socialization can often begin as soon as parents find out whether they are expecting a boy or a girl. Before the child is born, they may begin painting the baby’s room a certain color and buy specific clothing which is ‘appropriate’ for their child’s gender.

The language that parents use around their child can also reflect gender socialization. Girls may be referred to as ‘pretty’ or ‘delicate’, whereas boys may be described as ‘strong’ and ‘boisterous.’ Children learn from this language how they should be according to their gender.

Often there are different expectations for children depending on their gender. Girls may be expected to help out their mother with cooking, shopping, and cleaning activities. Boys may be expected to have high job aspirations, engage in sports, and help their father with fixing things.

Children tend to be especially attentive to same-gender models (Bussey & Bandura, 1999). Therefore, when children observe their same-sex parent exhibit specific behaviors or engaging in activities which differ from other genders, the child is more likely to exhibit the same behaviors.

The way that parents behave with their child may differ depending on the child’s gender. Girls may be encouraged to play and behave in a polite and quiet manner, whereas boys may be encouraged to play louder and rougher.

Even if parents try not to reinforce gender norms, if they have their own gendered socialization from when they were younger, these parents may be inadvertently reinforcing this onto their children.

Peer socialization

Children can also be socialized by their peers in different ways, according to their gender.

It is thought that by the time children reach the age of three, they often prefer playing with other children of the same gender (Wharton, 2005).

This is often found across a variety of cultures and continues until adolescence. They often prefer to play with peers who share similar interests and thus are more likely to be socialized by peers of the same gender.

An explanation for gender-segregated play is that boys and girls play very differently and seek out others whose play style is similar (Stockard, 2006).

Girls often form intimate friendships with a small number of other girls and they take turns speaking and expressing agreement. Boys often play in larger groups, engage in rougher activities, and use interruptions and boasts.

When spending time with peers, boys and girls learn what is ‘appropriate’ for their gender. They may discuss with each other what boys and girls should do.

Peers can ‘punish’ each other for engaging in activities that do not conform to their gender. Girls seem to face less pressure than boys to conform to gender norms than boys and are less likely to receive negative attention for participating in ‘cross-gender’ activities and games (Wharton, 2005).

School socialization

Teachers and other educators may place expectations on children based on their gender.

They could do this by labeling and organizing students in group activities or creating different activities for boys and girls. As with parents, teachers may use gendered language when speaking to and about boys and girls.

Schools may encourage boys to engage in science or mathematics whereas they may be more forgiving if girls are not succeeding in these subjects.

Teachers may also discipline students in different ways depending on their gender, which may reinforce children’s beliefs and assumptions.

Media socialization

Gender socialization through media can include through movies, television, and literature. The media can reinforce gender stereotypes so that children have ideas about what it means to be a boy or a girl.

In a lot of movies and TV, men can often be seen as the heroes and going on adventures. In comparison, women are usually outnumbered by the number of male characters, are often portrayed as being physically attractive, and are frequently introduced as the love interest for the male characters.

Female characters are often seen as passive characters who need to be rescued by men and dressed in a way which appeals to the male gaze.

Studies show that children who watch a lot of TV tend to have more sex-stereotypical views of men and women and that this influences their choice of toys, career aspirations, and self-esteem (Burn, 1996).

While the media is beginning to portray males and females in non-stereotypical ways, a lot of older media shows them in traditionally gender-appropriate ways.

For instance, women are shown doing housework or as being stay-at-home mothers, whereas men are shown engaging in a wider variety of activities.

Theories to Explain Gender Socialization

Social learning theory.

Social learning theory is most closely associated with the work of psychologist Albert Bandura. This theory relates to the behaviorist approach which defines learning in terms of stimulus and response.

Social learning theory explains that gender socialization comes as a result of children being reinforced, both positively and negatively, for gender appropriate and inappropriate behavior (Wharton, 2005).

For example, if a boy plays with a ‘gender appropriate’ toy such as a football, he may receive positive reinforcement from his father. Whereas, if the boy plays with a ‘gender inappropriate’ toy such as a doll, he may be ignored or receive negative attention from his father.

According to this theory, children learn what is appropriate from noticing the behavior of their same-sex parent. A young girl may learn what it means to be female by observing her mother, whereas a boy learns what it means to be male by observing his father.

Social learning theory can be discredited by research which has shown that parents who exhibit sex stereotypical behaviors are not more likely than other parents to have children who exhibit sex stereotypical behaviors (Stockard, 2006).

Likewise, children are not thought to be passive learners as social learning theory makes them out to be. Instead, they are more actively engaged in their socialization than the theory suggests (Wharton, 2005).

Gender codes

Gender codes are hidden, unspoken assumptions about the proper roles of men and women which are transmitted through the socialization process and are negotiated by each generation. Gender codes are not uniform but vary with location.

Traditional gender codes tend to be stronger in the working class than the middle class, but all people have access to both conservative and radical gender codes and negotiate their way through to their own balance.

Cognitive development theory

Cognitive development theories for gender socialization build on the research of psychologist Jean Piaget.

These theories emphasize how the socialization process is developmental in nature. It also argues that children have an active role to play in the development of their gender identity (Stockard, 2006).

Psychologists Lawrence Kohlberg was one of the first to apply cognitive development theories to gender identity. He argued that ‘children’s views of appropriate gender roles… change as they grow older, reflecting their changing cognitive development’.

It is thought that younger children have the most rigid definitions of gender and are more likely to punish others for violating gender norms. As they get older and gain more cognitive flexibility, gender stereotypes and gender roles become more flexible for them.

Kohlberg believed that once children develop gender constancy – the recognition that their gender is stable and unchanging – they become more motivated to demonstrate gender appropriate behavior (Wharton, 2005).

