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Gender Stereotypes

Gender is essentially a composite of stereotypes— beliefs, positive or negative, that people hold about a group and its members. Gender stereotypes are evident in many aspects of life, including personal traits, behaviors, occupations, hobbies, appearance, family functions, communication, sports activities, and preferences for most anything. Gender stereotypes shape people's behaviors, expectations, and roles; conversely, roles can become stereotypes. Research has found that gender stereotypes in Western society have remained fairly stable, even as roles have been changing. Women are increasingly present in the formal workforce; nevertheless, they are also consistently viewed as caretakers and hold a large proportion of service jobs and support positions. Regardless of their job position, women often take care of the social functions on the job. Men are seen as leaders and are often found in head positions. In the business world, masculine communication styles are often the standard. Many social differences, such as race and sexuality, influence and inform gender stereotypes. These gender stereotypes influence the choices people make about themselves and others. They are so ingrained in society, that to go against gender stereotypes can generate uneasiness, confusion, fear, and hostility. This entry describes the effects of stereotypes.

Cognition, Interaction, and Stereotypes

Stereotyping is a normal cognitive process. Humans deal with a high volume of information on a daily basis, and stereotyping is a cognitive tool for organizing information about people and thus more efficiently processing information. Stereotypes assist in social categorization as they help people maintain the consistency they tend to prefer in their lives. This consistency sometimes comes at the expense of accuracy: stereotypes can be exaggerated or false. Stereotypes help people adjust or plan their behavior to accommodate others and allow a person, when first meeting other people, to have ideas about who they are and how to treat and interact with them. Stereotypes affect what people notice, think about, and remember, as well as how they interpret other people and interact with them. In short, stereotypes facilitate smooth personal interactions.

As people communicate with others about the world around them and about their expectations for that world, they pass on messages about how others should think, feel, and act. They learn how others see them and learn how to see themselves. Although stereotyping can assist us in one's cognitive interaction with the world, stereotypes foster the loss of uniqueness. People become part of a larger group and are defined by their most salient group memberships. Gender stereotypes, numerous and pervasive, thus influence one's perceptions of others and ourselves, while muting individual differences in favor of gendered expectations and norms.

Stereotypes of Women and Men

The current stereotypes of women originated in the 19th-century Victorian era during the Industrial Revolution. At this time, the economy shifted from agriculture to factories; as this economic shift took hold, men left the home to work and the women stayed home to care for the household and children. This difference in roles is enough to create or enhance stereotypes: The disparate activities are often viewed as representing some internal aspect of a person or group of persons. Women are viewed as mothers, providing nurturance and support to others. As women are socialized to be caretakers, they learn that they need to be nice and to put others' needs before their own. The Judeo-Christian virtues of piety, purity, domesticity, and submissiveness also fostered the belief that women are most virtuous when vulnerable, dependent, and weak. Apparently in need of protection and guidance, women are stereotyped as childlike, suggesting that they are immature, incompetent, and in need of assistance. Stereotypes such as this encourage people to patronize women and to neglect their intelligence and competence. Women are also stereotyped as sex objects who pay significant attention to their physical appearance. Women who do not adhere to this stereotype may fall into another stereotyped role—that of a manly woman. This iron maiden demonstrates stereotypi-cally male characteristics such as independence, ambition, toughness, competition, career minded-ness, and directness. Other social categorizations combine with gender and create specific stereotypes of women. The butch lesbian connects with the iron maiden image of masculinity, and the femme lesbian takes on a more passive role and is concerned with her physical appearance despite the lesbian stereotype of being a bit stronger because of her supposed anti-male stance. Women of color in particular have been stereotyped in demeaning ways. Research on women in advertising supports this in findings that nonwhite women are typically portrayed as animals, less than human, and always lower in the image than males. These images depict women of color as being sexual objects lacking intelligence, being subservient to men, and requiring male control.

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