The impact of context on gender social identities

Abstract

What follows is a quasi‐experimental study aiming to analyse the influence of the social division of roles (especially the division between public and private spheres of activity) on gender social identities. Subjects were asked to describe themselves as well as their images of the ‘perfect or ideal person’ in the context of their professional activities or their close relationships. The order of presentation (self‐description and the description of the ‘perfect person’) was balanced. We found that women and men perceived themselves according to the traditional gender stereotypes (women perceived themselves as more feminine while men describe themselves as more masculine). However the context in which subjects imagined themselves affected their self‐perceptions as well as their images of the ‘ideal person’: A public context (professional activity) elicited more masculine self‐images in women and men whereas private contexts (close relationships) led to more feminine images of themselves. Furthermore, the images of the ‘perfect person’ varied according to which context was salient: these images were more masculine in the public context and more feminine in the private one. Finally, the asymmetry hypothesis in social comparison was confirmed. Although there was a significant correlation between self‐images and the image of the ‘perfect or ideal person’, this correlation was stronger when subjects described themselves first and described their images of the ‘ideal person’ before. This result was interpreted as reflecting the subjects' tendency to see themselves as prototypes in the social comparison. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Self and other reported workplace traits: A communal gap of men across occupations

“…Because social identities emerge from identifications with self‐relevant groups and one's social position in terms of professional roles constitutes a central dimension of the self (Tajfel, 1978, 1982; Turner et al., 1987), an individual's occupational position can be a relevant source of internationalization of socially shared expectations in personality. Consistent with this, some studies have shown that identification with agentic and communal traits is influenced by one's professional status or occupation (Agronick & Duncan, 1998; Echebarria & Gonzalez, 1999; Kasen et al., 2006).…”

Autoatribuciones de género y su relación con los dominios laboral y familiar

“…En este sentido podemos decir que nuestros datos corroboran la afirmación de Eagly y Mladinic (1994) relativa al aumento en la adscripción de rasgos masculinos en las mujeres de cara a su éxito profesional. En definitiva, la autopercepción de los sujetos cambia según los dominios y contextos en los cuales se desenvuelven, estando éstos a su vez íntimamente relacionados con los roles que los individuos desempeñan en su vida cotidiana (Spence, 1984;Ortiz y Valencia, 1998;Echebarría y González, 1999).…”

Women’s Job Search Competence: A Question of Motivation, Behavior, or Gender

“…On the one hand, a functionalist social discourse legitimizes precarious jobs and blames women, resulting in an image of incompetence, laziness, and comfort ( Kelvin and Jarrett, 1985 ; Noguera, 2000 ). On the other hand, women perceive themselves according to traditional gender stereotypes ( Echebarria and González, 1999 ; Carter, 2014 ). This inequality, focused on training human capital ( Becker, 1962 ), is based on the gender stereotype of ‘the good woman’ ( Cornwall et al, 2008 ), who has to be efficient at work and in taking care of the family.…”