Cognitive development theories expand on social learning theory as they acknowledge that children play an active role in the socialization process and suggest that ideas about gender change and develop over time.

However, the fact that children can demonstrate gendered behavior as young as two or three years old, long before gender constancy, discredits Kohlberg’s theory (Martin & Ruble, 2004).

Gender schema theory

Gender schema theory was introduced by psychologist Sandra Bem in 1981 who asserted that children learn about gender roles from the culture in which they live. According to Bem, in cultures where differences between genders are emphasized, children learn to use gender as a way to process information about the world.

Gender schemas are thought to help children organize information and maintain a sense of consistency and predictability (Stockard, 2006). These schemas tend to be polarized so children come to understand what they believe is acceptable and appropriate for different genders.

Gender schemas provide an efficient way to hold new information and make new situations more predictable. Children develop more elaborate gender schemas as they develop their gender identity and their understanding of gender roles.

This theory suggests that the gender schemas are internalized in a way that males and masculinity are the norm and are more highly valued than females and femininity (Wharton. 2005).

A limitation of gender schema theory is the issue of individual differences. The theory does not account for why children with much of the same environmental influences respond differently to gender appropriate behavior.

Psychoanalytic theory

The psychoanalytic theory of gender socialization is different from other theories as it is not a learning theory. Founded by Sigmund Freud , its application to gender socialization was outlined in the 1970s by Nancy Chodorow.

The theory suggests that some aspects of gender identity result from unconscious psychological processes and not from conscious processes such as modeling or schemas.

A key factor of gender socialization according to psychoanalytic theory is the role of the mother as the primary caregiver. Chodorow argues that children’s first identification is with the feminine since they spend more time with their mothers early in life.

Eventually, children need to develop a sense of themselves and their own gender identity. For girls, this process is easier since they have already identified with the mother. For boys, however, they must first reject their feminine identification and develop masculinity.

This masculinity is defined as being ‘not feminine’. During this process, boys also learn to often devalue femininity.

Criticisms of psychoanalytic theory for gender socialization are that the theory is hard to empirically verify. It also reinforces gender stereotypes, places too much emphasis on the unconscious, and does not explain how children who were not raised by mothers develop their gender identity.

How Does Gender Socialization Affect Society?

Women are devalued.

In many societies, tasks and behaviors that are associated with femininity and being female are often devalued.

Women often complete more unpaid labor such as housework and childcare since this is seen as a feminine role and is not appreciated by being paid.

Inequalities in the workplace

Since women are often devalued, many employers may have the gender bias that women will be weaker workers, especially if they have extra labor to do at home.

Women can still experience a wage gap for completing the same work as men. Women-dominated jobs such as those in healthcare are often underpaid in comparison to male-dominated roles.

Women who have children also find they may experience a ‘penalty’ in the workforce and are not afforded the same opportunities as men who have children.

Negative attitudes about different genders

Children often favor their own gender in their attitudes and show gender discriminatory behaviors to other genders.

Gender segregated behavior may be supported by adults and may become a problem when children need to be able to function in gender-integrated settings such as school.

Children may find that they are not able to effectively relate with other genders which can further separate them and enhance differences.

Both boys and girls tend to associate positive characteristics with their own gender. However, after the age of 6, it is found that many girls stop showing this pattern and mostly consider that something that requires a lot of intelligence should preferably be done by a male (Bian et al., 2017).

Thus, girls can often develop negative feelings and attitudes towards their own gender and their own abilities.

Moreover, suppose society has very strict ideas about gender. In that case, this can negatively affect individuals who identify as non-binary, transgender, or anyone who does not subscribe to their assigned gender at birth. It can be hard for these individuals to be their true selves in a society that sees gender as being on a strict binary.

Limitations for men

Gender socialization is limited to both men and women in society. Boys and men can experience gender role conflict and pressure to succeed and dominate in their careers. They may feel like a failure if this is not what they want to or cannot do.

Men and boys may also intentionally avoid expressions of affection with their peers, believing that anger is the only appropriate expression of emotion for them. They often view more vulnerable emotions and crying as being feminine and would not be comfortable displaying these in front of others.

If a boy were to express typically ‘feminine’ traits, they would be at risk of being bullied, so they learn not to display these traits.

Likewise, if men are pushing down their vulnerable emotions, this can eventually damage their mental health and they could be less likely to reach out for help if they were struggling.

Finally, if men are socialized into being more aggressive, they may be more likely to commit crimes and specifically display acts of violence against women.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does gender socialization relate to gender stereotypes.

Gender stereotyping is where a set of gender attributes, characteristics, or roles are ascribed to people by reason of their membership to their gender.

People are thought to be socialized to have gender stereotypes.

If society has specific ideas about what each gender should be, and these are socialized to children, this can lead to them having stereotypes about other genders or adhering to their own gender stereotypes.

Although gender stereotypes tend to become more flexible later in childhood with the development of cognitive flexibility, in many instances, they can persist throughout life and continue to influence behavior (Solbes-Canales et al., 2020).

Interestingly, gender stereotyping is less restrictive for female stereotypes than for male stereotypes, meaning that females are less scrutinized for not adhering to gender stereotypes, but males are.

How does gender socialization relate to sexism?

The persistence of traditional gender roles exacerbates gender inequalities, encourages rigid behaviors, and maintains unbalanced power relations within societies in favor of men (Marcus, 2018).

With society having the attitude that women are weaker or less competent than men at the same work, this can lead to discriminatory behavior towards women.

The roots of prejudices, discrimination, and violence against women can be traced back to widespread gender stereotypes, which come from gender socialization (McCarthy et al., 2018).

