Background High rates of violence and HIV have been documented within the South African context. Constructions of masculinity and femininity that position men as dominant and highly sexually active and women as subordinate and acquiescent have been found to contribute towards gender inequality. This inequality is in turn related to negative health consequences, specifically violence against wom...

This study used samples of adults from the United States (n = 285) and the People's Republic of China (n = 450) to examine age, gender, and culture differences in personality. Participants in both samples ranged from 20 to 87 years of age and responded to the California Psychological Inventory (CPI). Factor analyses of the CPI resulted in 4 personality factors (i.e., extraversion, control/norm ...

The development of gender categorization and the effect of gender-typicality (i.e., masculinity/femininity) on categorization of dynamic faces were investigated from infancy through childhood. Studies 1 and 2 tested 5-, 6-, 8-, and 11-month-old infants in a habituation task with either typical or atypical faces without cultural cues (e.g., hair or clothing). The results demonstrated that by 6 m...

Two instruments were developed and standardized on first-, second-, and third-grade boys and girls. The Toy Preference Test (TPT) measures sex-role preference, and/or Stereotypic Sex-Role Concepts of masculinity (SRCm) and femininity (SRCf), depending upon the instructions used for administration. The Rating Scale for Children (RSC) taps sex-role adoption. Subjects were at least third generatio...

Evolutionary researchers have identified age, operational sex ratio and high variance in male resources as factors that intensify female competition. These are discussed in relation to escalated intrasexual competition for men and their resources between young women in deprived neighbourhoods. For these women, fighting is not seen as antithetical to cultural conceptions of femininity, and femal...

This study examines the relationship between suicide and aging from a gender perspective, examining the socially imposed boundaries of masculinity and femininity in the lives of elderly people who committed suicide. It is a qualitative study in which 50 psychosocial autopsies conducted with elderly relatives were selected from 10 cities in the North, South, Northeast and Midwest of Brazil. In t...

Juxtaposing data from Dubrovnik studies based on archival material and Dubrovnik narrative sources, the paper points to the complexity of that urban community's cultural horizons during the 15th and 16th century with a special focus on women's history. The parallel existence of diverse frames of reference within which women's lives were conceptualised — legal, economic, social and cultural, ecc...

Drawing on interviews, participant observation, and Internet postings, this article analyzes gender in a local Goth scene. These Goths use the confines of the subcultural scene, where they are relatively safe from outsider view, and the scene’s celebration of sexuality as resources to resist mainstream notions of passive femininity. This article probes the struggles of women in this Goth scene ...

Two studies examined the threatened masculinity theory of male body dissatisfaction, which posits that threats to masculinity result in increased muscle dissatisfaction. In Study 1, a masculinity threat was followed by tasks examining confidence in physical ability and perceptions of current and ideal body shapes. Results showed that men who experienced a masculinity threat reported lower confi...

ALAN D. DESANTIS is an associate professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Kentucky. He is presently researching the ways fraternities and sororities both reinforce and challenge traditional conceptions of masculinity and femininity on college campuses. " The primary function of these arguments was to inoculate regulars from the potential disonance-causing and anxiety-cr...