Masculinity and Femininity: A Factor Analytic Study

Abstract

The concepts of typical masculinity and typical femininity (i.e., stereotypes), and also ideal masculinity and ideal femininity, were rated by 40 male and 40 female college students. The judgments were made by means of the Concept Meaning Measure, a semantic differential of masculinity and femininity, which was constructed on the basis of six hypothesized factors. Factor analysis of the results yielded two major factors, potency and social behavior, in each of the four concepts. The analysis of the stereotypes also resulted in five additional factors—activity, emotion, form, tactility, with another one, a residual, for masculinity and one, dependability, for femininity. The ideal concepts had six additional factors which were not as clearly delineated and suggest a more complex relationship than exists in the stereotypes. The obtained factors, in general, matched the factors which had been hypothesized, but the outstanding quality of the two major factors had not been predicted. The correspondence of the hypothesized and obtained factors was much more satisfactory for the stereotypes than for the ideal concepts. The relative importance of the various factors and the implications concerning social change were discussed.

Masculinity-femininity: An exception to a famous dictum?

“…There have been a number of attempts to develop verbal measures of M-F in adults that do not involve the standard inventory or questionnaire format, among them are adjective checklists (Berdie, 1959;Heilbrun, 1964), a word association test (Goodenough, 1946), and a semantic differential technique (Reece, 1964). In general, the basis for item selection has again been the differential response patterns of the two sex groups, with the hope that the items are less tainted by sex role stereotypes than those in questionnaires, thereby producing a "truer" measure of M-F. Goodenough is the only one who seems to be aware of the bipolarity problem and no one attempts to deal with the issue of dimensionality.…”

Beliefs about Males

“…Item means were not reported, but those items which significantly differentiated typical adult male (and female), typical student male (and female), and ideal male (and female) were listed. Finally, Reece (1964) asked 40 male and 40 female college students to rate the concepts "typical masculinity" and "ideal masculinity" (among others) on 45 bipolar rating scales. An orthogonal factor analysis of the responses yielded two major factors: Potency (sturdy, robust, bold, fearless, independent) and Social Behavior (gruff, demanding, crude, coarse, harsh).…”

“…As a way to synthesize the findings of a number of investigations, we examine in detail the results of seven studies using an adjective checklist or bipolar rating scales (Jenkin & Vroegh, 1969; Reece, 1964; Rosenkrantz et al, 1968;Sherriffs & Jarrett, 1953; ; Spence et al, 1975;. These studies were selected because they presented subjects with a large number of stimuli, and also because the traits mentioned most frequently in Chafetz's (1974) openended study were included.…”

Zur sprachlichen Inszenierung von Geschlecht – doing gender in Kontaktanzeigen

“…21 Vgl. Schenk (1979: 128 Hofstätter (1966), Reece (1964). Auch neuere Untersuchungen bestätigen diese Zuschreibungen, vgl.…”