The results suggest that mature women students may be more flexible in the sex-role identities and less tied to a nurturant, interpersonally oriented role but that they are not necessarily more ambitious, confident, or achievement-oriented than homemakers. (Author/DB)

Role models serve important functions for students, providing standards against which students can evaluate themselves, and motivating students toward innovative achievement. The findings of a study show that students tend to prefer models of the same sex. (Author/MLW)

Examined college students' perceptions of their ideal man and woman. Both male and female students, regardless of age or major saw the ideal man as having a "balanced" orientation and the ideal woman as having a self-orientation. College students' sex role perceptions appear to have changed. (Author)

Presents findings of a study that examined drawings made by first grade children after they had been read stories in which the protagonists were presented in the first person. Concludes that children perceive males as being larger than females and that sex role stereotypes develop prior to school entrance. (FL)

Identified some factors accounting for relatively flexible gender role orientation among adolescent mothers (n=118). Education and support from family, peers, and the father of the child(ren) were predictive of positive attitude toward combining career and child-care roles and competing in labor market on equal basis with males. (Author/NB)

Compared 60 Italian-Australian and 48 Anglo-Australian adolescent girls on self-esteem and measures associated with sex roles. Found self-esteem and sex role satisfaction did not differ in two groups, and no significant differences in attitudes toward sex role differentiation. Groups differed in pattern of variables associated with self-esteem and…

Investigated what stereotyping attitudes children at the Berry College Child Development Center and Laboratory School (Florida) developed regarding task performance in the home or family setting. Children manifested strong sex-role stereotyping toward male and female roles; they also perceived reading to be a nonsex-typed item. (GLR)

In 1970, Broverman, Broverman, Clarkson, Rosenkrantz, and Vogel administered a Stereotype Questionnaire to 79 male and female clinically trained psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers. The study concluded that sex bias was demonstrated in that clinicians' trait ascriptions given to the mentally healthy adult person did not differ…

Shostrom (1971) has identified a type of marriage in which self-actualizing couples do not simply accept their socially defined roles, but instead develop personality traits and values that are consistent with their own psychological health and that of the couple relationship. Antill (1983) found evidence for the importance of high scores in…

Is it possible that what is perceived as self-assertion in a man is perceived as aggression in a woman? These studies investigate whether (a) consciously feminist women place a greater than average importance on the value of equality and whether (b) women's approval for self-assertion in themselves and others interacts with their feminist…

Middle-class Caucasian children in grades 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12 were examined to determine the effect of sex role standards on reading and arithmetic achievement. Results indicated agreement between the sexes on perceptions of what constituted girls' activities and disagreement on perceptions of what constituted boys' activities. Sex role…

More than 300 adults responded to a telephone survey designed to examine whether the gender of the source and the similarity of gender between the source and the receiver affected the receiver's perception of source credibility. The results indicated that (1) men had more overall credibility than did women, (2) women recognized that they would…

Contemporary women continue to choose the role of motherhood, but questions remain about women's attitudes toward the timing of parenthood, the perceived effect of parenthood on the marital relationship, the perceived effect of parenthood on males as well as females, and the perceived contribution of children to the relationship. A sample of…

This study examines the effects of reading materials on children's gender stereotypes toward adult occupations. The study sample consisted of 355 first-, third- and fifth-grade middle class children randomized into 3 groups which received 10 stories each. One group received sex-role-reversed occupational stories, another sex-stereotyped stories,…