Is gender socialization important?

Gender socialization is thought to be important since it helps individuals to develop their gender identity – deeply held internal perception of one’s gender.

Being aware of gender socialization and gender roles means that individuals can choose what they most identify with and develop their own identities.

Can gender socialization occur throughout life?

Although a lot of gender socialization occurs during childhood, it is a lifelong process. The beliefs about gender that are acquired in childhood can affect people throughout their lives.

Many new ideas about gender can be learnt well into adulthood, meaning that new expectations can be learnt. Through gender socialization, people have shaped ideas about what they believe they can achieve.

For instance, a man may believe he is capable of being successful in his career compared to a woman who may think she will have less success due to being a woman.

Can gender socialization be tackled?

It can be useful to become more aware of how individuals have been socialized based on their assigned gender. In this way, people can consider whether they behave or make decisions based on how they have been socialized, or whether it is because it is their own choice.

Since there are a lot of issues with gender socialization, parents and educators can put things in place to ensure children are not restricted by their gender.

They can use gender neutral terms when speaking to the children, ensuring that boys and girls are being spoken to in similar ways.

Parents can encourage children to play with a wide range of toys and activities during early childhood and can help to create playful environments where children interact with a mix of genders.

Also, parents and teachers can discuss and challenge gender stereotypes with children and not put so much emphasis on gender differences. In this way, children should have an understanding that they do not need to be stuck in their traditional gender roles.

Bhattacharjee, N. (2021). Through the looking glass: Gender socialisation in a primary school. In Gender and Education in India A Reader (pp. 40-52). Routledge.

Bian, L., Leslie, S. J., & Cimpian, A. (2017). Gender stereotypes about intellectual ability emerge early and influence children’s interests.  Science, 355 (6323), 389-391.

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Gender and Media Representations: A Review of the Literature on Gender Stereotypes, Objectification and Sexualization

Media representations play an important role in producing sociocultural pressures. Despite social and legal progress in civil rights, restrictive gender-based representations appear to be still very pervasive in some contexts. The article explores scientific research on the relationship between media representations and gender stereotypes, objectification and sexualization, focusing on their presence in the cultural context. Results show how stereotyping, objectifying and sexualizing representations appear to be still very common across a number of contexts. Exposure to stereotyping representations appears to strengthen beliefs in gender stereotypes and endorsement of gender role norms, as well as fostering sexism, harassment and violence in men and stifling career-related ambitions in women. Exposure to objectifying and sexualizing representations appears to be associated with the internalization of cultural ideals of appearance, endorsement of sexist attitudes and tolerance of abuse and body shame. In turn, factors associated with exposure to these representations have been linked to detrimental effects on physical and psychological well-being, such as eating disorder symptomatology, increased body surveillance and poorer body image quality of life. However, specificities in the pathways from exposure to detrimental effects on well-being are involved for certain populations that warrant further research.

1. Introduction

As a social category, gender is one of the earliest and most prominent ways people may learn to identify themselves and their peers, the use of gender-based labels becoming apparent in infants as early as 17 months into their life [ 1 ]. Similarly, the development of gender-based heuristics, inferences and rudimentary stereotypes becomes apparent as early as age three [ 2 , 3 ]. Approximately at this age, the development of a person’s gender identity begins [ 4 ]—that is, the process through which a person tends to identify as a man, as a woman or as a vast spectrum of other possibilities (i.e., gender non-conforming, agender, genderfluid, etc.). These processes continue steadily throughout individuals’ lives as they receive and elaborate information about women and men and what it means to belong to either category, drawing from direct and indirect observations, social contact, personal elaborations and cultural representations [ 5 , 6 ]. As a result, social and mental representations of gender are extremely widespread, especially as a strictly binary construct, and can be argued to be ubiquitous in individual and social contexts.

Among the many sources of influence on gender representations, media occupies an important space and its relevance can be assessed across many different phenomena [ 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 ]. The ubiquity of media, the chronicity of individuals’ exposure to it and its role in shaping beliefs, attitudes and expectations have made it the subject of scientific attention. In fact, several theories have attempted to explore the mechanisms and psychological processes in which media plays a role, including identity development [ 12 , 13 , 14 ], scripts and schemas [ 15 ], cultivation processes [ 16 , 17 , 18 ] and socialization processes [ 5 , 6 ].

The public interest in the topic of gender has seen a surge in the last 10 years, in part due to social and political movements pushing for gender equality across a number of aspects, including how gender is portrayed in media representations. In the academic field as well, publications mentioning gender in their title, abstract or keywords have more than doubled from 2012 to 2022 [ 19 ], while publications mentioning gender in media representations have registered an even more dramatic increase, tripling in number [ 20 ]. Additionally, the media landscape has had a significant shift in the last decade, with the surge in popularity and subsequent addition of social media websites and apps to most people’s mediatic engagement [ 21 ].

The importance of media use in gender-related aspects, such as beliefs, attitudes, or roles, has been extensively documented. As reported in a recent review of the literature [ 22 ], several meta-analyses [ 17 , 23 , 24 ] showed support for the effects of media use on gender beliefs, finding small but consistent effect sizes. These effects appear to have remained present over the decades [ 25 ].

Particular attention has been given to stereotypical, objectifying and sexualizing representations, as portrayals that paint a restrictive picture of the complexity of human psychology, also producing sociocultural pressures to conform to gender roles and body types.

