Traditionally masculine traits are also referred to as which type of traits?

7.2 Gender Division of Labor

Conceptions of masculinity and femininity vary widely across cultures, but two universals are plausible: (i) To varying degrees, every society assigns traits or tasks on the basis of sex, and (ii) the status of women is inferior to the status of men in every society. As one would expect based on these generalizations, extensive differences do exist in the work roles of men and women. Examining jobs and tasks in 244 societies, Roy D’Andrade found that men were involved in hunting, metal work, and weapon making and tended to travel further from home than women. Women were responsible for food preparation, carrying water, caring for clothing, and various child-rearing responsibilities. Although women’s subsistence activities generally included child-rearing demands, some did hunt in societies in which this activity did not compete with child care. The strong sex segregation for child-rearing duties was mirrored by another study that found that men were significant caretakers in only 10% of the 80 cultures examined. However, both sexes seemed to be flexible enough to adapt to a range of socioeconomic roles.

Today, women account for a substantial proportion of the world’s labor force. With decreases in infant mortality and fertility, women now spend less time in child-rearing roles. Furthermore, technological advances have allowed women in many parts of the world to separate childbearing from child-rearing and thereby contribute to the family through jobs outside the home.

However, women’s increased autonomy has not been paralleled by increased acceptance or equality. For example, in a 56-country study of labor trends from 1960 to 1980, the job market was marked by declines in women’s occupational opportunities and increases in sex segregation. When measured by per capita gross national product and women’s level of education, modernization was associated with increased segregation of the sexes. Additionally, increased workplace involvement for women correlated with decreases in total fertility rate. Women continue to be disadvantaged in the workplace, most overtly through persistent salary discrepancies that favor men. In addition to women’s lower salaries is evidence suggesting that women prefer traditionally female jobs, especially those offering extensive contact with other people. Moreover, these jobs tend to be low paying. On the contrary, men tend to prefer jobs with high income and promotion opportunities.

Even in the countries with the highest proportion of females in the labor force, women continue to face inequality within the home. Studies in several North American and European countries have found that women perform a majority of the housework, regardless of the extent of their occupational demands. Along with children and larger homes comes reduced male involvement in domestic chores. This is surprising in light of the previous suggestion that increases in education and income are associated with more modern sex role views (i.e., equality in the workforce). However, studies suggest that systematic differences in sex role ideology persist in these more modern countries. For example, in the United States, Great Britain, West Germany, and Austria, people with relatively high levels of education and women with employed husbands indicated less support for efforts to reduce gender inequality compared to those with less education and women without employed husbands. Such findings suggest that even the subjective change in perceived life quality associated with improved socioeconomic conditions may be greater for men than women.

Overview and Theories of Masculinity

Within broad definitions of health and wellness, gender figures significantly in individuals’ feelings, thoughts, appearance, behavior, and embodiment. Masculinity is a form of gender, variously defined as an identity, a social role, and a form of power and is typically, though not exclusively, associated with men. In the socialization of masculinity, boys and men are encouraged to reject or avoid anything stereotypically feminine, to be tough and aggressive, suppress emotions (other than anger), distance themselves emotionally and physically from other men, and strive toward competition, success and power. In particular, anti-femininity and homophobia are at the core of what traditional masculinity means. Boys and men are rewarded in a variety of settings such as schools, intimate relationships, the workplace, military, and prisons for adhering to these stereotypic expectations and often are punished or rejected for violating them. However, fulfillment of these gendered expectations is also associated with a range of health and social problems including anxiety and depression, substance abuse, and interpersonal violence.

The role of gender in health is often analyzed in terms of sex differences, in which the prevalence and severity of men’s mental health disorders and help-seeking are compared to women’s. Although such comparative analysis may be useful in identifying domains where there is a possible connection between biological sex and health, such analyses are analytically incomplete and potentially misleading. The relatively few differences in actual behavior and health outcomes between men and women are overemphasized and the greater variation existing within each group is underappreciated. An expanded analysis is needed that goes beyond a sex comparative lens to address the connection between masculinity and mental health among diverse men. Consequently, we pursue an intersectional analysis that attends closely to the complex diversity in masculinities as they are related to mental health among individuals belonging to different cultures marked by race, class, gender, age, sexuality, ability, and so forth.

We begin our analysis by tracing the development of theories of gender and masculinity, including the psychoanalytic theory of gender identity, the social psychological theory of gender roles, and a sociological theory of intersectionality in masculinities. Next, we summarize what research has shown about the relationship between various aspects of masculinity, such as male gender role stress, and mental health among men. In particular, we review the connection between masculinity and specific health problems that men experience including depression and suicide, violence victimization and perpetration, substance abuse, and stress. Then, we discuss how the values comprising masculinity are especially reinforced and amplified in particular settings, such as prisons and jails. The impact of masculinity on men’s mental health and well-being is especially pronounced in these contexts. Finally, we examine the implications of theory and research on masculinity for psychological practice, intervention and social action that improves men’s mental health and well-being.

