Study Guide
My apologies everyone, I have been out most of the week with the flu. Here is a good portion of the study guide. If you study this, and the course notes you should be greatly prepared.
Social cognition
Gender role ideologies
Three components of Gender-role attitudes (Affective, cognitive, and behavioral)
Define the different types of sexism
What is a stereotype?
How has culture effected gender stereotypes?
Category-based expectancies versus target-based expectancies
Subcategories and Gender-role stereotypes
Discrimination
Women and the Media
Development
Issues involved with Intersexed Individuals
Gender-role acquisition
Changes associated with aging
Older women and HIV
Motherhood
Episitomy
Female Genital Mutilation
Doula
Certified Nurse Midwife Practioners
Women Work and Education
gender differences in college experience
Mentor differences
comparable worth
Salary Gap
Sexual Harassment
Work Place Equality
Women and intimate relationships
Women and HIV
Women and Domestic Violence
Gender roles and sex problems
Birth Control
Lesbianism
Abortion
Alternatives to Abortion
Women's Health Issues
PofW Unit 2: Social Cognition, how we think about each other.....
Gender Role Attitudes (Helgison)
I. Atttitudes towards Men's and Women's Roles
A. Gender ideology are attitudes towards men's and women's roles
1. A traditional gender ideology maintains that men's sphere is work and women's sphere is the home (assumption that men have greater power than women).
2. Egalitarian gender ideology maintains that power/status is equal and that both genders identify equally with home and work.
3. Transitional ideology exists between the two. Both men and woman focus on both spheres, however women should devote more time to the home and men to work.
B. When scales such as the Attitudes Toward Women's Scale are used to measure attitudes, women have less traditional attitudes towards gender roles when compared to men.
1. This appears to be a universal, but individualistic cultures tended to be less traditional the collectivist cultures.
2. Over time the gender difference has become smaller.
C. Over time these attitudes have become more liberal
D. Ethnic differences between AA's and Cauc. on gender attitudes is unclear
1. One study on AA women of a lower SE status found that their own traits were androgynous (they were more likely to be this than their white counterparts), but they were more likely than their white counterpart to report more traditional attitudes towards gender roles than their white counterparts (Binion,1990).
a. specifically they thought women are responsible for the raising of children, that men should not have to do housework, and that men do not take women seriously.
b. Binion argues that AA are more likely to be socialize to be independent , self reliant and hardworking than their white counterpart. This could be due to the fact that AA women have been employed outside of the home due to economic necessity than white women.
c. Binion argues that AA women need these more male traits to survive, but need the more traditional attitudes to get along w/AA men.
d. By adoption less traditional attitude it could be seen as a threat to the AA male who is of a lesser status than the white male, (who is the AA females partner in the race movement)
E. Hispanics and gender role attitudes.
1. When comparing gender role attitudes between AA's, whites, and hispanics, C women were the most non-traditional and hispanic women the most traditional [Vazquez-Nuttall, Romero, & de Leon 1987] Sample mix college students and other adults.
2. Hispanic women who are more acculturated show more liberal attitudes.
F. Chinese and gender role attitudes
1. Historically gender role attitudes are more traditional (Confucian doctrine, obediance to father, husband and son).
2. Using the ATWS, chinese students took a more traditional approach in regards to ideas concerning who should be making the decisions concerning the family (on students in the USA, Tawain, Taipei China).
3. Also found that women had more liberal attitudes than men in both countries.
G. Cross-cultural examinations of attitude towards gender roles very difficult to conduct because definition of traditional gender roles vary culture to culture.
1. "Chinese men are socialized to value poetry, reading, rituals, and music, as well as interdependendence and cooperation"
2. a study found that women appeared to be more conservative because they preferred more masculine males (under the US definition of masculine)
II. Affective Component of Gender role attitudes : Sexism
A. Sexism is one's attitude of feeling toward people based upon their sex alone.
B. Sexism may have declined over the pass few decades, but it has subtly changed.
1. Traditional Sexism (Wim, Aikin, Hall, and Hunter, 1995)
a. embraces traditional gender roles
b. women have less status than men
c. women are less competant than men
d. reflects an open disregard for women
2. Modern Sexism
a. A denial of any existing discrimination towards women
b. an antagonism to women's demands
c. and a resentment of any preferential treatment
d. Modern sexism is correlated with overestimating the percentage of women who have male-dominated jobs (underestimate the difficulty getting these jobs)
3. AA women and modern sexism
a. a modern sexist believes that being AA and women counts twice in terms of affirmative action-which gives her special advantage in aquiring a job.
b. not true, aa women are paid less than ww, wm, and aa men int he work force, and have lowest status positions
c. while the # of AA proffesional women is increasing, the # of WW in Proffesional job is 10X that of AA women.
