Attitude Towards men and women

“Gender role attitudes” refer to views held by individuals regarding the roles men and women
should play in society. It is a term most often used with respect to the distinction between paid
and unpaid work. When individuals agree that a traditional division of labor between men and
women – with men in the role of breadwinner and women in the role of homemaker – is
advisable, they are considered to have traditional gender role attitudes. This is independent of
their own behavior. When they do not agree with such a division of labor and instead want a
more equal division of labor, they are considered to have egalitarian or modern gender role
attitudes.
Despite gains that women have made over the last decades in the domains of health,
education, the labor market/economic participation, and political representation, the ordinal
hierarchy that advantages men over women remains. The resilience of gender inequality may
partly be due to factors at other levels of the social ecology. Specifically, scholars argue that
traditional attitudes toward gender roles are also responsible for the persisting inequalities
between women and men. Gender-role attitudes (also often called sex-role attitudes or gender
ideology) refer to an individual’s approval or disapproval of traditional gender roles or the shared
cultural expectations about appropriate role-related behaviors for men and women and girls and
boys. Usually centered on notions of femininity and masculinity, these attitudes are often
conceptualized as falling on a continuum ranging from traditional to egalitarian. Individuals with
a traditional view support a gendered division of family labor, regarding women as homemakers
responsible for parenting and men as the wage earner and decision maker. Egalitarian gender-
role attitudes include a more equal view on participation in decisions, paid labor, and
domesticities.
According to social role theory, gender stereotypes derive from the discrepant
distribution of men and women into social roles both in the home and at work. There has long
been a gendered division of labor, and it has existed both in foraging societies and in more
socioeconomically complex societies. In the domestic sphere women have performed the
majority of routine domestic work and played the major caretaker role. In the workplace, women
have tended to be employed in people-oriented, service occupations rather than things-oriented,
competitive occupations, which have traditionally been occupied by men. This contrasting
distribution of men and women into social roles, and the inferences it prompts about what
women and men are like, give rise to gender stereotypical conceptions.
Stereotypes can serve an adaptive function allowing people to categorize and simplify
what they observe and to make predictions about others. However, stereotypes also can induce
faulty assessments of people – i.e., assessments based on generalization from beliefs about a
group that do not correspond to a person’s unique qualities. These faulty assessments can
negatively or positively affect expectations about performance, and bias consequent decisions
that impact opportunities and work outcomes for both men and women. Stereotypes about gender
are especially influential because gender is an aspect of a person that is readily noticed and
remembered .
Gender stereotypes are used not only to characterize others but also to characterize
oneself. The process of self-stereotyping can influence people’s identities in stereotype-
congruent directions. Stereotyped characteristics can thereby be internalized and become part of
a person’s gender identity – a critical aspect of the self-concept. Young boys and girls learn
about gender stereotypes from their immediate environment and the media, and they learn how
to behave in gender-appropriate ways. These socialization experiences no doubt continue to exert
influence later in life and, indeed, research has shown that men’s and women’s self-
characterizations differ in ways that are stereotype-consistent.
Gender stereotypes, and their defining features of agency and communality, have been
measured in a variety of ways. Researchers have investigated people’s stereotypical assumptions
about how men and women differ in terms of, for example, ascribed traits, role behaviors,
occupations, or emotions. Researchers also have distinguished personality, physical, and
cognitive components of gender stereotypes. In addition, they have investigated how men’ and
women’s self-characterizations differ in stereotype-consistent ways .