Gender and Aggression in Marital Relationships: A Life-Span Perspective

This study examines the relationship between age, gender, and marital aggression by comparing conflict resolution strategies, physical aggression, and injury across 6,185 married young, middle and older aged men and women. We found a consistent age effect such that younger participants used more maladaptive conflict resolution strategies, engaged in more physical arguments, and sustained more injuries than older participants. In terms of gender differences, women compared to men used calm discussions less (the least reported by women who were young) and heated arguments more. Analyses on the relation among age, gender, and injuries showed that more young and middle-aged women than men reported that they had sustained injuries at the hands of their spouse and more young men than women reported inflicting injury on their spouse. The results are discussed in relation to research on gender differences in intimate violence and the association of age and intimate aggression in general.     

Reproductive‐age women are overrepresented among perpetrators of husband killing

When a woman kills her husband, it is almost always an unplanned action of self‐defense against a battering husband or a last‐ditch attempt to survive a batterer's tyranny. Younger, reproductive‐age women are battered and killed by husbands at higher rates than are older, postreproductive‐age women. Because husband killing occurs in the context of self‐defense or as a last‐ditch effort to survive, reproductive‐age women should kill their husbands at higher rates than do postreproductive‐age women. I used a sample of 8,077 husband killings to test this hypothesis. Results support the hypothesis and document that (1) the highest rates of husband killing are for the youngest women, (2) the youngest husbands are at greatest risk of being killed by their wives, (3) women married to older men kill their husbands at higher rates than do women married to same‐age men and women married to younger men, and (4) reproductive‐age women kill their husbands at higher rates than do postreproductive‐age women across two groups: women married to younger men and women married to older men. Discussion suggests directions for future work that can improve the identification of women at greatest risk for husband killing. Aggr. Behav. 26:309–317, 2000. © 2000 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Married Women’s Situational Use of Last Names: An Empirical Study

Situational last name use was examined in a sample of 600 married women who responded to a mail survey. The sample was selected from the faculty and staff of a state university in the Midwest with over-sampling of women whose last name differed from their husband’s last name. Overall, 12% of married women reported situational last name use. Women from all last name choices (e.g., changed to husband’s, kept birth surname) reported situational surname use, but the most common occurrence of this practice was among hyphenators. Situational users were most likely to use their husband’s last name in family situations and their birth surname in professional situations. Factors that increase situational last name use included full-time employment, higher levels of educational attainment, and an older age at marriage. Situational last name use by married women can be seen as a manifestation of ambiguity over identity with family and non-family roles.     

Crossover,Degendering, or…? A Multidimensional Approach to Life-Span Gender Development

Inspired by Sandra Bem and subsequent theorists, we examine gender as a multidimensional construct that differs across adulthood to test claims made by two different theories of life-span gender development—that men and women cross over and become more like the other gender with age, and that aging involves degendering or viewing gender as a less central aspect of the self. Self-report survey data from a U.S. sample of men and women recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (25–89 years, M age?=?47.38, SD?=?14.05) were used to investigate the extent to which stereotypically masculine traits; stereotypically feminine traits; androgyny; gender identification (i.e., identifying with one’s gender group and viewing this as a positive part of the self); and gender typicality (i.e., viewing oneself as a typical member of one’s gender group) differ between younger (i.e., under age 40), middle-aged (i.e., ages 40–59), and older men and women (i.e., age 60 and older) and by marital status. Results indicate that gender differences in stereotypically masculine and feminine personality traits exist, and that marital status moderates age and gender differences in traits. Among older men, those who are married are more likely to endorse stereotypically masculine traits, but also have higher androgyny scores than unmarried men. With age, both men and women perceive themselves as more typical examples of their gender group. Results are discussed as providing limited support for crossover theory, but not degendering.     

The Influences of Sex and Gender-Role Identity on Moral Cognition and Prosocial Personality Traits

The relations of sex and gender-role identity to moral thought and prosocial personality traits were examined. Two hundred and nine men and women rated the importance of real-life, care-related, justice-related, and mixed (both care- and justice-related) moral dilemmas. Responses on the real-life and mixed dilemmas also were scored for care and justice orientations. Women and feminine persons viewed moral conflicts as more important than did men and masculine people. On the mixed dilemmas, women scored higher than men on care reasoning, whereas men scored higher than women on justice reasoning. Regardless of sex or gender role, relational real-life dilemmas evoked higher importance and care reasoning scores than did nonrelational ones. Women and persons high in femininity showed more empathic concern for other people. Masculine persons scored lower on personal distress, whereas androgynous persons reported more helpful behaviors than did all others.     

