Sex Roles最新文献

Due to social role expectations, individuals who work in “gender atypical” occupations (i.e., occupations primarily comprised of workers of a different gender) often face unique job strains that may impede healthy intimate relationships (Yu & Kuo, 2021). At the same time, “greedy institutions” (i.e., those that expect total commitment from members, e.g., family, the military), demand members’ full commitment and may increase risk for marital problems. Women’s higher marriage rates to fellow strained professionals likely also contribute to work/family tension (Yu & Kuo, 2021). Still, little is known about how one’s gender and their spouse’s career are associated with specific marital problems in gender atypical, greedy institutions like the military. This study utilized the United States Air Force Community Feedback Tool (N = 28,745) to examine rates of and associations between gender, spouse military status, and types of marital problems endorsed by active-duty members (e.g., communication, divorce, abuse, living apart). Rate comparisons revealed that servicewomen endorsed higher rates of all types of marital problems than servicemen. After controlling for potential confounding variables, spouse military status moderated the relationship between gender and two problems likely exacerbated in greedy military institutions: changing roles and living apart. This finding suggests that servicewomen are bearing more marital burden overall, and only when men’s spouses serve do they experience similar marital problems. Results indicate that human resource policies and leadership practices are warranted that support dual-military/career couples (e.g., reducing unnecessary moves, providing targeted transitional assistance) as well as preventative and clinical interventions to mitigate severe problems disproportionately faced by women (e.g., community efforts to identify and mitigate risks of abuse and divorce).

Liberal abortion laws are crucial to the freedom of reproductive decision-making. However, even in countries like Iceland, which have high levels of gender equality and liberal abortion policies, women often feel constrained by socio-political rhetoric and traditional attitudes about motherhood. This paper examines the association between reproductive choice and potential regret in motherhood. Through in-depth interviews with 35 individuals in Iceland who can bear children, we investigate the tension between the decision not to have an abortion and feelings of regret about motherhood. Using thematic analysis, we explore three main themes relating to abortion attitudes: legitimacy and morality, the weight of responsibility, and the social and personal constraints to reproductive autonomy. The participants’ personal narratives reveal how socio-political discourses and attitudes surrounding abortion complicate the process of reproductive decision-making. The results suggest that the complexity arises when women struggle with the decision to end a pregnancy, feeling they have no real choice without a legitimate justification for having an abortion. These experiences can serve to minimize the negative discourse and social stigmas that are commonly associated with abortion in the public discourse. The findings can assist clinical, medical, and social welfare professionals by fostering a deeper understanding of the importance of reproductive autonomy and support in reproductive decision-making processes.

This study addresses the underexplored domain of self-reports of gendered nonverbal behaviors. We developed the Gendered Mannerisms Scale (GMS) to bridge self-perception and social perception of gendered nonverbal cues. Across three studies, the paper validates the GMS as a reliable self-report psychometric tool and determines which gendered nonverbal behaviors show consistent gender differences for cisgender heterosexual women and men in U.S. samples. The first two studies employed exploratory factor analysis with distinct samples from a U.S. data vendor platform to establish and replicate the GMS’s initial factor structure, demonstrating the scale’s robustness in capturing the self-reports of gendered nonverbal behaviors. The third study used a measurement invariance analysis with a community-based sample, further demonstrating the scale’s validity and its applicability to more racially/ethnically diverse and younger samples (than Studies 1 and 2). Finally, the four factors of self-reportable nonverbal gendered behavior consistently identified by the GMS are: (a) dynamic movements and open posture, (b) swaying gait, (c) gesticulations, and (d) closed posture. Importantly, the first factor (dynamic) may actually be more influenced by extraversion than gender.

The current study aims to explore how varying perceptions of masculinity influence adolescent boys' attitudes toward STEM and their future engagement with STEM-related careers, with a particular focus on the differences between boys from the social center and those from the periphery in Israel. Analyzing 27 in-depth interviews with participants from the social periphery and the social center, we uncovered a pronounced difference: boys from the social periphery, who were facing economic challenges, often adhered to traditional masculinity perceptions, potentially curtailing their STEM engagement. This pattern aligns with Connell’s (1995) theory of hegemonic masculinity. In contrast, boys from the social center, who were typically more affluent, demonstrated fluid masculinity perceptions, which may encourage their participation in STEM. This difference highlights the significant role of masculinity perceptions in shaping and developing "science capital"— the cultural and social assets that individuals hold, which enable them to engage with and participate in scientific fields. Our findings highlight the importance of considering the socio-geographical environment to understand the acquisition and utilization of science capital. We discuss our contribution to a more nuanced theory and call for interventions that should be implemented differently among boys from the social periphery and center, to achieve equality in the accessibility and future use of science capital.

