INTRODUCTION

1. SEX: The terms sex refers to the biological category of male or female, as defined by
physical differences in genetic composition and in reproductive anatomy and function.

2. GENDER: it refers to the cultural, social, and psychological meanings that are associated
with masculinity and femininity (Wood & Eagly, 2002). You can think of “ male” and
“ female” as distinct categories of sex (a person is typically born a male or a female), but
“ masculine” and “ feminine” as continuums associated with gender (everyone has a
certain degree of masculine and feminine traits and qualities).

3. GENDER ROLES: These are the behaviors, attitudes, and personality traits that are
designated as either masculine or feminine in a given culture. It is common to think of
gender roles in terms of gender stereotypes.

4. GENDER STEREOTYPES: These are the beliefs and expectations people hold about
the typical characteristics, preferences, and behaviors of men and women.

5. GENDER IDENTITY: It refers to their psychological sense of being male or female.

6. SEXUAL ORIENTATION: It is the direction of their emotional and erotic attraction

toward members of the opposite sex, the same sex, or both sexes.

7. MASCULINITY: It includes the traits, behaviors, and interests that society has assigned
to the male gender role. A masculine trait is self-confidence; a masculine behavior is
aggression; and a masculine interest is watching sports.

8. FEMININITY: It includes the traits, behaviors, and interests assigned to the female
gender role. A feminine trait is emotional; a feminine behavior is helping someone; and a
feminine interest is cooking.
9. TYPES OF SEXUAL ORIENTATION: Heterosexuals prefer other-sex partners;
homosexuals prefer same-sex partners; and bisexuals are accepting of other-sex and
same-sex partners.

10. INTERSEX: Intersex persons are those who are born with ambiguous genitals; these
persons typically have surgery to alter their genitals so that they can be consistent
biologically.

11. TRANSSEXUALS: Transsexuals also have a gender identity that does not correspond to
their biological sex but they have hormonal or surgical treatment to change their sex to
correspond with their gender identity.

12. TRANSGENDERED: Transgendered individuals are people who live with a gender
identity that does not correspond to their biological sex. That is, their biological sex is
incongruent with their psychological sex. A transgendered person may be biologically
female but feel psychologically like a male and choose to live life as a male. This
transgendered individual may dress and behave like a man, that is, take on the male
gender role.

