Androgyny

• IN everyday speak, to be androgynous means to have the appearance of someone who cannot be clearly identified as male or female
• Within psychology androgyny refers to a personality type that is characterised by a balance of masculine and feminine traits, attitudes/behaviours e.g. a man or woman who is competitive and aggressive at work but an caring and sensitive parent.
• Both males and females can be androgynous
• Sandra Bem developed the BSRI - Bem's sex role inventory
• According to Bem, androgynous individuals are better equipped to adapt to a range of situations and contexts than non-androgynous individuals would find difficult
• A person scoring high on both scales will score highly on the androgyny scale
• Bem argued that androgynous individuals have a different cognitive style, adotpting behaviours where necessary that are independent of gender concepts. In terms of cognitive schema theory (explains how sex-role stereotypes are maintained/transmitted), androgynous people are aschematic - not influenced by sex-role stereotypes
• There is some research support for the BSRI e.g. Burchardt and Serbin
• The research involved in the BSRI is valid - 50 participants of each sex rated 200 traits in terms of how desirable they were for men and women - those with the highest scores became the 20 masculine and feminine traits on the scale. The study was the piloted with over 100 students and the results broadly corresponded with the participants' own descriptions of gender identity - high construct validity - measures underlying characteristics very well
• Has high test-retest reliability - Bem tested participants again after a 4 week period finding correlations of 0.76-0.94 - very valid
• However, there are limitations to the BSRI - it only assesses self-perception rather than behavioural manifestation of gender roles
• Also, the BSRI doesn't take into account cultural differences so it may be less reliable outside Western cultures
• It also assumes that all males are masculine and females are feminine which isn't true - this may lead to underreporting of androgyny
• It also assumes that all males and females share common views about what constitutes masculinity and femininity which may be culturally specific
• Also, the BSRI doesn't take into account the impact of socialisation on gender role development so it can't explain why certain people develop particular gender identities
• The scoring was subjective
• Association between androgyny and well-being questioned - may not have taken adequate account of social and cultural context. Critics suggest that people who display more masculine traits are in fact better adjusted (Adams and Sherer). The argument being that masculine traits are more highly valued in western society and therefore they have higher well-being than androgynous individuals
• Over simplistic - gender identity is too complex to be reduced to a number - reductionist
• Developed over 40 years ago - made up of behaviours regarded as 'typical' have changed since then - lacks temporal validity
• Scale developed in US - western notion/stereotypes - cultural bias/ ethnocentrically biased