Gender Differences in the Importance of Work and Family Roles: Implications for Work–Family Conflict

In this study we explored between- and within-gender differences in the importance of life roles and their implications for work–family conflict. In earlier research (Cinamon & Rich, 2002) we found 3 profiles of workers who differ in attributions of importance to work and family roles: persons who assigned high importance to both the work role and the family role (“Dual” profile); participants who ascribed high importance to the work role and low importance to the family role (“Work” profile); and participants who attributed high importance to the family role and low importance to the work role (“Family” profile). We used these profiles to clarify the relationship between gender and work–family conflict. Participants were 126 married men and 87 married women who were employed in computer or law firms. Significant between- and within-gender differences were found in the distribution of participants to profiles. Men were equally distributed throughout the profiles, whereas women were underrepresented in the Work category. More women than men fit the Family profile, and more men than women fit the Work profile. No gender differences were found for the Dual profile. Women reported higher parenting and work values than men did. Between-gender differences in work–family conflict were apparent, as were within-gender differences across profiles. Results demonstrate the value of examining both between- and within-gender variation in studies of gender and work–family conflict.     

Age, gender, and individual differences in memory failure appraisal

Young adults (22 men and 24 women) and older adults (24 men and 24 women) rated 12 gender-neutral vignettes describing short-term, long-term, and very-long-term memory failures. Vignette target persons were young (21-32) or older (65-75) men or women. Subjects of both age and gender groups used a double standard: Failures of older targets of both genders were rated as signifying greater mental difficulty than failures of young targets; failures of young targets were attributed to lack of effort and attention. Young subjects judged very-long-term failures more harshly than did older subjects. Subjects' objective memory performance, self-rated memory failure frequency, memory failure discomfort, and depression made little difference in their target person ratings.     

The total workload of male and female white collar workers as related to age, occupational level, and number of children

A questionnaire assessing various aspects of paid as well as unpaid forms of productive activity was mailed to stratified samples of male and female white collar workers, approximately matched for educational and occupational level. Data from 501 men and 679 women employed full time revealed traditional gender differences in terms of main responsibility for household duties, child care etc. In keeping with this, women reported higher levels of work overload, stress and conflict than men, which increased significantly with the number of children at home. The various stress indices reached a peak between the ages of 35 and 39. Men reported more autonomy in their paid work whereas women reported more control at home. Men and women at the upper managerial levels reported more control over their total work situation and less conflict between demands.     

Gender Differences,Infidelity, Dyadic Trust,and Jealousy among Married Turkish Individuals

In the present study, relationships among gender, emotional response to partner’s imagined infidelity (emotional and sexual infidelity), and dyadic trust (low and high levels of trust) were investigated as functions of married Turkish individuals’ jealousy types (cognitive, emotional, and behavioral). Five hundred thirty seven (276 women and 261 men) married individuals living in urban areas in Turkey participated in the study. Results of the Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) revealed significant main effects for gender, infidelity types, and dyadic trust. Particularly, married Turkish men in this study were found to be more emotionally jealous than women. Participants who responded to sexual infidelity as more upsetting had higher levels of emotional jealousy when compared to the participants who found emotional infidelity more upsetting. Moreover, participants with low dyadic trust for their partners were found to be high in their cognitive jealousy and behavioral jealousy reactions. Results are discussed in details with implications for future research and suggestions for mental health practitioners.     

Social status,cognitive ability,and educational attainment as predictors of liberal social attitudes and political trust

We examined the prospective associations between family socio-economic background, childhood intelligence (g) at age 11, educational and occupational attainment, and social attitudes at age 33 in a large (N = 8804), representative sample of the British population born in 1958. Structural equation Modeling identified a latent trait of ‘liberal social attitudes’ underlying attitude factors that are antiracist, socially liberal, and in support of gender equality. Another attitude factor—‘political trust’—was relatively independent from the latent attitude trait and has somewhat different pathways in relation to the other variables included in the analysis. There was a direct association between higher g at age 11 and more liberal social attitudes and political trust at age 33. For both men and women the association between g and liberal social attitudes was partly mediated via educational qualifications, and to a much lesser extent via adult occupational attainment. For women the association between g and political trust was partly mediated through both educational qualification and occupational attainment, and for men it was mediated mainly via occupational attainment. Men and women who had higher educational qualifications and higher occupational status tend to be more socially liberal and more trusting of the democratic political system. In terms of socio-economic background, people from less privileged families showed less political trust, but did not differ much in liberal social attitudes from those born into relatively more privileged circumstances. This study shows that social background, cognitive ability, education, and own social status influence perceptions of society.     