Gender stereotypes can be defined as an extremely simplified concept of attitudes and behaviors considered normal and appropriate for men and women in a specific culture [ 26 ]. They usually span several different areas of people’s characteristics, such as physical appearance, personality traits, behaviors, social roles and occupations. Stereotypical beliefs about gender may be divided into descriptive (how one perceives a person of a certain gender to be; [ 27 ]), prescriptive (how one perceives a person of a certain gender should be and behave; [ 28 , 29 ]) or proscriptive (how one perceives a person of a certain gender should not be and behave; [ 28 , 29 ]). Their content varies on the individual’s culture of reference [ 30 ], but recurring themes have been observed in western culture, such as stereotypes revolving around communion, agency and competence [ 31 ]. Women have stereotypically been associated with traits revolving around communion (e.g., supportiveness, compassion, expression, warmth), while men have been more stereotypically associated with agency (e.g., ambition, assertiveness, competitiveness, action) or competence (e.g., skill, intelligence). Both men and women may experience social and economic penalties (backlash) if they appear to violate these stereotypes [ 29 , 32 , 33 ].

Objectification can be defined as the viewing or treatment of people as objects. Discussing ways in which people may be objectified, Nussbaum first explored seven dimensions: instrumentality (a tool to be employed for one’s purposes); denial of autonomy (lacking self-determination, or autonomy); inertness (lacking in agency or activity); fungibility (interchangeable with others of the same type); violability (with boundaries lacking integrity and permissible to break into); ownership (possible to own or trade); denial of subjectivity (the person’s feelings or experiences are seen as something that does not need to be considered) [ 34 ].

In its initial definition by Fredrickson and Roberts [ 35 ], objectification theory had been offered as a framework to understand how the pervasive sexual objectification of women’s bodies in the sociocultural context influenced their experiences and posed risks to their mental health—a phenomenon that was believed to have uniquely female connotations. In their model, the authors theorized that a cultural climate of sexual objectification would lead to the internalization of objectification (viewing oneself as a sexual and subordinate object), which would in turn lead to psychological consequences (e.g., body shame, anxiety) and mental health risks (e.g., eating disorders, depression). Due to the pervasiveness of the cultural climate, objectification may be difficult to detect or avoid, and objectification experiences may be perceived as normative.

Sexual objectification, in which a person is reduced to a sexual instrument, can be construed to be a subtype of objectification and, in turn, is often defined as one of the types of sexualization [ 36 ]. As previously discussed by Ward [ 37 ], it should be made clear that the mere presence of sexual content, which may be represented in a positive and healthy way, should not be conflated with sexualized or objectifying representations.

The American Psychological Association’s 2007 report defines sexualization as a series of conditions that stand apart from healthy sexuality, such as when a person’s value is perceived to come mainly from sexual appeal or behavior, when physical attractiveness is equated to sexual attractiveness, when a person is sexually objectified or when sexuality is inappropriately imposed on a person [ 36 ]. Sexualization may involve several different contexts, such as personal, interpersonal, and cultural. Self-sexualization involves treating oneself as a sexual object [ 35 ]. Interpersonal contributions involve being treated as sexual objects by others, such as family or peers [ 38 , 39 ]. Finally, contributions by cultural norms, expectations and values play a part as well, including those spread by media representations [ 36 ]. After this initial definition, sexualization as a term has also been used by some authors (e.g., Zurbriggen & Roberts [ 40 ]) to refer to sexual objectification specifically, while others (e.g., Bigler and colleagues [ 41 ]) stand by the APA report’s broader meaning. In this section, we will explore scientific literature adopting the latter.

These portrayals have been hypothesized to lead to negative effects on people’s well-being on a mental and physical level, as well as bearing partial responsibility for several social issues, such as sexism, gender discrimination and harassment. However, the pathways that lead from an individual’s relationship with media to these detrimental effects can be complex. Furthermore, they seem to involve specificities for men and women, as well as for different sexual orientations. A wealth of publications has been produced on these themes and, to the authors’ knowledge, no recent review has attempted to synthesize their findings.

The present article aims to summarize the state of the art of research on stereotyping, sexualization and objectification in gender and media representations. A focus will be placed on the definitions of these concepts, the media where they occur, and verifying whether any changes over time are detectable or any specificities are present. The possible effects of these representations on people’s well-being will be explored as well.

A search of the literature was conducted on scientific search engines (APA PsycArticles, CINAHL Complete, Education Source, Family Studies Abstracts, Gender Studies Database, MEDLINE, Mental Measurements Yearbook, Sociology Source Ultimate, Violence & Abuse Abstracts, PUBMED, Scopus, Web of Science) to locate the most relevant contributions on the topic of media and gender representation, with a particular focus on stereotypes, objectification and sexualization, their presence in the media and their effects on well-being. Keywords were used to search for literature on the intersection of the main topics: media representation (e.g., media OR representation* OR portrayal*), gender (e.g., gender OR sex OR wom* OR m*n) and stereotypes, objectification and sexualization (e.g., stereotyp*, objectif*, sexualiz*). In some cases, additional keywords were used for the screening of studies on specific media (e.g., television, news, social media). When appropriate, further restrictions were used to screen for studies on effects or consequences (e.g., effect* OR impact* OR consequence* OR influence* OR outcome*). Inclusion criteria were the following: (a) academic articles (b) pertaining to the field of media representations (c) pertaining to gender stereotypes, objectification or sexualization. A dataset of 195 selected relevant papers was created. Thematic analysis was conducted following the guidelines developed by Braun and Clarke [ 42 ], in order to outline patterns of meaning across the reviewed studies. The process was organized into six phases: (1) familiarization with the data; (2) coding; (3) searching for themes; (4) reviewing themes; (5) defining and naming themes; and (6) writing up. After removing duplicates and excluding papers that did not meet the inclusion criteria, a total of 87 articles were included in the results of this review. The findings were discussed among researchers (LR, FS, MNP and TT) until unanimous consensus was reached.

