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Sex‐Role Attitudes and Psychological Well‐Being
Author(s) -
Gump Janice Porter
Publication year - 1972
Publication title -
journal of social issues
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.618
H-Index - 122
eISSN - 1540-4560
pISSN - 0022-4537
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-4560.1972.tb00019.x
Subject(s) - happiness , psychology , workmanship , constructive , id, ego and super ego , social psychology , gender role , wife , aggression , developmental psychology , political science , process (computing) , computer science , law , visual arts , operating system , art
Sex‐role concepts of 162 senior college women are explored in relationship to ego strength, happiness, and achievement plans. The majority of women believe it possible to assume the roles of wife and mother while concomitantly pursuing extra‐familial interests. Neither happiness nor the establishing of relationships with men differentiated women traditional in sex‐role orientation from women primarily interested in realizing their own potential. Differences in ego strength were found to be associated with plans for marriage and career: Subjects who obtained the highest ego‐strength scores were actively pursuing both objectives. The latter finding suggests that ego strength may be negatively related to the adoption of the traditional female sex‐role. The traditional conceptions of masculine and feminine are [assumed to be] inappropriate to the kind of world we can live in in the second half of the twentieth century. An androgynous conception of sex role means that each sex will cultivate some of the characteristics usually associated with the other in traditional sex role definitions … tenderness and expressiveness should be cultivated in boys and socially approved in men … [and] achievement need, workmanship and constructive aggression should be cultivated in girls and approved in women [Rossi, 1964, p. 608].