Item #680
Women use social stereotypes for men but not for other women
Topic: PatriarchySource
Citation: Are People's Notions of Maleness More Stereotypically Framed Than Their Notions of Femaleness?, p. 209 Author(s): Hort, Fagot, Leinbach Institution(s): University of Oregon Link: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF00289866 Nation(s): United States Year(s): 1990 Source: Primary Type: Behavioral ExperimentDiscussion
Other Notes:"It is interesting to note that if, as hypothesized, females are more sensitive to social norms, they are manifesting this sensitivity in the present study by describing a significant difference in the stereotypicality between the social construals of males and females" (p. 209)
"In other words, females found the societal opinion of males to be more stereotypic than males found it, and more stereotypic than either males or females found societal notions of females. While it is impossible to interpret this result with absolute certainty, it seems that females perceive in the societal notions of maleness a stereotypicality that no one perceives in the female stereotype, and that males themselves do not perceive in the male stereotype, even though it is relevant to their own sex. Either our female subjects are describing an erroneous figment of their social cognition, or society's view of males really is more stereotypic than its view of females, and males are simply not aware of this inequity nor, we might speculate, of its implications for males." (pp. 210-211)