2.1. Stereotypical Portrayals

Gender stereotypes appear to be flexible and responsive to changes in the social environment: consensual beliefs about men’s and women’s attributes have evolved throughout the decades, reflecting changes in women’s participation in the labor force and higher education [ 31 , 43 ]. Perceptions of gender equality in competence and intelligence have sharply risen, and stereotypical perceptions of women show significant changes: perceptions of women’s competence and intelligence have surpassed those relative to men, while the communion aspect appears to have shifted toward being even more polarized on being typical of women. Other aspects, such as perceptions of agency being more typical of men, have remained stable [ 31 ].

Despite these changes, gender representation in the media appears to be frequently skewed toward men’s representation and prominently features gender stereotypes. On a global scale, news coverage appears to mostly feature men, especially when considering representation as expert voices, where women are still underrepresented (24%) despite a rise in coverage in the last 5 years [ 44 ]. Underrepresentation has also been reported in many regional and national contexts, but exact proportions vary significantly in the local context. Male representation has been reported to be greater in several studies, with male characters significantly outnumbering female characters [ 45 ], doing so in male-led and mixed-led shows but not in female-led shows [ 46 ] in children’s television programming—a key source of influence on gender representations. Similar results have been found regarding sports news, whose coverage overwhelmingly focuses on men athletes [ 47 , 48 ] and where women are seldom represented.

Several analyses of television programs have also shown how representations of men and women are very often consistent with gender stereotypes. Girls were often portrayed as focusing more on their appearance [ 45 ], as well as being judged for their appearance [ 49 ]. The same focus on aesthetics was found in sports news coverage, which was starkly different across genders, and tended to focus on women athletes’ appearance, featuring overly simplified descriptions (vs. technical language on coverage of men athletes) [ 48 ]. In addition, coverage of women athletes was more likely in sports perceived to be more feminine or gender-appropriate [ 47 , 48 , 50 ]. Similarly, women in videogames appear to be both underrepresented and less likely to be featured as playable characters, as well as being frequently stereotyped, appearing in the role of someone in need of rescuing, as love interests, or cute and innocent characters [ 51 ]. In advertising as well, gender stereotypes have often been used as a staple technique for creating relatability, but their use may lead to negative cross-gender effects in product marketing [ 52 ] while also possibly furthering social issues. Hust and colleagues found that in alcohol advertisements, belief in gender stereotypes was the most consistent predictor of intentions to sexually coerce, showing significant interaction effects with exposure to highly objectifying portrayals [ 53 ]. Representation in advertising prominently features gender stereotypes, such as depicting men in professional roles more often, while depicting women in non-working, recreational roles, especially in countries that show high gender inequality [ 54 ]. A recent analysis of print ads [ 55 ] confirmed that some stereotypes are still prominent and, in some cases, have shown a resurgence, such as portraying a woman as the queen of the home; the study also found representations of women in positions of empowerment are, however, showing a relative increase in frequency. Public support, combined with market logic, appears to be successfully pushing more progressive portrayals in this field [ 56 ].

Both skewed representation and the presence of stereotypes have been found to lead to several negative effects. Gender-unequal representation has been found to stifle political [ 57 ] and career [ 58 ] ambition, as well as foster organizational discrimination [ 59 ]. Heavy media use may further the belief in gender stereotypes and has been found to be linked to a stronger endorsement of traditional gender roles and norms [ 60 ], which in turn may be linked to a vast number of detrimental health effects. In women, adherence and internalization of traditional gender roles have been linked to greater symptoms of depression and anxiety, a higher likelihood of developing eating disorders, and lower self-esteem and self-efficacy [ 36 , 61 , 62 , 63 ]. In men as well, adherence to traditional masculine norms has been linked to negative mental health outcomes such as depression, psychological distress and substance abuse [ 64 ], while also increasing the perpetration of risky behaviors [ 65 , 66 ] and intimate partner violence [ 65 , 67 ].

2.2. Objectifying Portrayals

Non-sexual objectifying representations appear to have been studied relatively little. They have been found to be common in advertising, where women are often depicted as purely aesthetic models, motionless and decorative [ 68 ]. They may also include using a woman’s body as a supporting object for the advertised product, as a decorative object, as an ornament to draw attention to the ad, or as a prize to be won and associated with the consumption of the advertised product [ 55 ].

The vast majority of the literature has focused on the sexual objectification of women. This type of representation has been reported to be very common in a number of contexts and across different media [ 69 ], and several studies (see Calogero and colleagues’ or Roberts and colleagues’ review [ 69 , 70 ]) have found support for the original model’s pathway [ 35 ]. Following experimental models expanded on the original (e.g., Frederick and colleagues or Roberts and colleagues [ 69 , 71 ]), highlighting the role of factors such as the internalization of lean or muscular ideals of appearance, finding evidence for negative effects on well-being and mental health through the increase in self-objectification and the internalization of cultural ideals of appearance [ 71 , 72 ].

Sexual objectification also appears to be consistently linked to sexism. For both women and men, the perpetration of sexual objectification was significantly associated with hostile and benevolent sexism, as well as the enjoyment of sexualization [ 73 ]. Enjoyment of sexualization, in turn, has been found to be positively associated with hostile sexism in both men and women, positively associated with benevolent sexism in women and negatively in men [ 74 ].

