Femininity and Dominance Across the Lifespan: Longitudinal Findings from Two Cohorts of Women

The Intergenerational Studies (IGS) began in 1929 designed with the overarching goal of describing and predicting normal human development. Here we focus on original IGS participant women and daughters of original participants, with respect to development in femininity and dominance, as measured by the CPI. Three-level HLM indicates older cohort women are higher in femininity than younger cohort women in early adulthood; both cohorts show an equivalent linear decrease with age. In contrast, the two cohorts show equivalent levels of dominance in early adulthood, but the younger cohort women show a greater increase with age than the older cohort women. Results illustrate both cohort and developmental movement toward less femininity and more dominance in women.