HISTORY OF GENDER IN PSYCHOLOGY

The history of the field is divided into four periods that approximate those identified by
Richard Ashmore (1990). Each time period is marked
by one or more key figures in the field
1. 1894– 1936: Sex Differences in Intelligence
The first period focused on the differences between men and women and was marked by the
publication of a book by Ellis (1894) entitled Man and Woman, which called for a scientific
approach to the study of the similarities and differences between men and women. No
consideration was yet given to personality traits or roles associated with sex. Thus, gender
roles were not part of the picture. The primary goal of this era was to examine if (really, to
establish that) men were intellectually superior to women. To accomplish this goal, scientists
turned to the anatomy of the brain (Shields, 1975).
First, scientists focused on the size of the human brain. Because women’ s heads and
brains are smaller than those of men, there seemed to be conclusive evidence that women
were intellectually inferior. However, men were also taller and weighed more than women;
when body size was taken into account, the evidence for sex differences in intelligence
became less clear. If one computed a ratio of the weight of the brain to the weight of the
body, women appeared to have relatively larger brains. If one computed the ratio of the
surface area of the brain to the surface area of the body, men appeared to have relatively
larger brains. Thus brain size alone could not settle the question of sex differences in
intelligence.
Next, researchers turned to specific areas of the brain that could be responsible for higher
levels of intellectual functioning The frontal cortex was first thought to control higher levels
of mental functioning, and men were observed to have larger frontal lobes than women. Then
it appeared men did not have larger frontal lobes; instead, men had larger parietal lobes.
Thus, thinking shifted to the parietal lobe as the seat of intellectual functioning. All this
research came under sharp methodological criticism because the scientists observing the
anatomy of the brain were not blind to the sex associated with the particular brain; that is, the
people evaluating the brain knew whether it belonged to a male or a female! This situation
was ripe for the kinds of experimenter biases.
The period ended with the seminal work of Sex and Personality published by Lewis
Terman and Catherine Cox Miles in 1936. They concluded there are no sex differences in
intellect: “ Intelligence tests, for example, have demonstrated for all time the falsity of the
once widely prevalent belief that women as a class are appreciably or at all inferior to men in
the major aspects of intellect” (p. 1).
2. 1936– 1954: Masculinity– Femininity as a Global Personality Trait
During this next period, researchers shifted their focus from sex differences alone to
consider the notion of gender roles. The construct of masculinity– femininity, or M/F was
introduced during this period. Because men and women did not differ in intelligence, Terman
concluded that the real mental differences between men and women could be captured by
measuring masculinity and femininity. Researchers developed a 456-item instrument to
measure M/F. It was called the Attitude Interest Analysis Survey (AIAS; Terman & Miles,
1936) to disguise the true purpose of the test. The AIAS was the first published M/F scale.
The items chosen were based on statistical sex differences observed in elementary, junior
high, and high school children. This meant that items on which the average female scored
higher than the average male were labeled feminine, and items on which the average male
scored higher than the average female were labeled masculine, regardless of the content of
those items. The M/F scale was also bipolar, which meant that masculinity and femininity
were viewed as opposite ends of a single continuum. The sum of the feminine items was
subtracted from the sum of the masculine items to yield a total M/F score.
The instrument was composed of seven subject areas: (1) word association, (2) inkblot
interpretation, (3) information, (4) emotional and ethical response, (5) interests (likes and
dislikes), (6) admired persons and opinions, and (7) introversion– extroversion, which really
measured superiority– subordination.
Several of these subscales are quite interesting. The information scale was based on the
assumption that men have greater knowledge than women about some areas of life, such as
sports and politics, and women have greater knowledge about other areas of life, such as
gardening and sewing. Thus, giving a correct response to an item about which women are
supposed to know more than men would be scored as feminine; conversely, giving a correct
response to an item about which men are supposed to know more than women would be
scored as masculine. Answering that a marigold is a flower would be scored as feminine,
whereas answering that a marigold is a stone would be scored as masculine. The emotional
and ethical response subscale was scored such that being feminine meant getting angry when
seeing others treated unfairly and being masculine meant getting angry when being disturbed
at work. There were no assumptions about the basis of these sex differences. Terman and
Miles (1936) left the cause of the sex differences—biological, psychological, or