Exposure to objectifying media in men has been found to increase the tendency to engage in sexual coercion and harassment, as well as increasing conformity to gender role norms [ 75 ]. Consistently with the finding that perpetration of objectification may be associated with a greater men’s proclivity for rape and sexual aggression [ 76 ], a study conducted by Hust and colleagues found that exposure to objectifying portrayals of women in alcohol advertising was also a moderator in the relationship between belief in gender stereotypes and intentions to sexually coerce. Specifically, participants who had a stronger belief in gender stereotypes reported stronger intentions to sexually coerce when exposed to slightly objectifying images of women. Highly objectifying images did not yield the same increase—a result interpreted by the authors to mean that highly objectified women were perceived as sexually available and as such less likely to need coercion, while slightly objectified women could be perceived as more likely to need coercion [ 53 ].

Research on objectification has primarily focused on women, in part due to numerous studies suggesting that women are more subject to sexual objectification [ 73 , 77 , 78 , 79 , 80 ], as well as suffering the consequences of sexual objectification more often [ 81 ]. However, sexually objectifying portrayals seem to have a role in producing negative effects on men as well, although with partially different pathways. In men, findings about media appearance pressures on body image appear to be mixed. Previous meta-analyses found either a small average effect [ 82 ] or no significant effect [ 72 ]. A recent study found them to be significantly associated with higher body surveillance, poorer body image quality of life and lower satisfaction with appearance [ 71 ]. Another study, however, found differing relationships regarding sexual objectification: an association was found between experiences of sexual objectification and internalization of cultural standards of appearance, body shame and drive for muscularity, but was not found between experiences of sexual objectification and self-objectification or body surveillance [ 83 ]: in the same study, gender role conflict [ 84 ] was positively associated to the internalization of sociocultural standards of appearance, self-objectification, body shame and drive for muscularity, suggesting the possibility that different pathways may be involved in producing negative effects on men. Men with body-image concerns experiencing gender role conflict may also be less likely to engage in help-seeking behaviors [ 85 , 86 ]. This is possibly due to restrictive emotionality associated with the male gender role leading to more negative attitudes toward help-seeking, as found in a recent study by Nagai, [ 87 ], although this study finds no association with help-seeking behavior, conflicting with previous ones, and more research is needed.

Finally, specificities related to sexual orientation regarding media and objectification appear to be present. A set of recent studies by Frederick and colleagues found that gay men, lesbian women and bisexual people share with heterosexual people many of the pathways that lead from sociocultural pressures to internalization of thin/muscular ideals, higher body surveillance and a lower body image quality of life [ 71 , 88 ], leading the authors to conclude that these factors’ influence applies regardless of sexual orientation. However, their relationship with media and objectification may vary. Gay and bisexual men may face objectification in social media and dating apps rather than in mainstream media and may experience more objectification than heterosexual men [ 89 ]. In Frederick and colleagues’ studies, gay men reported greater media pressures, body surveillance, thin-ideal internalization, and self-objectification compared to heterosexual men; moreover, bisexual men appeared to be more susceptible to ideal internalization, displaying stronger paths from media appearance pressures to muscular-ideal internalization compared to heterosexual men; lesbian women, instead, demonstrated weaker relationships between media pressures and body image outcomes [ 71 , 88 ]. Consistently with previous studies suggesting a heightened susceptibility to social pressures [ 90 ], bisexual women appeared to be more susceptible to media pressures relative to other groups [ 88 ]. Another recent study of lesbian and bisexual women supported previous evidence for the pathway from the internalization of cultural appearance standards to body surveillance, body shame and eating disorder symptoms; however, it found no significant connection between experiences of objectification and eating disorder symptoms [ 91 ].

2.3. Sexualized Portrayals

Several studies have found sexualizing media representations to be commonplace across a number of different media contents and across different target demographics (i.e., children, adolescents or adults) and genres. Reports of common sexualized representations of women are found in contexts such as television programs [ 92 ], movies [ 93 , 94 , 95 , 96 ], music videos [ 97 , 98 ], advertising [ 54 , 55 ], videogames [ 51 , 99 , 100 ], or magazines [ 101 ].

Exposure to sexualized media has been theorized to be an exogenous risk factor in the internalization of sexualized beliefs about women [ 41 ], as well as one of the pathways to the internalization of cultural appearance ideals [ 102 ]. Daily exposition to sexualized media content has been consistently linked to a number of negative effects. Specifically, it has been found to lead to higher levels of body dissatisfaction and distorted attitudes about eating through the internalization of cultural body ideals (e.g., lean or muscular) in both men and women [ 71 ]. It has also been associated with a higher chance of supporting sexist beliefs in boys [ 103 ], and of tolerance toward sexual violence in men [ 104 ]. Furthermore, exposure to sexualized images has been linked to a higher tolerance of sexual harassment and rape myth acceptance [ 76 ]. Exposure to reality TV programs consistently predicted self-sexualization for both women and men, while music videos did so for men only [ 103 ]. Internalized sexualization, in turn, has been linked to a stronger endorsement of sexist attitudes and acceptance of rape myths [ 105 ], while also being linked to higher levels of body surveillance and body shame in girls [ 106 ]. Internalization of media standards of appearance has been linked to body surveillance in both men and women, as well as body surveillance of the partner in men [ 107 ].

As a medium, videogames have been studied relatively little and have produced less definite results. This medium can offer the unique dynamic of embodiment in a virtual avatar, which has been hypothesized to be able to lead to a shift in self-perception (the “Proteus effect”, as formulated by Yee & Bailenson, [ 108 ]). While some studies have partially confirmed this effect, showing that exposure to sexualized videogame representations can increase self-objectification [ 109 , 110 , 111 ], others [ 112 ] have not found the same relationship. Furthermore, while a study has found an association between sexualized representations in videogames, tolerance of sexual abuse of women and rape myth acceptance [ 113 ], and in another, it was linked to a decreased real-life belief in women’s competence [ 114 ], a recent meta-analysis [ 115 ] found no effect of the presence of sexualized content on well-being, sexism or misogyny.