Adversarial Sexual Attitudes Toward Women: The Relationships with Gender and Traditionalism

This investigation examines gender differences in adversarial attitudes toward women and their relationships with traditionalism and age. The sample participated in an online survey, collected at a large university in the west. The sample consisted of 777 individuals, 342 men and 375 women, with a mean age 22.22. Findings indicate that men significantly endorse rape myth acceptance, adversarial sexual beliefs and acceptance of interpersonal violence more than women. In addition, men are significantly more traditional in their gender role beliefs than women and age is significantly related to rape myth acceptance and acceptance of interpersonal violence. Within gender, men’s acceptance of all criterion variables increased with age whereas women’s acceptance of interpersonal violence increased with age. Findings also indicate more disparate incomes between the genders in lower income brackets, but more alignment in higher brackets. Implications are discussed in the context of theoretical considerations.     

Beliefs about and experiences with battering: Women and men in two populations

A questionnaire was developed to measure beliefs about and experiences with violence in the family. Two groups of persons in two different states who had attended conferences on battered women participated in this research. Of the 177 subjects (84% women, 16% men), none of the men had been battered, yet over one-third of the women had been; more older women reported having been adult battering victims than did younger women; the women had less formal education than the men; the women in the lower educational groups were more likely to have been battered and to report fear of becoming victims; and the social service workers reported little fear of battering.     

Parental interest in children's education,children's self‐esteem and locus of control,and later educational attainment: Twenty‐six year follow‐up of the 1970 British Birth Cohort

Background. Few studies have investigated if mother's interest and father's interest in child's education are linked to educational attainment via their impact on child's self‐esteem and locus of control. Aims. (1) To investigate (after controlling for known confounding factors) the long‐term effect of mother's and father's interest in child's education at age 10 and child's locus of control and self‐esteem at age 10 in educational attainment at age 26; and (2) to explore if mother's interest and father's interest in child's education are linked to child's educational attainment via their effect in increasing child's self‐esteem and internal locus of control. Sample. The study used longitudinal data from sweeps of the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70). The initial sample was those 1,737 men and 2,033 women with valid data on age 10 self‐esteem, locus of control, father's interest, mother's interest, and age 26 educational attainment. Of these, 1,326 men and 1,578 women were included in the final analysis. Method. The birth to age 10 factors that were controlled for were birth weight, parental social class, socio‐economic disadvantage, emotional/behavioural problems, cognitive ability, and mother's educational attainment. Results. At the multivariate level, internal locus of control and mother's interest (but not self‐esteem) were significantly related to educational attainment in both men and women. Father's interest was a significant predictor of educational attainment only in women. Parent's interest was not linked to educational attainment via its impact on child's self‐esteem or locus of control. Self‐esteem predicted educational attainment in both genders by increasing internal locus of control, and fathers' interest predicted educational attainment in men by increasing mother's involvement. Conclusion. Although mothers' and fathers' interest in their children's education were not linked to educational attainment via their impact on children's self‐esteem or locus of control, they were significant predictors of educational attainment especially in daughters.     

Gender Differences in Coping Styles of Chinese Military Officers Undergoing Intensive Training

This study investigated gender differences in anxiety and coping styles under the stress of intense military training. We surveyed Chinese female (n = 470) and male (n = 379) military officers who were surveyed during the third month of a 10-month intensive training program. Results indicated that state and trait anxiety were highly correlated in both women and men. In general, female officers had higher levels of anxiety, greater negative coping tendencies, and less perceived self-efficacy than their male counterparts. When compared with the norm, both women and men had significantly more positive coping strategies. A hierarchical multiple regression analysis showed factors that influenced male and female state anxiety. Avoidance, which was chosen by women more often than men, in general was less useful for female officers. The most common positive coping style for female officers was problem solving, whereas for men it was help seeking. We suggested that even female officers with lower mental health levels than their male counterparts made active cognitive changes to their coping styles when undergoing intense military training.     

Why women of lower educational attainment struggle to make healthier food choices: The importance of psychological and social factors

Women of lower educational attainment are more likely to eat unhealthy diets than women of higher educational attainment. To identify influences on the food choices of women with lower educational attainment, 11 focus groups (eight with women of lower, and three with women of higher educational attainment) were held. Using a semi-structured discussion guide, environmental, social, historical and psychological factors known to be associated with food choice were explored. Audio recordings were transcribed verbatim and thematically analysed. Compared to women of higher educational attainment, women of lower educational attainment had less control over their families’ food choices, less support for attempts to eat healthily, fewer opportunities to observe and learn good food-related practices, more negative affect, more perceived environmental constraints and more ambiguous beliefs about the consequences of eating a nutritious diet. These findings provide a starting point for taking forward the design of an intervention to improve the diets of young women.     