cultural—unspecified.
A few years later, Hathaway and McKinley (1940) developed the Minnesota Multiphasic
Personality Inventory (MMPI). It eventually included an M/F scale that consisted of items
reflecting altruism, emotional sensitivity, sexual preference, preference for certain
occupations, and gender identity questions. The most notable feature in the development of
this scale is that the femininity items were validated on 13 homosexuals. Homosexual men
were compared to heterosexual male soldiers; at that time, heterosexual male soldiers
epitomized (were considered an example of) masculinity and homosexual men were
considered feminine. In fact, feminine traits were considered to be a predisposing factor to
homosexuality in men (Terman & Miles, 1936). Women were not even involved in research
to evaluate femininity. Thus we can see at least two major problems with this instrument:
First, women were not involved in the conceptualization of the female gender role; second,
only 13 homosexual men were involved in the study, which is hardly sufficient to validate an
instrument even if they had been the appropriate population.
Some researchers became concerned about the self-report methodology used to assess
M/F. The purpose of the tests might have been obvious, which could lead men and women to
give socially desirable rather than truthful responses. The concern focused on demand
characteristics. Thus several projective tests of M/F were developed, including one by Franck
and Rosen (1949). They developed a test that consisted of incomplete drawings.
Franck and Rosen began with 60 stimuli, asked men and women to complete the
drawings, and found sex differences in the way that 36 of the 60 were completed. These 36
stimuli then comprised the test. How did men and women differ in their drawings? Men were
found to be more likely to close off the stimuli, make sharper edges, include angles, and
focus on unifying objects rather than keeping them separate. Women were found to leave a
stimulus open, to make round or blunt edges, and to make lines that pointed inward. The
content of the objects men and women drew also was found to differ: Men drew nude
women, skyscrapers, and dynamic objects, whereas women drew animals, flowers, houses,
and static objects. Interestingly, Franck and Rosen (1949) did not conclude that a male and a
female who receive the same score on the test are the same in terms of masculinity and
femininity. In fact, they argued that the drawings of a male who receives a feminine score are
quite bizarre and very different from the drawings of a female who receives a feminine score.
They applied the same logic to a female who receives a masculine score. If the instrument
does not measure psychological masculinity and femininity among both men and women, we
have to wonder about the purpose of the test. Franck and Rosen suggested their instrument
measures acceptance of one’ s gender role rather than the degree of masculinity and
femininity. Males who scored masculine and females who scored feminine were considered
to have accepted their gender roles.
 1954-1982: SEX TYPING AND ANDROGYNY
This period was marked by Eleanor Maccoby’ s (1966) publication of The Development of Sex
Differences, which reviewed important theories of sex typing, that is, how boys and girls
developed sex-appropriate preferences, personality traits, and behaviors. In addition, in 1973,
Anne Constantinople published a major critique of the existing M/F instruments. She questioned
the use of sex differences as the basis for defining masculinity and femininity; she also
questioned whether M/F was really a unidimensional construct that could be captured by a single
bipolar scale. The latter assumption, in particular, was addressed during this period by the
publication of instruments that distinguished masculinity and femininity as independent
constructs. Instrumental Versus Expressive Distinction. A distinction brought to the study of
gender roles that helped conceptualize masculinity and femininity as separate dimensions was
the distinction between an instrumental and an expressive orientation.
In 1955, Parsons, a sociologist, and Bales, a social psychologist, distinguished between
instrumental or goal-oriented behavior and expressive or emotional behavior in their studies of
male group interactions. The instrumental leader focuses on getting the job done and the
expressive leader focuses on maintaining group harmony.
Parsons and Bales (1955) extended the instrumental/expressive distinction to gender.
They saw a relation between superior power and instrumentality and a relation between inferior
power and expressivity. They believed the distinction between the husband role and the wife role
was both an instrumental/ expressive distinction as well as a superior/ inferior power distinction.
The instrumental orientation became linked to the male gender role and the expressive
orientation became linked to the female gender role. Two instruments were developed during this
period that linked the instrumental versus expressive orientation to gender role.
1. 1974, Sandra Bem published the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI)
2. Spence, Helmreich, and Stapp published the Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ).
The BSRI and the PAQ are still the most commonly used inventories to measure masculinity and