How survivors label victimization experiences that meet the definition of sexual assault can change over time. The current study more closely examines how and why survivors’ labeling of victimization experiences changes over time. Participants were 380 college students (83.7% cisgender women) with a history of sexual assault victimization since age 14. Participants reported the extent to which they considered their most recent sexual victimization experience to be sexual assault one-month post-assault (i.e., retrospectively) and currently (i.e., during participation), then explained their reasons for label changes via open-ended responses. Over half (56.0%) of participants were consistent in their labeling across timepoints, 36.1% increased the extent to which they labeled the experience a sexual assault, and 7.9% decreased the extent to which they labeled the experience a sexual assault. Notably, queer (i.e., LGBTQ+) survivors evidenced the greatest labeling change, and cisgender heterosexual men survivors evidenced the lowest current sexual assault labeling. Using qualitative content analysis, we identified five reasons for broad label change by participants: (1) meaning-making, (2) attributions, (3) (un)certainty, (4) assault characteristics, and (5) emotional and cognitive consequences. These findings demonstrate that survivors’ use of the label sexual assault can decrease over time, and that reasons for broad label change are influenced by event-, individual-, interpersonal-, and societal-level factors. Individuals who support sexual assault survivors are encouraged to recognize that labeling can be a flexible, bidirectional process and validate survivors’ evolving perceptions of their victimization experiences.

Women tend to view themselves as less capable than men. Some have interpreted this as female underestimation and male overestimation, a phenomenon called hubris-humility effect. While such an effect could have important practical implications (e.g., on career choices), only few studies compared women's and men's self-estimates to their measured abilities. We investigated the hubris-humility effect in spatial intelligence, a domain in which many studies reported women’s and men’s abilities to differ substantially. Participants (n = 208; 103 women and 105 men; aged 18–37) completed self-estimate and performance measures of spatial intelligence and additional questionnaires on personality and interests. Surprisingly, women and men performed similarly well in the spatial tests. Still, women, on average, provided more negative self-estimates of their overall spatial intelligence and concrete test performance than men. This constituted female humility but not male hubris: Women underestimated themselves, but men did not overestimate themselves. To contextualize the effect, we tested associations between misestimation and specific personality traits (narcissism and honesty-humility). Especially people higher in grandiose narcissism provided overly positive self-estimates. However, even when we accounted for individual differences in grandiose narcissism, women still underestimated themselves more than men. We further investigated interests in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers. Women reported lower STEM interests than men—interests that, in turn, showed stronger associations to self-estimated than measured spatial intelligence. Our findings suggest that improving women’s self-views in the spatial domain might contribute towards greater gender equality in STEM.

Drawing on the theoretical frameworks of stigma and hegemonic masculinity, this qualitative study describes the stigmatization of men experiencing homelessness. The analysis is based on individual interviews carried out with 44 men experiencing homelessness, aged 23 to 66 years. Using a thematic analysis method, we identified three main themes related to the stigmatization of men experiencing homelessness. The first theme describes four forms of stereotypes attached to men’s experiences of homelessness—“addict,” “psychotic,” “dangerous,” and “minority.” The second theme refers to the symbolic consequences of stigmatization which create a sense of humiliation and shame among participants, to the point of making them feel reduced, as in “less than men.” The third theme describes the stigma management strategies deployed by men to present a positive image of themselves despite experiencing homelessness, which involves playing with the codes of masculinity. This study reveals that the process of stigmatization that affects men experiencing homelessness is based on gendered relationships marked by hegemonic masculinity founded on capitalistic, patriarchal, and “homeism” logics, highly valued in contemporary society.

The increasing share of individuals adopting gender-neutral pronouns as their personal pronouns represents one of the most significant socio-linguistic shifts of the past decade. Academic research in this space, however, is surprisingly limited. This study relies on unique data from an Australian equity and diversity survey (N = 41,157) to provide first-time empirical evidence on the factors underpinning the adoption of gender-neutral pronouns, focusing on gender identity, outness, allyship, sexual orientation, and other social locations. Our results reveal a high degree of overlap between non-binary identification and adoption of gender-neutral ‘they’ pronouns. However, a non-negligible share of non-binary individuals do not use these pronouns, whereas a small-to-moderate share of individuals from binary genders do so. Not being ‘out’ about their gender identity precluded adoption of ‘they’ pronouns amongst non-binary people, whereas being an active ally, a woman, and sexuality-diverse fostered their adoption amongst binary-gender individuals. These results carry important practical lessons for diversity-and-inclusion training and interpersonal interactions in social settings.

We expanded upon previous research by providing a mixed-method investigation of students’ experiences of campus gender bias incidents. Undergraduates (N = 225) from a Northeastern U.S. selective liberal arts college (SLAC) responded to an open-ended prompt about their exposure to incidents of campus bias targeting those across the gender identity spectrum. Qualitative coding and thematic analysis revealed rich information about the existence/prevalence, perceived targets, and types/manifestations of gender bias. While the majority of comments (70.7%) included reports of a specific example of campus gender bias, nearly half (40.4%) of the comments included hedged or second-guessed reports, and nearly a quarter (23.1%) denied encountering gender bias. Comments identified “women” as the perceived targets of gender bias most commonly (36%), followed by cisgender, heterosexual men (12.4%) and “non-cisgender” people (12%). Students described 21 different types of campus gender bias, including misgendering, benevolent sexism, backlash for violating gender stereotypes and stigma for possessing marginalized gender identities, sexualization, verbal and physical aggression, and issues related to institutional handling of sexual assault cases (i.e., Title-IX) and other college policies. Their comments frequently included references to stereotypically-masculine contexts (e.g., STEM, athletics), and particularly highlighted the consequences of campus gender bias for academic/professional advancement as well as sense of belonging/inclusion. Given that evidence of substantial gender bias emerged “even” at a relatively progressive SLAC, we discuss implications for campus climate and gender justice issues more broadly.