New wave or second stage? Attitudes of college women toward feminism

The attitudes of female subjects toward gender roles, gender inequality, and the women's movement were measured using a 24-item attitudinal inventory. Subjects tended to hold nontraditional but only moderately feminist attitudes toward gender roles. They were, however, highly aware of gender inequality and supportive of the women's movement, although they were also reluctant to identify themselves as feminists. T tests revealed that subjects most supportive of feminism were advanced students (juniors and seniors) and students who had personally experienced discrimination. But when personal experience of sex discrimination was controlled for, the strength of the relationships between class level and gender role attitudes, and between class level and support for the women's movement, diminished. Students who had personally experienced sex discrimination are less traditional and more feminist in their gender role attitudes, and show stronger support for the women's movement, regardless of their class level, than students who have not had such experiences. These findings are interpreted and their implications for the future of the women's movement are discussed.     

"THEY HAVE EYES AND SEE NOT"

An analysis of the display of gender in an Israeli museum of social history decodes the practices by which the museum constructs gender and uses gender difference in the display of Jewish life to construct male dominance and to marginalize women. It reinforces a stereotypical world in which women remain nameless and voiceless and have no contribution to show for themselves. Far from being a reflection of historical reality, women's marginalization is the erasure of women's contribution to Jewish survival. This trivialization of women goes unnoticed by the visitor, to whom the display seems perfectly natural and factually acceptable, and contributes to the preservation of gender difference and inequality in Israeli society. Thus, Beit Hatefusot can be seen as a metaphor for the nonconscious ideology that marginalizes women in Israeli culture and results in their exclusion from such activities that are honored or glorified or bring money or power.     

Women's housing conditions in Bangladesh

This news article describes women's housing conditions, housing policy, and pilot programs to house poor women in Bangladesh. Although Bangladesh has a constitution that reinforces the equal status of women, in practice, men dominate and patrilineal customs determine inheritance and property rights. Religious affiliation also determines land tenure and inheritance. Muslim women can inherit 12.5% of their husband's property if there are children. 25% is inherited if wives are without children. Hindu women without sons can inherit their husband's property, but not parental property. Many families refuse to release property to women without a fight. Women, regardless of ownership of land, rarely control or use their land. The custom of requiring men to maintain wives during the marriage, and daughters until marriage, creates obstacles to women's decision making about property. Without collateral and other security women are unable to secure bank loans. Many women are also constrained by the requirement of male consent or guarantees for bank transactions. Banks do not have a gender responsive criteria for selecting loan recipients. The government does not provide sufficient housing to satisfy the growing housing needs due to population growth. Some housing is available from slum landlords. A National Housing Policy was formulated in 1993. Priority would be given to the housing needs of low income women in urban areas and women-headed households with income below the poverty line. The policy does not address the underlying factors that prevent equal access to housing for women. The government prepared a Human Settlement and Urban Development proposal for the Habitat II conference. The plan did not address gender issues. Special efforts are being made by nongovernmental groups to meet the housing needs of professional women and for some disadvantaged women.     

Making gender matter: the role of gender-based expectancies and gender identification on women's and men's math performance in Sweden

It is well established that an emphasis on gender differences may have a negative effect on women's math performance in USA, Germany and the Netherlands. It has further been found that an individual's identification with the stereotyped group may moderate effects of negative stereotypes. The present study investigated how gender-based expectancies affected the math performance of women and men in Sweden, a nation with a smaller gender gap than in other countries, and a strong cultural emphasis on gender equality. Participants, 112 female and 74 male undergraduate math students from Swedish universities, completed a difficult math test in which their gender was either linked to their test performance or not. Men performed better than women when gender was made relevant among participants who did not see their gender as an important aspect of their identity, while participants high in gender identification were unaffected by gender identity relevance. Moreover, the gender relevance manipulation affected men's performance more than women's. The results deviate from findings on US samples, indicating that the role of group identification as a moderator of stereotype-based expectancy effects is complex, and that factors in the cultural context may interact with individual differences in identification to determine the impact of negative stereotypes.     