femininity today. The innovative feature of both instruments is that masculinity and femininity
are conceptualized as two independent dimensions rather than a single bipolar scale; thus, a
person receives a masculinity score and a femininity score. Masculinity and femininity were no
longer viewed as opposites.
The BSRI (Bem, 1974)
The BSRI (Bem, 1974) was developed by having undergraduates rate how desirable it is
for a man and a woman to possess each of 400 attributes. Items that students rated as more
desirable for a male to possess were indicators of masculinity, and items that students rated as
more desirable for a female were indicators of femininity. Items were not based on respondents’
views of how likely men and women are to have these traits but on their views of how desirable
it is for men and women to have the traits. The final BSRI consisted of 60 items: 20 masculines,
20 feminine, and 20 neutral items. The neutral items are included in the instrument to disguise
the purpose of the scale.
PAQ (Spence, Helmreich, & Stapp, 1974)
PAQ (Spence, Helmreich, & Stapp, 1974) was developed by focusing on the perception of how
likely men and women are to possess certain traits. College students were asked to rate the
typical adult male and female, the typical college male and female, and the ideal male and
female. The masculinity scale included items that students viewed as more characteristic of men
than women but also as ideal for both men and women to possess. “ Independence” was a
masculinity item; the typical college male was viewed as more independent than the typical
college female, but independence was perceived as equally desirable in both men and women.
The femininity scale included items that were more characteristic of women than men but
viewed as ideal in both women and men. “ Understanding of others” was a femininity item; the
typical college female was rated as more understanding of others than the typical college male,
but respondents viewed being understanding of others as a socially desirable trait for both
women and men. Spence and colleagues (1974) also created a third scale, called the M/F scale,
that was bipolar. That is, one end represented masculinity and the other end represented
femininity.
The items on the masculinity scales of the BSRI and PAQ were thought to reflect an instrumental
or agentic orientation, and the items on the femininity scales were thought to reflect an
expressive or communal orientation. Scores on the masculinity and femininity scales are
generally uncorrelated, reflecting the fact that they are two independent dimensions.
Women’ s masculinity scores have increased over time, which has reduced the size of that sex
difference (Spence & Buckner, 2000). People view masculine characteristics as more desirable in
women today than they did in 1972 (Auster & Ohm, 2000). People’ s views of what is desirable
in men have not changed. These findings reflect the greater changes in the female than the male
gender role over the past several decades. There has been more encouragement for women to
become agentic than for men to become communal. Because reports of femininity and
masculinity could be influenced by demand characteristics, implicit measures of masculinity and
femininity have been developed, the most popular of which is the Implicit Association Test
(IAT; Greenwald & Farnham, 2000).
Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald & Farnham, 2000)
The IAT is based on reaction times. Individuals see a series of agentic and communal attributes
flashed on a screen, one at a time, and have to indicate whether the attribute reflects a self-related
term or an other-related term as well as whether the attribute characterizes themselves or not.
The measure correlates with self-report measures of agency and communion and reveals larger
sex differences, perhaps because the implicit measure reduces demand characteristics. To date, it
is not known whether these measures predict behavior (Wood & Eagly, 2009).
Androgyny.
One outgrowth of these two M/F inventories (the BSRI and the PAQ) was the conceptualization
of and research on androgyny. Androgyny emerged from the operationalization of masculinity
and femininity as unipolar, independent dimensions. The androgynous person was someone who
displayed both masculine and feminine traits. Androgyny was first measured with the BSRI by
subtracting the masculinity score from the femininity score. Positive difference scores reflected
femininity, and negative difference scores reflected masculinity. Scores near zero reflected
androgyny, signifying that people had a relatively equal amount of both traits.
• Sex-Typed: A male who scored masculine and a female who scored feminine
were referred to as sex-typed.
• Cross-sex-typed. A masculine female and a feminine male were referred to as
cross-sex-typed.
One problem with this measurement of androgyny is that the score did not distinguish
between people who endorsed many masculine and feminine qualities from people who
endorsed only a few masculine and feminine qualities. Someone who endorsed 10
masculine and 10 feminine traits received the same score (0) as someone who endorsed 2
masculine and 2 feminine traits; both were viewed as androgynous.
 Spence and colleagues (1974) had an alternative system for scoring androgyny. They
divided scores on the masculinity and femininity scales in half to create the four