C. Sexism can either be NEG or POS feelings
1. Hostile sexism (Glick and Fiske 1996) is just as it sounds,, feelings of hostility towards women
a. women exaggerate the problem
b. take advantage of the situation to manipulate men.
2. Benevolent Sexism reflects positive feelings towards women.
a. prosocial orientation toward women (desire to help women)
b. harmful attitude because it includes the idea that women are less competent than men are in need of men's help.
c. research has shown that both types of sexism are based on negative images of women.
Now sexist jokes about women can be offensive (women drivers and dumb blondes), but jokes about males asking for directions or incompetence as fathers can be socially acceptable....
In Class Activity
III. Cognitive Component: Gender-Role Stereotyping
A. "Gender-role stereotypes are the features we assign to men and women in our society, features that are not assigned due to biological sex but due to the social roles that men and women hold."(Helgeson, 2001).
1. Descriptive Components- identifies the features of the stereotype
2. Prescriptive component says we should have those features.
a. most powerful component
b. is enforced by other people
c. is our representation of how other people think we out to behave (we may have a belief that men should stay home with children, or that boys can wear pink, but we don't dress up our child in pink because of what we think other people may think).
B. Components of Gender Role Stereotypes
1. Research has found that there is a strong concensus of what is female and what is male across age, sex, religion, marital status, and education (Broverman, Vogel, Broverman, Clarkson, & Rosenkranz 1972).
SHOW OVERHEAD
2. They found that male characteristics are more desirable.
3. Mental Health proffesionals rated male characteristics as more healthy.
4. The stereotype of a more healthy adult reflected more of a male than a female.
C. Ethnic and Cultural Views of Men and Women
1. AA's and Caucasians have very similar viewpoints in regards to gender role stereotypes, but do not have completely the same point of view.
2. Key difference, AA's were less likely to gender stereotype, they perceived less differences between male and female
3. W more likely to see women as passive, where AA more likely to see women involved in church activities.
4. AA were more likely to view men as fathers, family oriented, and factory workers-w view men as unexpressive, agressive, competitive and status concious.
5. Difficult though to differentiate between SE group and race in these studies (AA more likely to be blue collar workers......because of SE status)
6. Out of the US, Religion appears to play the strongest role in Gender role stereotypes.
7. Race influences the content of male and female stereotypes (racial interaction with gender as well as socio economic class) SHOW OVERHEAD.....
The Structure of Gender-Role Stereotypes (much of this information can spill over into ethnic/diversity issues).
Consist specifically of role behaviors, physical features, and occupations.
II. To what extend to people rely on stereotypes when other information is available about the person? Depending on how much you know about a person you use either. . .
A. Category-Based expectancies- You use when you do not know much about a person except a certain category they belong to. You would rely on this information to make judgments.
B. Target-based expectancies are the perceptions you have about a person based on individuating information.....for example if you aquire specific personal information you will use this information rather than the category based information in making judgements
C. Research has shown that when college students are given sex, occupation and age information, pieces of individuating information will more likely influence the judgements the students make than the catagorical information of sex.
II. Subcategories of Gender-Role Stereotypes
A. We have different stereotypes for a female businessperson and a female house keeper.
B. It can be benefitial because it detracts from the power of the overall stereotype in certain instances, but is a double edged sword & allows the individual to create an exception and leave the overall stereotype in tact (Fiske & Stevens 1993).
1. Bill Cosby & the Cosby Show
III. The Function of Gender Role Stereotypes
A. Stereotypes simplify our world, simplify our information processing
1. Example of proffesors and students (stereotypical)
B. Dangers of stereotyping is in the biases the result
1. Influences our perception and recollection of events in a way that can be harmful to men and women.
2. Gender role stereotpyes can lead people to perceive men and women differently when they are displaying the same behavior (Aries, 1996)
a. Subjects rated women as using more qualifiers (like I guess) when the target individuals (both man and woman) used the same exact language. This is consistent with gender stereotypes regarding language. Women are seen as less powerful in language.