SOCIAL CLASS, SOCIAL CHANGE, AND GENDER

This article explores the implications of social class background in the lives of women who attended Radcliffe College in the late 1940s and in the early 1960s. Viewing social classes as "cultures" with implications for how individuals understand their worlds, we examined social class background and cohort differences in women's experiences at Radcliffe, their adult life patterns, their constructions of women's roles, and the influence of the women's movement in their lives. Results indicated that women from working-class backgrounds in both cohorts felt alienated at Radcliffe. Cohort differences, across social class, reflected broad social changes in women's roles in terms of the rates of divorce, childbearing, level of education, and career activity. There were few social class-specific social changes, but there were a number of social class differences among the women in the Class of 1964. These differences suggested that women from working-class backgrounds viewed women's marital role with some suspicion, whereas women from middle- and upper-class backgrounds had a more positive view. Perhaps for this reason, working-class women reported that the women's movement confirmed and supported their skeptical view of middle-class gender norms.     

Body satisfaction, sexual self-schemas and subjective well-being in women

The objectification of women's bodies in western culture creates special emphasis on women's representations of embodied aspects of themselves. I argue that women's satisfaction with their bodies is likely to have particularly strong implications for other embodied aspects of self: in this case, representations of their sexual selves. This paper examines the relationships between women's body satisfaction, their sexual self-schemas, and components of subjective well-being in a sample of 91 Australian women aged between 18 and 68. Body satisfaction and dimensions of women's actual sexual self-schemas predicted satisfaction with life, positive and negative affect. The relationships between body satisfaction and both positive affect and satisfaction with life were partially mediated by the positive dimensions of sexual self-schemas. This finding suggests that at least some of the negative consequences associated with body dissatisfaction are due to the negative implications of body dissatisfaction for women's beliefs about their sexual selves.     

Women's health. Review and research agenda as we approach the 21st century

This article reviews past research and projects future research directions regarding women's health. Sex differences in mortality and morbidity, along with evidence that the quality and quantity of these differences are changing, are examined. Over the past decade, concurrent with dramatic changes in lifestyle and social roles for women, mortality rates have shifted, resulting in a decreasing advantage for women. Explaining the consequences of these dynamic changes requires understanding the health effects of such variables as perceived control, the experience of life roles, perceived and actual social support, and redefinition of gender roles. The future portends additional changes that will significantly affect women's health. In establishing an explicit psychological research agenda on women's health, (a) general recommendations for research are provided and (b) important issues that have not yet received a great deal of research attention (e.g., women and AIDS, psychopharmacology, reproductive technologies) are highlighted. This article expands the current discourse in health psychology and raises a number of issues for serious consideration.     

Different Voices, Still Lives: Problems in the Ethics of Care

ABSTRACT Recent writings in feminist ethics have urged that the activity of caring is more central to women's lives than are considerations of justice and equality. This paper argues that an ethics of care, so understood, is difficult to extend beyond the local and familiar, and is therefore of limited use in addressing the political problems of the modern world. However, the ethics of care does contain an important insight: if references to care are understood not as claims about women's nature, but as reflections on the extent to which moral obligations are both unchosen and conflicting, then an ethics of care can supplement an ethics of justice, and can also provide a more realistic account of both men's and women's moral life.     

CONTEXTUAL HISTORY

The absence of women from published histories of psychology is addressed from a perspective that makes sense of women's place in the history of psychology, including their participation, their exclusion, and their invisibility. This approach is based on principles of social construc-tionism and on a contextual approach to history that seeks to understand women's place in psychology as a product of socially constructed notions of gender, psychology, and history. The article suggests that an awareness of the context created by these constructions explains women's role in psychology to date and holds promise for their meaningful inclusion in the future.     

Implicit romantic fantasies and women's interest in personal power: a glass slipper effect?

Three experiments investigated the relationship between women's romantic fantasies and their interest in personal power. Romantic fantasies (associating partners with chivalry and heroism) were assessed using the Implicit Association Test and self-reports. In each experiment, women's implicit romantic fantasies were dissociated with their conscious beliefs. More important, implicit (but not explicit) romantic fantasies negatively predicted women's interest in personal power, including projected income, education goal, interest in high-status jobs, and group leadership appeal. By contrast, men's implicit romantic fantasies were not routinely linked to their interest in personal power. In concert, the findings are consistent with positing a "glass slipper" effect for women that may be an implicit barrier to gender equity.     