following groups.
1. Someone who possessed a high number of masculine features and a low number of
feminine features was designated masculine;
2. Someone who possessed a high number of feminine and a low number of masculine
features was designated feminine.
3. The androgynous person was someone who possessed a high number of both
masculine and feminine features.
4. A person who had few masculine or feminine traits was referred to as
undifferentiated.
Androgyny was put forth by Bem (1974, 1975) as an ideal: The androgynous person was
one who embodied the socially desirable features of both masculinity and femininity. It was no
longer believed the most psychologically healthy people were masculine men and feminine
women; instead, the healthiest people were thought to be those who possessed both attributes.
Androgynous people were supposed to have the best of both worlds and to demonstrate the
greatest behavioral flexibility and the best psychological adjustment. Unfortunately, subsequent
research revealed that the masculinity scale alone predicts behavioral flexibility and
psychological adjustment as well as, and sometimes better than, the androgyny score (e.g., Woo
& Oei, 2006). In hindsight, this finding is not so surprising because the traits included on the
BSRI and PAQ masculinity scales are those valued by American society. Bem actually
conceptualized androgyny to be much more than the sum of masculine and feminine traits.
Androgyny had implications for how one thought about the world.
Undesirable Aspects of Masculinity and Femininity.
One criticism of the PAQ and the BSRI is that a majority of attributes are socially
desirable. In 1979, Spence, Helmreich, and Holahan set out to develop scales that paralleled the
original M/F scales in content but differed in social desirability.
• The masculinity scale, which they referred to as M+, was thought to reflect a positive
instrumental or agentic orientation,
• The femininity scale, which they referred to as F+, was thought to reflect a positive
expressive or communal orientation.
Spence and colleagues were looking to develop scales that measured socially undesirable aspects
of agentic and communal orientations. Spence and colleagues turned to the work of David Bakan
(1966), who richly developed the ideas of agency and communion. Bakan argued there are two
principles of human existence:
a. An agentic: one that focuses on the self and separation (male principle)
b. A communal: one that focuses on others and connection (female principle)
Bakan argued that it is important for agency to be mitigated by communion and that unmitigated
agency would be destructive to the self and society. Unmitigated agency reflected a focus on the
self to the neglect of others.
Drawing on this work, Spence and colleagues (1979) developed a negative masculinity scale that
reflected unmitigated agency. The unmitigated agency scale is agentic like the earlier positive
masculinity scale, more common in men than women, and socially undesirable in both men and
women. Most important, it conceptually reflects the construct of unmitigated agency: a focus on
the self to the exclusion of others. It includes a hostile attitude toward others and self-absorption.
Spence and colleagues (1979) also wanted to capture socially undesirable aspects of the female
gender role. Turning to Bakan (1966) again, they noted that communion also ought to be
mitigated by agency. Although Bakan never used the term unmitigated communion, he noted it
would be unhealthy to focus on others to the exclusion of the self. Spence and colleagues had
more difficulty coming up with traits that conceptually reflected unmitigated communion. They
developed two negative femininity scales, but neither conceptually captured the construct of
unmitigated communion (Spence et al., 1979). Later, I developed an unmitigated communion
scale (Helgeson, 1993; Helgeson & Fritz, 1998). The unmitigated communion scale has two
components:
a. over involvement with others
b. neglect of the self.
1982 To PRESENT: GENDER AS A SOCIAL CATEGORY
Over the past three decades, research on sex and gender has increased rapidly in number
(proliferated). There have been two recent trends.
1. The first has been to view gender as a multifaceted or multidimensional construct,
meaning that the two-dimensional view of masculinity and femininity is not sufficient to
 capture gender roles. The development of the unmitigated agency and unmitigated
communion scales was a first step in this direction.
2. The second research direction has been to emphasize the social context in which gender
occurs. The research on gender diagnosticity addresses this issue. Emphasis on the social
context led to research on gender-role constraints, the difficulties people face due to the
limits a society places on gender-role-appropriate behavior.
Gender Role as Multifaceted.
In 1985, Spence and Sawin called for the renaming of the PAQ masculinity and femininity
scales. They stated that these scales reflect only one aspect of masculinity and femininity—
instrumentality or agency and expressiveness or communion—and that the names of the scales
should reflect these aspects. They argued that masculinity and femininity are multidimensional
constructs that cannot be captured by a single trait instrument. What else is involved in
masculinity and femininity besides the traits that appear on the BSRI and the PAQ? Researchers