2.1 Development of Androgyny Measures

Development of psychometrically sound masculinity and femininity scales based on the revised assumptions was an important first step for androgyny researchers. The favored scale format was paper-and-pencil self-descriptions using Likert scales. Criteria for item selection were somewhat variable. Although a (small) number of measures were eventually developed, only two achieved prominence: The Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) (Bem 1974) and the Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ) (Spence and Helmreich 1978). The items on the BSRI and the PAQ reflected judges' ratings of personality characteristics utilizing criteria of sex-based social desirability or of sex typicality, respectively. The PAQ incorporated only characteristics generally seen as desirable. The BSRI included some femininity items with less positive connotations (e.g., ‘childlike,’ ‘gullible’), a decision that complicated subsequent analyses considerably (Pedhazur and Tetenbaum 1979).

Correlations between the masculinity and femininity scales of a single androgyny measure tended to be small in magnitude as was desired, and the content of corresponding scales across androgyny measures was overlapping but not identical. Factor analyses (e.g., Wilson and Cook 1984) indicated that the content of the femininity and masculinity scales corresponded generally to theoretical definitions of femininity as representing empathy, nurturance, and interpersonal sensitivity and masculinity as representing autonomy, dominance, and assertiveness. The emergence of this factor structure is interesting in that item selection procedures did not specifically select items to be congruent with the expressive/communal and instrumental/agentic distinctions. These content distinctions appear to be central to the broad-based perceptions of the sexes' personalities and behaviors elicited by the androgyny measures (Cook 1985).

Myth resolves contradiction

In addition to the expressive, totemic view of the mythical function of advertising there is a second view of myth that also provides a useful model for understanding cigarette advertising. Levi-Strauss, in Structural Anthopology (Levi-Strauss C., 1977), argues that the purpose of myth is to provide a model of thought capable of overcoming contradiction generated by society or human condition. His position is that the function of myth is to mediate salient cultural contradictions, modifying and masking them so as to minimize their cultural impact. To Levi-Strauss, myth is one form of thought, where opposed logical positions (contradictions) are stated and then mediated by a restatement in a dialectical structure. Myth makes explicit the contradictoriness of reality in human preoccupations: contradictions between instincts, wishes, and the intransigent realities of nature and society (Kirk G.S., 1978). Douglas, in a commentary on Levi-Strauss’ position on myth, writes that myths portray the many unsatisfactory compromises in social life so that “people can recognize indirectly what it would be difficult to admit openly and yet what is patently clear to all and sundry, that the ideal is not attainable” (Douglas M., 1968). This process is experienced as essentially palliative. In The Structural Study of Myth, Levi-Strauss provides a chart where he labels the function of myth as “transformation” and the problem transformed as the “sentimental status” (Levi-Strauss C., 1977). This seems an attempt to anchor the social process of mythologizing to a psychologistic construct and thus seems an identical explanation of the psychological ‘needs’ that on-target advertisements are able to interpellate in their audiences.

Cigarettes, their use and users are rife with contradictions which advertising attempts to resolve or mediate by placing them in apposition to images expressing values suspected from market research and advertising intuition as being effectively distracting. As a material product, cigarettes have many features that present them as potential contradictions to values widely held throughout communities. In the U.S.A., over 90% of people accept that smoking is bad for health and is an addiction (Roper Organization Inc, 1978 May). Cigarettes are widely felt to smell and to be filthy, as the testimony of air-freshening product advertising so often indicates. People of higher social class are quitting smoking at a much faster rate than their lower class counterparts which may well be lending smoking a ‘down market’ set of associations (which presents as a contradiction to those wanting to project themselves as upwardly mobile). A pioneer in advertising motivational research, Pierre Martineau, writing in 1957 outlined four dimensions along which cigarettes themselves can be ‘problematical’, presenting as potential contradictions that advertising can alleviate:

1.

“1. Masculinity-Femininity. Some cigarettes are typed as very masculine, some as acceptable to either group. Camel is by widespread agreement the ‘he-man’ cigarette, particularly of the athletic and working class male. Chesterfield is for both men and women, but for a different sort of male – the white-collar type.

Strong-Mild. Each cigarette acquires its own shade of character along this range. Smokers want to strike a balance between being too unhealthy and evil (the strongest cigarette) and being too innocuous and prudish (the mildest).

Economical-Expensive. A cheap cigarette may actually cost less, or it may be rated cheap because it is considered inferior … People can think of more reasons why they shouldn't smoke than why they should. So there is no point in making matters worse by smoking a cheap cigarette…

Which statement describes the influence of context on the seasons of life quizlet?

In which age range does the rate of decline in muscle mass and strength tend to accelerate quizlet?