Gender Identification Moderates Stereotype Threat Effects on Women's Math Performance

This research applies a social identity perspective to situations of stereotype threat. It was hypothesized that individuals would be more susceptible to the performance-inhibiting effects of stereotype threat to the extent that they are highly identified with the group to which a negative stereotype applies. A quasi-experimental study with male and female college students revealed that individual differences in gender identification (i.e., importance placed on gender identity) moderated the effects of gender identity relevance on women's (but not men's) math performance. When their gender identity was linked to their performance on a math test, women with higher levels of gender identification performed worse than men, but women with lower levels of gender identification performed equally to men. When gender identity was not linked to test performance, women performed equally to men regardless of the importance they placed on gender identity.     

Implicit stereotypes, gender identification, and math-related outcomes: a prospective study of female college students

This study examined the effects of gender identification and implicit and explicit gender stereotyping among undergraduate women enrolled in college-level calculus courses. Women's gender identification and gender stereotyping regarding math aptitude were assessed after the course's first midterm exam. Implicit, but not explicit, stereotyping interacted with gender identification to affect women's performance on their final exams and their desire to pursue math-related careers. Women who showed low gender identification and low implicit gender stereotyping performed best on the final exam, and women with high scores on both factors were the least inclined to pursue math-based careers. Implications for the underrepresentation of women in math and the hard sciences are discussed.     

GENDER ROLES AND WOMEN'S ACHIEVEMENT-RELATED DECISIONS

Occupational sex segregation continues to exist and the occupational career paths of women and men continue to differ. This article proposes a model to explain these persistent, gender–role linked trends, summarizes evidence to support the proposed mediating psychological mechanisms, and discusses the social experiences that shape gender differences on these mediators. In addition, the article reviews the economic and psychological costs often associated with the traditional female choices and proposes interventions aimed at achieving a more gender–fair social system that does not devalue traditionally female domains. The proposed model links occupational choices to expectations for success and subjective task value, which, in turn, are linked to gender–role socialization, self schemas, and anticipated role and task demands. The importance of subjective task value is stressed, as is the need to study women's achievement–related choices from the women's perspective.     

Gender at Work and at Home in Britain: Continuities and Changes

This paper discusses the views that British men and women hold about gender roles. Drawing on a survey with over 4,000 university students and interviews with professional men and women, it is suggested that, while the majority of both genders are moving toward an egalitarian model of gender roles, men's views are more likely than women's to be constrained by an essentialist mode] of gender. The data presented indicate that men were more likely than were women to endorse traditional gender roles, to regard women as better equipped for child care than men, to believe that women's advances necessarily disadvantage men, and to believe that men's work opportunities have worsened in comparison to women's. Drawing on both the interviews and the survey, it is also argued that beliefs about gender roles tend to be mediated by individualist discourses, which exempt exceptional individuals from normative gender roles.     

College Women��s Feminist Identity: A Multidimensional Analysis with Implications for Coping with Sexism

This study examined components of women's feminist identity and possible relations to their reported coping responses to sexism. A sample of 169 undergraduate women (M?=?19.4?y, SD?=?1.2) from diverse ethnic backgrounds completed surveys assessing their experiences and gender-related views. The first set of analyses revealed that women's social gender identity, exposure to feminism, and gender-egalitarian attitudes independently contributed to feminist identification; moreover, non-stereotyping of feminists further predicted feminist self-identification. A second set of analyses tested the relative contribution of feminist identity components to women's cognitive appraisals of coping responses to sexual harassment. Seeking social support was predicted by self-identification as a feminist (for White European American women only). Confronting was predicted by social gender identity, non-stereotyping of feminists, and public identification as a feminist. Findings highlight possible components of women's feminist identity and their possible impact on coping responses to sexism.     

