ANDROGYNY

• ANDROGYNY 


  a personality type displaying a balance of masculine and feminine characteristics in one's personality
• BEM SEX ROLE INVENTORY (BRSI)

  the first attempt to measure androgyny using a rating scale of 60 traits. It is a self-report method that asks participants to rate themselves on a scale of 1-7 for 60 traits (20 masculine, 20 feminine, 20 neutral). It's to produce scores across 2 dimensions: masculinity-femininity and androgynous-undifferentiated
• BEM (1977) describes 4 broad personality types

  1. Masculine: High masculinity and low femininity
  2. Feminine: High femininity and low masculinity
  3. Androgynous: High masculinity and high femininity
  4. Undifferentiated: Low masculinity and low femininity
• BEM argues that androgyny – scoring highly for both masculinity and femininity – is psychologically healthy and advantageous. One reason androgyny may be advantageous is that having a mix of masculine and feminine traits enables a person to adapt and excel in more situations, whereas a person who scores highly one way but not the other is likely to have a more limited skill set.
• BEM believed that avoiding fixed sex role stereotypes was important to avoid mental health issues
• Individuals that have a mixture of masculine and feminine traits are better equipped to adapt to a range of situations and contexts (psychological well being)
• Young children (before 9 years old) are more rigid about sex roles and therefore show little sign of androgyny. From 11 years onwards signs of androgyny appear.
• The undifferentiated category was added after criticisms by SPENCE ET AL (1975), to account for those individuals who were neither masculine or feminine
• Androgynous individuals have a different cognitive style (gender schema theory) and adopt behaviours that are independent of gender concepts. They are therefore gender aschematic (not influenced by sex-role stereotypes)
• Over-representation of opposite sex characteristics does not qualify someone as androgynous
• (+) Supporting evidence: ANDROGYNY


  PRAKESH ET AL (2010) -

  tested 100 married females in India on masculinity / femininity + a range of outcome measures related to health: physical, depression, anxiety, stress. Masculinity/Femininity was measured using the personal attribute scale. Females with high masculinity scores had lower depression scores etc. Whereas those with high femininity scores had higher depression scores. This supports the view that androgyny has a psycho-proactive effect
• (+) Supporting evidence: ANDROGYNY



  BEM (1974) -

  used the BSRI to measure androgyny, finding 34% of males + 27% of females to be androgynous, which suggests a sizeable minority of people are predominately androgynous rather than being masc/fem
• (-) Evidence: ANDROGYNY


  One problem with the BSRI is that it lacks temporal validity . The BSRI was developed in 1970s, so behaviours that are regarded as 'typical' + 'acceptable' have changed scientifically in relation to gender over the last 40yrs. HOFFMAN + BORDERS (2001) found that only 2 items on the BSRI is no longer relevant. This suggests that the masc + fem stereotypes used in the BSRI are outdated + is historically biased.
• (-) Evidence: ANDROGYNY




  Contrasting research to psychological well being - TAYLOR + HALL (1982) / TAYLOR (1986) -

  suggested that masculinity , in males + females, is a better predictor of psychological well being than androgyny, which is supported by TAYLOR (1986) reporting that psychological well being is more strongly related to masc than fem on the BSRI
• (-) ANDROGYNY 


  The view of androgyny as being the most psychologically healthy gender identity is supported by research conducted on WEIRD communities. This makes the theory of androgyny ethnocentric as the assumptions that androgyny, and especially the masculine traits associated with it, is the ideal gender identity are culturally biassed and should not be imposed on other cultures.