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Gender Stereotypes

Gender-associated beliefs influence how people respond to us from the cradle to the grave. From birth, our parents shape our world based, in part, on their beliefs about what boys and girls are and should be like. As we develop, we learn how to interact with members of the same and the other sex, both in groups and as individuals. Friendships, family relationships, romantic partnerships, and workplace associations are affected by cultural beliefs about the sexes. This entry focuses on gender stereotypes, defined as organized, consensual beliefs and opinions about the characteristics of women and men and about the purported qualities of masculinity and femininity. As will be discussed, people hold gender-associated beliefs about the basic categories of “woman” and “man,” but usually recognize that men and women are also simultaneously members of other social groups, and they hold more fine-grained stereotypes about these subtypes. The extent to which gender stereotypes influence relationships depends on the social context of the relationship and on the power and status associated with the male and female gender role.

Gender-Associated Beliefs

Until recently, most research on gender stereotypes focused on the basic category level. Early work from the late 1960s and early 1970s identified two constellations of traits, one associated with women and one associated with men. Stereotypes about women are represented by a communal or expressive cluster that includes traits such as emotional, kind, and understanding. Stereotypes about men are represented by an agentic or instrumental cluster that includes traits such as active, competitive, and self-confident. These characteristics are the core of two well-known measures of gender stereotyping, the Bem Sex Role Inventory and the Personal Attributes Questionnaire. These measures are used to assess people's perceptions about their own traits and their beliefs about others' traits. In an average sense, women's and men's self-assessments correspond to the gender stereotypes they apply to others.

More recent work has demonstrated that gender-associated beliefs are multidimensional; to capture the full picture of gender-based stereotypes, one must consider the roles women and men occupy, their physical characteristics, their cognitive abilities, and their emotions. Women's roles, for example, are stereotypically assumed to include cooking the meals and caregiving, whereas men's roles are assumed to include being the breadwinner and being a leader. Men are stereotypically described as tall and rugged whereas women are described as pretty and petite. Women's cognitive skills are believed to include an artistic bent and strong verbal skills; beliefs about men's cognitive abilities center around their strong mathematical skills and their ability to reason. Finally, people hold stereo-typic expectations about appropriate emotions for the sexes. In general, women are seen as both experiencing and expressing more emotion than men do; emotions associated with women include happiness, embarrassment, love, fear, and distress. Only two emotions, anger and pride, are stereo-typically associated with men.

Characteristics of Gender Stereotypes

Gender stereotypes have several characteristics that merit attention. First, as with most stereotypes, there is both a descriptive component, representing the content of people's beliefs, and a prescriptive component, representing what people believe others should be like. In the context of a heterosexual partnership, for example, beliefs about gender roles often lead to the assumption that women ought to have greater responsibility for the children and that men should naturally assume the role of breadwinner. A second characteristic of gender stereotypes is that they are remarkably stable. Respondents in the United States have beliefs about gender that are similar to those held by Germans or Koreans; John Williams and Deborah Best, for example, found that respondents in 30 countries held similar gender stereotypes. Respondents in the new millennium hold beliefs similar to respondents in 1970, and older adults hold views similar to younger people. There is an exception to the general finding that gender stereotypes are stable, however; Amanda Diekman and Alice Eagly found that today's women are viewed as more agentic than women in the 1950s and that people expect that women and men will become more similar in agency in the future. Men's agency, however, is not viewed as changing over time, nor is either women's or men's communion. Such perceptions are consistent with the power and status women are gaining in a variety of roles.

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