Sustainable Pressure for "Women-Friendliness" in Sweden

This paper describes how Swedish women argue and act in order to improve their quality of life. It is based on a citizen survey and on interviews with leaders of a broadly defined women's movement. The thesis is that women are in the process of developing their own democratic practice. They thereby challenge the assumption that general suffrage and numerical equality of representation are sufficient conditions for transforming the contemporary gender power order into one characterized by equality of power between women and men. The empirical data show that there is a great deal of variation in perceptions of problems and ways of accomplishing change. The existence of somewhat different priorities and plural feminist strategies for change—state feminist, interest group–based, civil, and segregated—are interpreted as speaking in favor of the sustainability of such pressure for "women-friendliness" in Sweden.     

GENDER STEREOTYPES AND WOMEN'S REPORTS OF LIKING AND ABILITY IN TRADITIONALLY MASCULINE AND FEMININE OCCUPATIONS

Gender stereotypes were examined for their causal influence on women's reported liking for and perceived ability to succeed in traditionally masculine and feminine occupations. One hundred twenty-one women were assigned to either a gender-stereotype activation or filler task and then completed measures of liking for, and perceived ability to succeed in, traditionally masculine and feminine occupations. Strongly gender-identified women showed significantly greater liking for feminine occupations in the stereotype-activation condition than in the control condition. However, more weakly identified women did not show the same effect. In contrast, women weak in gender identification reported an increase in perceived ability for feminine occupations when stereotypes were activated than in the control condition. Activating gender stereotypes did not shift reported liking or perceived ability in traditionally masculine occupations. These results demonstrate the theoretical and practical importance of gender stereotypes on women's career-related attitudes.     

GENDER'S ROLE IN RESPONSES TO INFERTILITY

Infertility is a major life stressor that affects approximately 10% of U.S. married couples. Infertile women and men have reported experiencing depression, helplessness, and marital strain. Given U.S. society's emphasis on women's role as mothers, it has been suggested that women's lives are more disrupted by infertility than those of men. This hypothesis was supported in a survey of 185 infertile couples and 90 presumed fertile couples. Infertile wives, as compared to their husbands, perceived their fertility problem as more stressful, felt more responsible for and in control of their infertility, and engaged in more problem-focused coping. Infertile husbands experienced more home life stress and lower home life performance than did their wives. These differences were not found for presumed fertile couples. Both infertile and presumed fertile wives experienced more depression, more sexual dissatisfaction, and lower self-esteem than did their husbands. Theoretical and counseling implications of these findings are discussed.     

Gender,the Perception of Aggression,and the Overestimation of Gender Bias

The purpose of this study was to investigate how the gender of aggressor, target, and observer influences the perception and evaluation of aggression. One hundred seventy-one university students (predominantly White) read 1 of 8 vignettes that described an aggressive act. The aggressor–target gender combinations and the aggressive act were varied. Data did not support the hypothesis that, because of the impact of gender stereotypes, participants would perceive more aggressiveness in men's aggression than in women's aggression. Participants rated women's aggression as more acceptable than men's aggression, and male participants considered the aggression more acceptable, apparently because they saw the act as less aggressive. In addition, participants estimated how most men/women would perceive and evaluate the aggression. Results suggest that people overestimate how biased others are toward members of their own gender.     

More about brows: how poses that change brow position affect perceptions of gender

The speeded categorisation of gender from photographs of men's and women's faces under conditions of vertical brow and vertical head movement was explored in two sets of experiments. These studies were guided by the suggestion that a simple cue to gender in faces, the vertical distance between the eyelid and brow, could support such decisions. In men this distance is smaller than in women, and can be further reduced by lowering the brows and also by lowering the head and raising the eyes to camera. How does the gender-classification mechanism take changes in pose into account? Male faces with lowered brows (experiment 1) were more quickly and accurately categorised (there was little corresponding 'feminisation' of raised-brow faces). Lowering gaze had a similar effect, but failed to interact with head lowering in a simple manner (experiment 2). We conclude that the initial classification of gender from the facial image may not involve normalisation of the face image to a canonical state (the 'mug-shot view') for expressive pose (brow movement and direction of gaze). For head pose (relative position of the features when the face is not viewed head-on), normalisation cannot be ruled out. Some perceptual mechanisms for these effects, and their functional implications, are discussed.