The Gendered Nature of Discriminatory Experiences by Race, Class, and Sexuality: A Comparison of Intersectionality Theory and the Subordinate Male Target Hypothesis

Three competing theoretical approaches to social inequalities by gender, race, class, and sexuality are examined. The additive approach assumes that people possessing multiple subordinate-group identities experience the oppressions associated with them as distinct phenomena. The intersectionality-inspired approach suggests that subordinate-group identities such as non-White, lower class, and non-heterosexual interact with gender in a synergistic way, occasioning inordinately pernicious experiences of discrimination for women possessing one or more additional subordinate-group identities. The subordinate male target hypothesis (SMTH) claims that the discrimination experienced by the men of subordinate groups—primarily at the hands of men of dominant groups—is greater than that experienced by the women of the same subordinate groups. In 2009, telephone survey data was collected from 414 women and 208 men in Toronto, Canada and 521 women and 245 men in Vancouver, Canada. Negative binomial regression techniques are applied to these data to determine whether and how gender (male or female), race (White or non-White), educational attainment, household income, and sexual orientation (heterosexual or non-heterosexual), as well as two-way interactions between gender and the other variables, predict scale measures of self-reported major experiences of discrimination and self-reported chronic, routine discriminatory experiences. High levels of both kinds of discrimination reported by men in general are at odds with the additive and intersectionality-inspired perspectives which accord women the gender identity most vulnerable to discrimination. Inordinately high levels of routine discrimination reported by men with a high school diploma or less are consistent with the SMTH-inspired perspective.     

Gender differences in social support for socially anxious individuals

Given that social anxiety disorder is a common, chronic, debilitating disorder and socially anxious women appear to have different experiences related to social development and social support than men, it is essential that the gender differences in social anxiety and social support be understood. The present study examined perceived social support quantity and satisfaction in 23 women and 28 men seeking treatment for social anxiety disorder. Contrary to expectations, men and women did not differ on measures of social support. However, younger, unmarried women reported having smaller social support networks and less satisfaction with their social support networks than older, married women. Analyses of socially anxious men did not reveal such a pattern. The current study provides preliminary evidence that younger, single women have social support networks that are less satisfying than the social support networks of older, married women. Inclusion of social support modules within a cognitive behavioral treatment approach for social anxiety disorder may be warranted, particularly for young, unmarried women.     

Gender Differences in Social Support for Socially Anxious Individuals

Given that social anxiety disorder is a common, chronic, debilitating disorder and socially anxious women appear to have different experiences related to social development and social support than men, it is essential that the gender differences in social anxiety and social support be understood. The present study examined perceived social support quantity and satisfaction in 23 women and 28 men seeking treatment for social anxiety disorder. Contrary to expectations, men and women did not differ on measures of social support. However, younger, unmarried women reported having smaller social support networks and less satisfaction with their social support networks than older, married women. Analyses of socially anxious men did not reveal such a pattern. The current study provides preliminary evidence that younger, single women have social support networks that are less satisfying than the social support networks of older, married women. Inclusion of social support modules within a cognitive behavioral treatment approach for social anxiety disorder may be warranted, particularly for young, unmarried women.     

Self-esteem,self-concept,and the life goals and sex-role attitudes of college students1

Questionnaires that assessed self-esteem, self-concept, educational goals, career goals, preferred and expected career commitment, and sex-role attitudes were completed by 884 male and female undergraduates representing two racial groups and two age groups. Men and women did not differ significantly in terms of self-esteem, but the men described themselves as more attractive than did the women in their age group. For the 18–25-year-old white women, an intelligent, unconventional, and/or nonreligious self-concept predicts nontraditional goals and feminist attitudes, and the interaction between self-esteem and socioeconomic status influences educational goals and sex-role attitudes. For the 18–25-year-old white men, a physically strong and intelligent self-concept predicts higher educational goals and traditional career goals, and lower self-described strength and religiousness and greater intelligence predict more feminist attitudes. Physical self-concept is unrelated to goals or attitudes for the female samples. Self-concept is less strongly predictive of goals and attitudes for the black women and the older men and women. Possible reasons for the sample differences and implications for related research are discussed.     

Loneliness, optimism, and well-being among married, divorced, and widowed individuals

The study explored feelings of loneliness and dispositional optimism and their unique contribution to well-being. The sample included 196 women and men (M age = 45.94 years; 54% were women; 34% were married, 34% were divorced, and 32% were widowed) who completed inventories assessing feelings of loneliness, dispositional optimism, and well-being measured by life satisfaction and negative affect. Widows and widowers scored higher than married respondents on loneliness and negative affect and lower on life satisfaction and optimism. Divorced persons scored lower on life satisfaction than married respondents but higher than widows and widowers on optimism. Loneliness was negatively correlated with optimism. Multiple regression analyses using demographics, family status, loneliness, and optimism as independent variables showed that loneliness contributed negatively to well-being, while optimism contributed positively to well-being. A Structural Equation Modeling analysis and mediation tests showed that both loneliness and optimism mediated the effects of widowhood on well-being. The findings are in support of Conservation of Resources (COR) theory (S. E. Hobfoll, 1989, 2001).