Research on social media has also shown some specificities. Social media offers the unique dynamic of being able to post and disseminate one’s own content and almost always includes built-in mechanisms for user-generated feedback (e.g., likes), as well as often being populated by one’s peers, friends and family rather than strangers. Sites focusing on image- or video-based content (e.g., Instagram, TikTok) may be more prone to eliciting social comparison and fostering the internalization of cultural appearance ideals, resulting in more associations to negative body image when compared to others that have the same capabilities but offer text-based content as well (e.g., Facebook) [ 116 ]. Social media appears to foster social comparison, which may increase appearance-based concerns [ 117 ]. Consistently with previous research, exposure to sexualized beauty ideals on social media appeared to be associated with lower body satisfaction; exposure to more diverse standards of appearance, instead, was associated with increased body satisfaction and positive mood, regardless of image sexualization [ 116 , 118 ].

3. Discussion

3.1. critical discussion of evidence.

The reviewed evidence (summarized in Table 1 ) points to the wide-ranging harmful effects of stereotyping, objectifying and sexualizing media portrayals, which are reported to be still both common and pervasive. The links to possible harms have also been well documented, with a few exceptions.

Summary of findings.

These representations, especially but not exclusively pertaining to women, have been under social scrutiny following women’s rights movements and activism [ 119 ] and can be perceived to be politically incorrect and undesirable, bringing an aspect of social desirability into the frame. Positive attitudes toward gender equality also appear to be at an all-time high across the western world [ 120 , 121 ], a change that has doubtlessly contributed to socio-cultural pressure to reduce harmful representations. Some media contexts (e.g., advertising and television) seem to have begun reflecting this change regarding stereotypes, attempting to either avoid harmful representations or push more progressive portrayals. However, these significant changes in stereotypes (e.g., regarding competence) have not necessarily been reflected in women’s lives, such as their participation in the labor force, leadership or decision-making [ 31 , 122 , 123 ]. Objectifying or sexualizing representations do not seem to be drastically reduced in prevalence. Certainly, many influences other than media representations are in play in this regard, but their effect on well-being has been found to be pervasive and consistent. Despite widespread positive attitudes toward gender equality, the persistence of stereotypical, objectifying and sexualizing representations may hint at the continued existence of an entrenched sexist culture which can translate into biases, discrimination and harm.

Despite some conflicting findings, the literature also hints at the existence of differences in how media pressures appear to affect men and women, as well as gay, lesbian and bisexual people. These may point to the possibility of some factors (e.g., objectification) playing a different role across different people in the examined pathways, an aspect that warrants caution when considering possible interventions and clinical implications. In some cases, the same relationship between exposure to media and well-being may exist, but it may follow different pathways from distal risk factors to proximal risk factors, as in the case of gender role conflict for men or body shame for lesbian and bisexual women. However, more research is needed to explore these recent findings.

Different media also appear to feature specificities for which more research is needed, such as videogames and social media. The more interactive experiences offered by these media may play an important role in determining their effects, and the type of social media needs to be taken into consideration as well (image- or video-based vs. text-based). Moreover, the experiences of exposure may not necessarily be homogenous, due to the presence of algorithms that determine what content is being shown in the case of social media, and due to the possibility of player interaction and avatar embodiment in the case of videogames.

Past findings [ 37 , 69 ] about links with other social issues such as sexism, harassment and violence appear to still be relevant [ 67 , 73 , 103 , 105 ]. The increases in both tolerance and prevalence of sexist and abusive attitudes resulting from exposure to problematic media representations impact the cultural climate in which these phenomena take place. Consequently, victims of discrimination and abuse living in a cultural climate more tolerant of sexist and abusive attitudes may experience lower social support, have a decreased chance of help-seeking and adopt restrictive definitions for what counts as discrimination and abuse, indirectly furthering gender inequalities.

Exploring ways of reducing risks to health, several authors [ 22 , 41 , 75 ] have discussed media literacy interventions—that is, interventions focused on teaching critical engagement with media—as a possible way of reducing the negative effects of problematic media portrayals. As reported in McLean and colleagues’ systematic review [ 124 ], these interventions have been previously shown to be effective at increasing media literacy, while also improving body-related outcomes such as body satisfaction in boys [ 125 ], internalization of the thinness ideal in girls [ 125 ], body size acceptance in girls [ 126 ] and drive for thinness in girls and boys [ 127 ]. More recently, they were also shown to be effective at reducing stereotypical gender role attitudes [ 128 ], as well as fostering unfavorable attitudes toward stereotypical portrayals and lack of realism [ 129 ]. Development and promotion of these interventions should be considered when attempting to reduce negative media-related influences on body image. It should be noted, however, that McLean and colleagues’ review found no effect of media literacy interventions on eating disorder symptomatology [ 124 ], which warrants more careful interventions.

Furthermore, both internal (e.g., new entrants’ attitudes in interpersonal or organizational contexts) and external (e.g., pressure from public opinion) sociocultural pressures appear to have a strong influence in reducing harmful representations [ 55 , 56 ]. Critically examining these representations when they appear, as well as voicing concerns toward examples of possibly harmful representations, may promote more healthy representations in media. As documented by some studies, the promotion of diverse body representations in media may also be effective in reducing negative effects [ 70 , 118 ].

3.2. Limitations

The current review synthesizes the latest evidence on stereotyping, objectifying and sexualizing media representations. However, limitations in its methodology are present and should be taken into consideration. It is not a systematic review and may not be construed to be a complete investigation of all the available evidence. Only articles written in the English language have been considered, which may have excluded potentially interesting findings written in other languages. Furthermore, it is not a meta-analysis, and as such cannot be used to draw statistical conclusions about the surveyed phenomena.