began to realize that lay conceptions of masculinity and femininity included more diverse
content, such as physical characteristics and role behaviors, in addition to personality traits
In 1994, Helgeson asked college students and their parents to describe one of four targets:
A. a masculine man,
B. a masculine woman,
C. a feminine man,
D. a feminine woman
Slightly less than half of the sample was Caucasian; thus, the sample was diverse in terms of age
as well as ethnicity. The features of masculinity and femininity fell into one of three categories:
A. personality traits
B. interests,
C. physical appearance.
The average person identified five personality traits, two interests, and three physical appearance
features for each target. In addition, many of the identified personality traits were reflected on
conventional M/F inventories, suggesting that lay conceptions of M/F fit the scientific literature.
Whether the target’ s sex fit society’ s prescribed gender role influenced people’ s beliefs. For
example, features unique to the masculine male were socially desirable (e.g., well dressed), but
features unique to the masculine female were socially undesirable (e.g., uncaring, ugly, hostile).
Among the distinct features of the feminine male, some were positive (e.g., talkative, emotional,
creative) and some were negative (e.g., insecure, weak).
One limitation of most of this research is that conceptions of masculinity and femininity
are limited to the people who have been studied: typically, White, middle-class American men
and women. It would be interesting to know more about conceptions of masculinity and
femininity across people of different races, classes, religions, and more diverse age groups, such
as children and the elderly.
The Social Context Surrounding Gender.
An emphasis during this period, and today, is on how the social context influences the
nature of gender. Social psychologists, in particular Kay Deaux and Brenda Major (1987),
examined gender as a social category by emphasizing the situational forces that influence
whether sex differences in behavior are observed.
Another approach has been the movement by the social constructionists, who argue that
gender does not reside inside a person but resides in our interactions with people. Social
constructionists emphasize the diversity of human experience and view gender as the effect of an
interaction rather than the cause of the interaction. We, the perceivers, create gender by our
expectations, by our behavior, and by what we decide to include in this category. The studies
reviewed that compare men and women on a number of domains lead to the conclusion that the
situation, the context, has a large influence on the size of any differences that appear between
women and men.
Gender-Role Strain.
By viewing gender as a social category, researchers paid greater attention to the influence
of society on the nature of gender roles. One outgrowth of this recognition was research on
gender role strain, a phenomenon that occurs when gender-role expectations have negative
consequences for the individual. Gender-role strain is likely to occur when gender-role
expectations conflict with naturally occurring tendencies or personal desires. An uncoordinated
male or an athletic female may experience gender-role strain in physical education classes. A
male who wants to pursue dance or a woman who does not want to have children also may suffer
some gender-role strain.
Joseph Pleck (1995) describes two theories of gender-role strain.
 1. Self-role discrepancy theory suggests that strain arises when you fail to live up to the
gender role that society has constructed. This describes the man who is not athletic,
the man who is unemployed, the woman who is not attractive, and the woman who
does not have children.
2. Socialized dysfunctional characteristic theory states that strain arises because the
gender roles that society instills contain inherently dysfunctional personality
characteristics. For example, the male gender role includes the inhibition of emotional
expression, which is not healthy; similarly, the female gender role includes
dependency, which also may not be adaptive.
The concept of gender-role strain has largely been applied to men. The ideas were
inspired by popular books on men that appeared in the 1970s and the 1980s. These books, based
largely on anecdotal evidence collected by men interviewing men or men observing boys, outline
how some of the features of the male gender role limit men’ s relationships and are potentially
harmful to men’ s health. In his examination of young boys, Pollack (1998, 2006) suggests that
gender roles are much more rigid for boys than girls in our society. He describes a male code by
which boys are not to express any form of vulnerability for fear it will be perceived as feminine,
and femininity is equated with being gay, which is strongly derogated by boys.

Female Gender-Role Strain.

Gender-role strain rarely has been studied in women. In 1992, Gillespie and Eisler identified five
areas of strain for women:
1. fear of unemotional relationships
2. fear of physical unattractiveness
3. fear of victimization
4. fear of behaving assertively
5. fear of not being nurturant
This female gender-role strain scale was associated with depression and was independent from
the PAQ femininity scale.