3. G-Role stereotypes can lead people to treat each other differently.
a. (Skrypnek & Snyder, 1982) had male students assign tasks to another person they could not see or hear using a signalling system. They were either told that the other person was male or female, but in all cases the person was female. If the M though the F was m, he assigned more masculine tasks....towards the end of the experiment women the women began to initiate these kind of choices....
IV. How do you alter Gender role Stereotypes when you make exceptions rather than altering them with special cases?
A. Stereotypes are difficult to change
B. We also make dispositional or train attributions for behavior that confirms the stereotype bu situation attributions for bheavior that disconfirms the stereotype.
1. Female stereotype that she is nurturing-and if she is seen playing with a baby, a person is more likely to attribute that she is playing with the baby because she is nurturant rather than bored.
C. Two ways stereotypes can be changed
1. Easier to disconfirm stereotypical traits when the behavior that reflects the trait is clear rather than ambigious (easier to disconfirm the stereotype that a woman is talkative rather than emotional)
2. It is easier to disconfirm positive traits rather than negative traits. "Favorable trai s are difficult to acquire but easy to lose, whereas unfavorable traits are easy to acquire but difficult to loose"
3. We are more likely to change a feature of a stereotype if the disconfirming beheavior is in the context of other behavior that fits the stereotype.
4. Sometimes we do not have to alter ur stereotype because a target person calls to mind more than one stereotype-we then choose which stereotype to invoke.....(Martina Nav-Lesbian and sucessful athlete, Melissa Ethridge)
D. Views of Stereotype-Inconsistent information
1. When faced with gender-role incongruent behavior that we cannot ignore (like by embracing another stereotype) we may view the behavior as mroe extreme (assertiveness seen as more extreme by a woman than a man).
2.(Wiley & Eskilson 1985) Job applicants who used more power in their speach were seen as agressive, in this women were seen as more agressive than men.
3. Correspondent inference theory-we are more likely to make dispositional attributions for behavior that is non-normative, but unique. (We are more likely to infer aggression in a woman who uses power in her speech than in a man who used power in his speach because the woman's behavior is more 'unique')
4. We tend to view gender role consistent behavior more positively than gender role inconsistent behavior.
a. In research regarding leadership woman have been found to be viewed less favorably then men as the role of leadership is more consistent with that of a male role (Eagly, Makhinjani, & Klonsky, 1992). They demonstrated in their research that this bias is increasing rather than decreasing over time...like we would think.
Behavioral Component: Sex Discrimination
January 1996, Lawyers from the Birgina Military Institute (VMI) ar gued before the US supreme court that the VMI was not suitable for women because a woman's aspiration in the south are largely to marry, woman's ethics revolve around care for than justic, even "macho" woman cry, and only "bad girls" would want to attend an all male miltary school....The court of course ruled that the school would have to admit women.
I. Discrimination is the differential treatment of individuals based upon membership in a category
A. Ann Hopkins being denied partnership in Price Waterhouse a big accounting firm.
1. Cited as having interpersonal skills problems, was too macho, and overcompensated for being a woman...needed a charm school course...needed to wear lipstick and more jewelry.
2. Susan Fiske testified in the case regarding conditions that foster stereotyping.
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b. only 1% of the partners were female (7 out of 662)-thus Hopkin's sex was salient-salience draws more attention, and as a consequence leads to more extreme or polarized evaluations
c. Another condition is when the group the individual belongs to is incongruent with the person's role (occupation)....male nurses are more likely to be viewed in terms of gender role stereotypes
d. Remember behavior that violates the gender role stereotype is viewed as more extreme, thus assertive behavior on the part of Hopkins was more likely to be viewed as aggressive.
e. Fiske argued (1991) that based upon previous research (Condry & Condry), Hopkins assertiveness, get the job done behavior, was seen in a negative light....
f. The court took the research seriously and found in favor of Hopkins.
3. If gender role stereotypes are removed, will discrimination disappear? Some research says no......