3.3. Future Directions

While this perception is limited by the non-systematic approach of the review, to what we know, very few studies appear to be available on the relationship between media representation and non-sexual objectification, which may provide interesting directions to explore in relation to autonomy, violability or subjectivity, as was attempted in the context of work and organizations [ 130 ].

More cross-cultural studies (e.g., Tartaglia & Rollero [ 54 ]) would also prove useful in exploring differences between cultural contexts, as well as the weight of different sociocultural factors in the relationship between media representation and gender.

More studies focusing on relatively new media (e.g., social media, videogames) would possibly help clear up some of the identified discrepancies and explore new directions for the field that take advantage of their interactivity. This is particularly true for niche but growing media such as virtual reality, in which the perception of embodiment in an avatar with different physical features than one’s own could prove to be important in sexualization and objectification. Only preliminary evidence [ 131 ] has been produced on the topic.

Studies to further explore the relationship between media representations, gender and sexual orientation would also be beneficial. As already highlighted by Frederick and colleagues [ 132 ], gay, lesbian and bisexual people may deal with a significantly different set of appearance norms and expectations [ 133 ], and face minority-related stresses [ 134 ] that can increase susceptibility to poorer body image and disordered eating [ 135 , 136 ]. Additionally, none of the reviewed studies had a particular focus on trans people, who may have different experiences relating to media and body image, as suggested by the differences in pathways found in a recent study [ 137 ]. Sexual orientation and gender identity should be kept into consideration when investigating these relationships, as their specificities may shed light on the different ways societal expectations influence the well-being of sexual minorities.

The examined literature on the topic also appears to feature specificities that need to be taken into account. As previously reported by Ward [ 37 ], the vast majority of the studies continue to be conducted in the United States, often on undergraduates, which limits the generalizability of the results to the global population. Given the abundance and complexity of the constructs, more studies examining the pathways from media exposure to well-being using methodologies such as path analysis and structural equation modeling may help clarify some of the discrepancies found in the literature about the same relationships.

Finally, as previously reported by many authors [ 37 , 69 , 138 ], sexualization, self-sexualization, objectification and self-objectification are sometimes either treated as synonymous or used with different definitions and criteria, which may add a layer of misdirection to studies on the subject. Given the divergences in the use of terminology, clearly stating one’s working definition of sexualization or objectification would possibly benefit academic clarity on the subject.

4. Conclusions

Consistent empirical evidence highlights the importance of media representations as a key part of sociocultural influences that may have consequences on well-being. Despite some notable progress, harmful representations with well-researched links to detrimental effects are still common across a number of different media. Exposure to stereotyping, objectifying and sexualized representations appears to consistently be linked to negative consequences on physical and mental health, as well as fostering sexism, violence and gender inequity. On a clinical level, interventions dealing with body image and body satisfaction should keep their influence into account. The promotion of institutional and organizational interventions, as well as policies aimed at reducing their influence, could also prove to be a protective factor against physical and mental health risks.

Funding Statement

This research received no external funding.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, F.S. and L.R.; methodology, T.T. and M.N.P.; writing—original draft preparation, F.S.; writing—review and editing, T.T. and M.N.P.; supervision, L.R. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Home — Essay Samples — Sociology — Gender Roles — How Gender Roles Influence Our Identity

How Gender Roles Influence Our Identity

• Categories: Gender Identity Gender Roles

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Words: 1325 |

Published: Feb 8, 2022

Words: 1325 | Pages: 3 | 7 min read

Works Cited:

• Bar-Tal, D. (2013). Intractable conflicts: Socio-psychological foundations and dynamics. Cambridge University Press.
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• Coleman, P. T. (2006). Reconciliation as an approach to peacebuilding. Journal of Peacebuilding and Development, 3(1), 42-62.
• De Rivera, J. (2013). Reconciliation and emotional healing in the aftermath of mass violence. Journal of Social Issues, 69(2), 209-225.
• Lederach, J. P. (2005). The moral imagination: The art and soul of building peace. Oxford University Press.
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• Schirch, L. (2004). Little book of strategic peacebuilding: A vision and framework for peace with justice. Good Books.
• Staub, E. (2011). Overcoming evil: Genocide, violent conflict, and terrorism. Oxford University Press.

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The International Journal of Indian Psychȯlogy

The Impact of Modernization on Female Gender Roles and Gender Stereotypes: A Psychological Review

| Published: May 17, 2024

India is a land of customs and rituals. It has a vast diversity of traditions. Indian society is said to be very diversified. India is very rich in terms of traditions. But these customs and rituals vary according to culture and society. This is because of the stereotypical mindset of people. Our society is divided into two different worlds. Patriarchal dominance can be noticed. But as time passes and with the rise of the modern world, the situation of women has changed. The impact of modernization is now clearly visible in India and the world. The old belief systems have become a matter of the past but still, there are so many cases where we have seen females treated as objects and considered weak. yet we cannot say that gender inequality is completely demolished with time. It still exists in some parts of society, maybe in a different form than in the past. In this article, we will review how the modernization of society will influence gender roles and gender stereotypes existing in the community.

Modernization , Gender Role , Gender Stereotype , Society , Discrimination

This is an Open Access Research distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any Medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2024, Kumar, H., Soni, E., Rani, S. & Behmani, R.K.

Received: March 12, 2024; Revision Received: May 12, 2024; Accepted: May 17, 2024

Rakesh Kumar Behmani @ [email protected]

Article Overview

Published in   Volume 12, Issue 2, April-June, 2024