Androgyny

• Androgyny describes the balance between masculine and femine characteristics.
• Bem outlined gender schemas of 3 main beliefs

  • Men and women differ
  • Men are superior
  • Differences are natural
• Bem contrasted the 3 schemas with an interactionist viewpoint
• She devised the Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) to measure the extent to which a person's behaviour is consistent with the sex role stereotypes of their gender.
• The BSRI uses a rating scale of 1 - 7 for 60 characteristics, 20 masculine, 20 feminine and 20 neutral (behavioural and emotional).

  
  

  It generates a score across 2 dimensions:

  • Masculinity - femininity
  • Androgynous - undifferentiated
• A high MF score indicates someone who conforms to traditional gender roles. A low MF score suggests they do not conform to these expectations. An androgyne has a similar level of both masculine and feminine traits.
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  Bem also found that those who were most androgynous had better mental health and self esteem compared to those who were least androgynous.

  She suggested this may be because they have greater flexibility in how they behave and can adapt to different situations.

  This shows the positive benefits of androgyny.
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  :( - Ethnocentric

  Critics argue that Bem's research suffers from cultural bias as it only measured US participants.

  It was based on the idea of what were typical and acceptable traits within the 70s and was devised with 100 US judges using ideas of 'maleness' and 'femaleness'.

  However, these notions of maleness and femaleness may not be accepted and shared across cultures and therefore it may not be generalisable.

  It also lacks temporal validity as what was deemed typical and acceptable in the 70s may not be considered that now.
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  :( - Reductionist

  Critics claim that gender identity is far too complex to be reduced to a single rating and score.

  It may be more appropriate to use alternatives like the Personal Attribute Questionnaire (PAQ) which measures identity using another (qualitative) dimension (instrumentality and expressivity).

  This is because gender is a social concept and it varies.

  Therefore you need to account for specific interests and perception of one's own abilities and traits to be able to provide a holistic explanation of gender identity.
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  Bem uses a self report method in order to quantify gender identity which is open to social desirability bias.

  Often people will rate themselves highly in all categories to appear more androgynous than they are.

  Individuals may also not have great self awareness and their ratings may not be representative of their identity due to their lack of understanding with their own personality and behaviour.

  Therefore Bem SRI may not be an objective, valid method of assessing androgyny.