The Effect of Personal Growth and Assertive Training Classes on Female Sex-Role Self-Concept

Abstract

This study investigated the effect of personal growth and assertive training classes on the sex-role self-concept of 116 women enrolled in personal growth classes and seventy women enrolled in assertive training. All classes met for ten weeks. During the first session, subjects were asked to supply demographic information; during the first and ninth sessions, they completed the Bem Sex-Role Inventory. A significant difference (t (69) = 3.021, p < .01) was noted from pre-to post-test for subjects in assertive training. The subjects increased their acceptance of masculine characteristics. No significant differences were noted from pre-to post-test for subjects in personal growth (t (115) = 1.79). It was concluded that personal growth and assertive training may be effective approaches. However, their impact on female sex-role self-concept is different. Choice of classes should be dependent on the needs of clients and their goals. For many years, social scientists have assumed that masculinity and femininity are bipolar aspects of a single continuum; a person's self-concept was thought to be either masculine or feminine, but not both. Recently, however, the validity of this assumption has been seriously questioned. Bem (1974) suggested that &dquo;many individuals might be androgynous; that is, they might be both masculine and feminine ... both instrumental and expressive-depending on the situational appropriateness of these various behaviors&dquo; (p. 155). She hypothesized that an androgynous self-concept would increase the range of behavioral options available to an individual, whereas a more narrowly defined, stereotypically masculine or feminine self-concept would decrease the range. Consequently, an androgynous individual would be more likely to engage in behavior that was appropriate to a situation without regard to societal definitions of that behavior as masculine or feminine.In order to test these hypotheses, Bem developed the Bem Sex-Role Inventory (BSRI), a seven-point scale on which one ranks twenty