Psychological Reports, 1981,49, 677-678. @ Psychological Reports 1981

SEX-ROLE IDENTITY ACROSS TWO CULTURES

JAYNE GACKENBACHI

University of Northern Iowa

Summary.-Cross-cultural data o n 57 U.S. and 24 Australian women are provided for the Bem Sex-role Inventory. Femininity scores significantly dif- fered; American women scored more feminine than Australian women. There was no cultural difference in masculinity or androgyny scores.

The purpose of the present srudy was to examine differences for females in the United States of America and Australia in female sex-role identity, the extent to which self-perception is relatively masculine or feminine o n Bern's ( 1 ) unipolar model of sex- role identity. Although data are available on Aususlian vs American women's sex-role attitudes or the degree to which one believes others should behave in a sexually stereo- typical manner ( 5 ) , lictle work on cultural.differences in the personality trait of sex-role identity has been done. Previous research o n American females has produced mixed results regarding the independence of these sex-related trait and attirude measures (2, 3, 4, 6 ) . Consequently, it is doubtful whether one may draw inferences about the relative extent of masculinity and femininity of a population based on their attitudes towards expanding roles for women.

Fifty-seven American women enrolled in courses at a southeastern university and 24 Australian women enrolled in courses at a western Ausualian university were admin- istered the Bem Sex-role Inventory ( 1 ) during their class periods. There are 60 items designed to measure relative masculinity and femininity according to Bem's unipolar conceptualization of sex-role identity. Americans were tested by a female, the Australians by a male.

Masculinity, femininity, and androgyny scores were determined according to Bem's ( 1 ) original scoring procedure.' Cultural differences for these three sex-role identities were assessed by separate t tests. USA women had higher scores on masculinity (USA = 91.12, Australia = 86.42) and femininity (USA = 97.7, Australia = 90.58) but the difference was significant for femininity only ( t = 2.34, p < .025) even though the spread of scores o n masculinity was wide. Scores on androgyny were approximated by caking the absolute value of the masculinity score minus the femininity score as suggested by Bem ( 1 ) . There was no cultural difference in androgyny scores.

This greater femininity in USA women might be viewed as conceptually consistent with Stanley, et al.'s finding that Australian women had more liberal sex-role attitudes than USA women ( 4 ) . One might argue that women who are more feminine are less likely to be sympathetic to the expansion of the role of women into male domains. However, this interpretation is not consistent with the lack of a difference in masculinity scores across these two cultures, and it assumes a relationship between sex-role identity and attitude.

REFERENCES

1. BZM, S. L. T h e measurement of psychological androgyny. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 1974, 42, 155-162.

'Reprint requests should be sent to Jayne Gackenbach, Department of Psychology, Uni- versity of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, Iowa 50614. 'It was not possible to use her revised scoring procedure ( 2 ) as data from Bem's scale were not available for Australian males.

678 J. GACKENBACH

2. BEM, S. L. On the utility of alternative rocedures for assessing psychological androgyny. Journal o f Consulting and ClinicafPsychology, 1977, 45, 196-205.

3. GACKENBACH, J. I. A perceptual defense approach to the study of gender sex related traits, stereotypes, and attitudes. Joirrnal o f Perronality, 1978, 46, 645-676.

4. SPENcE, J. T., HELMREICH, R., & STAPP, J. Rat~ngs of self and peers on sex-role attributes and their relation to self-esteem and conception of masculinity and femininity. ]ournal o f Personality and Social Psychology, 1975, 32, 29-39.

5. STANLEY, G., BOOTS, M., & JOHNSON, C. Some Australian data on the short version of the Attitudes to Women Scale (AWS). Australian Psychologist, 1975, 10, 319-323.

6. ZELDOW, P. B. Psychological androgyny and actirudes toward feminism. Journal o f Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 19?6, 44, 150.

Accepted September 24, 1981