Reviews and summarizes research on how mass media portrays sex roles and influences our perceptions of them. (MH)

Based on data from a five-state probability sample of households, divergences appear by race with regards to measures of sex role egalitarianism. Basic processes are similar in both racial categories with respect to factors accounting for marital solidarity. (Author)

Women bring to the leadership process not only distinct needs, but also a unique perspective that should be incorporated in all facets of leadership definition. A woman who occupies a position of leadership is enacting both a sex role and an organizational role. Because of this dual role, women are vulnerable to role conflict. One kind of role…

This study examined the role of women as portrayed in the mass media, focusing on the depiction of women in the traditionally passive role as compared with men in the traditionally aggressive role. The analysis of media coverage was highlighted by the examination of women and men in magazines, billboards, television, and newspapers between January…

Recent research on sex differences in career and achievement motivation have used one dimensional definitions for the constructs. To investigate sex differences in four dimensions of career motivation, one dimension of achievement motivation, and three clusters of antecedent factors for young women and men, 212 high school graduates (112 females,…

For some time, the traditional stereotype of women which described them as gentle and dependent was considered normative and the concept that women were a unitary group dominated gender-role stereotype research. In contrast, the social cognitive approach described three subcategories of women: the housewife, the professional woman, and the sex…

This study investigated the effects of the attitude of the reader toward women's changing role on the reader's response to literature that illuminates women's role. Twelve skilled readers, six male and six female high school seniors with I.Q.'s of 120 or above, were selected because their semantic differentials indicated that half favored women's…

University students' attitudes toward women were significantly associated with the following variables: sex, church affiliation, major field, grade point average, years of college, size of home town, mother's employment status, race, loneliness during teen years, religiosity, mother's attitude toward homemaking, and (for married students) number…

The influence of sex-role identity on academic achievement behaviors and attitudes is just beginning to be understood. This paper examines two subject areas, mathematics and English, which have traditionally been sex-typed as male and female domains, respectively. Two mechanisms by which sex-role identity may affect achievement behaviors--value of…

The likelihood that females designate persons of the opposite sex as models more often than do males was investigated. Subjects, 61 boys and 64 girls from the sixth grade, plus 52 males and 83 female college students, indicated which other person, past or present, they would most like to be. Approximately 25% of females designated male models…

This study attempts a broad look at young children's sex typing of job classifications by examining the relationship of cognitive classification skills, age and sex to a 3-dimensional measure of children's job attributions, service preferences, and personal vocation choices. These dimensions were measured, respectively, by the following questions:…

A study was undertaken to determine if men and women in public relations jobs differed on the extent to which they performed each of four roles. Based upon the conceptual models found in a wide range of literature on consulting, the four roles used in the study were: (1) expert prescriber, in which the practitioner operates as the authority on…

This study investigates whether there has been a shift away from the sex-typing of the managerial profession as masculine toward an androgynous ideal. One hundred ten graduate students with jobs in the business community and 575 undergraduate business students completed the Bem Sex-Role Inventory containing "masculine"--aggressive, makes decisions…

Though Freud often is portrayed by advocates of women's liberation as the villain in the 'biology is destiny' controversy, Freud was very much a person of his own times. Rather than inventing the 'biology is destiny' theme, he was perpetuating a tradition that dates from at least the time of the Greeks, and which was deeply engrained in 19th…

This project investigated attitudes of entering freshmen college women in an attempt to learn whether traditional sex-role ideologies were still predominant, and what the career and educational aspiration levels of these young women were. The variables most concerning the authors were career salience, educational and career aspirations, opinions…