U.S. Adults Awareness to Gender Roles in Everyday Life

By Ansley Franklin and Meagan Clark

Introduction

Our group’s purpose is to explore U.S. adults’ awareness of gender roles in their everyday life, and if they believe they are combined in the impact of it all. We want to bring the mistreatment of both genders into light not just on college campuses, but everywhere since it is so prevalent in our modern society. Gender stereotyping is a huge deal everywhere and can have a poor effect on the victim. “Previous research finds that individuals who experience discriminatory behavior based on their gender report negative effects on psychological well-being, including lowered self-esteem” (Tay 3). Our group will be using quantitative data to measure the public’s perception of gender roles in their ordinary life. This isn’t just limited to men and women; non-binary people are often put into the role that they are outsiders, and this causes many people to not accept them which can lead to psychological problems. “Almost 42% of gender non-binary youth reported attempting suicide in the 2018 LGBTQ Youth Report” (Halliwell 223). Gender discrimination is fairly common, but many people just assume that it’s normal, and there’s no malintent to what was said or done to them. We hope that this survey will help Americans see the reality of gender roles and how they are affected and impacted by these gender roles and how people impact gender roles as well.

This survey was not limited to just CCGA students and faculty; anyone over the age of 18 and a U.S. citizen could take it. It was hoped that the survey would be randomly taken by people who saw our social media posts on it. This would ensure us with a widely ranged demographic and a more broad consensus.

We got a total of 120 responses with 91 of them being completed. Out of all the completed ones, 84.6% of the responses were from those who did not attend CCGA with the remaining 15.4% being students at CCGA. Involving the age range, 32.9% were 18-24 being the biggest age group to take the survey, 26.4% were 25-34, 11% were 35-44, 18.7% were 45-54, both 55-64 and 65-74 were 4.4%, and the smallest age group was the made up of 2 respondents or 2.2%. 12.1% of respondents identified as male with 13.2% being assigned male at birth (AMAB), 83.5% identified as female with 86.6% being AFAB, and four respondents (4.4%) chose other with one choosing not to fill in the answer, two identifying as genderfluid, and the last one identifying as a divine deity. None of the respondents identified as non-binary. Majority of the respondents were white (82.4%), 4.4% Hispanic or Latino, 6.6% were Black or African American, 4.4% were Asian or Pacific Islander, and 2.2% were multiracial; none of the respondents were Native American or Middle Eastern.

71.4% of the respondents were straight, 18.7 were bisexual, 1.1% were gay, 2.2% were lesbian, and 6.6% were pansexual; none of the respondents were asexual. 47.3% of respondents were married, none of them being widowed, 9.9% were divorced, 8.8% were in a domestic relationship, and 34.1% were single (never married).

Results

Discussion

Our survey shows that overall Americans have are a little divided on how they see gender roles, but generally acknowledge that they exist even if it is in different ways from each other. For example in the chart directly above about which gender assimilates more, the answer is very divided, but almost all of the participants agree that some gender is more likely to assimilate to certain stereotypes. In another study regarding hyper-masculinity, it's said that "Among emerging adult samples, previous research finds hyper-masculinity is linked to aggression toward women, aggression toward men who violate gender role norms, increased risk-taking behaviors (e.g., drugs, alcohol, large numbers of sexual partners), depression, alexithymia (e.g., lack of effect), poor coping skills, and low academic achievement" (Corprew et. al. 106) While the majority of our participants did not choose male for this question, it has the most male votes out of any question in the survey including the ones on demographics. As stated above, this means that some females choose that men are more likely to assimilate, possibly because these women know about hyper-masculinity. The study found that among their 328 participants, the ones that were extreme hyper-masculine (28) and traditional hyper-masculine (96), the most prevalent area of their hyper-masculinity was anti-feminine aspects in life (Corprew et. al. 113) There were several questions on anti-feminine attitudes, but the one that was most popular with the extreme hyper-masculine and traditional hyper-masculine participants was, "I know feminists want to be like men because men are better than women" (Corprew et. al. 111). This is significant because it would explain why some women would put that men are more likely to assimilate to gender roles. After all, they have to experience the consequences of men's hyper-masculinity and anti-feminine attitudes.

Based on the results of the survey, a significant finding of this survey was the majority of the respondents agree that, yes, children are forced to conform to gender stereotypes with the most common idea being it's being placed on them by parents. Parents will only allow children to play with certain toys, wear certain things, etc, because of the child's gender. A young boy will be told that he is not allowed to wear a dress and when he asks why the parents say because he is a boy. This shapes the impressionable child's mind into thinking that boys are allowed to wear dresses, and that dresses are only for girls. This happens with a lot of everyday things. Even children's literature hinders children's expression and identity in life. An article written by Ya-tun Tsao says, "The bias influencing gender-stereotypical thinking may limit children’s choices, interests, and abilities. In most children’s picture books, males characteristically dominate titles, pictures, and texts. Female characters, on the other hand, are not only under-represented in titles and central roles but also appear unimportant" (Tsao 17) The child will see these characters and want to become like them because most children's books have happy endings which will lead the child to expect a happy ending if they act this way. Of course, this doesn't happen, but these roles are still ingrained in the child's mind. We know from the survey that the majority of U.S. adults are aware of gender stereotypes and how the stereotypes affect them and we also know that, again, the majority of U.S. adults know that children are forced to conform to gender roles. If U.S. adults are aware of gender roles and the majority don't believe/like in "traditional" gender roles, then why are children still being forced into gender roles. It's seen everywhere in media, at school, at home, etc. Our findings show that adults see that there is a problem, but nothing is being done about that problem and that some of the respondents of the survey have conflicting views on the matter.

Our research also concluded that a majority of Americans experience gender stereotyping in the home. "While married men spend an average of 16.6 h each week on domestic work and childcare, married women who work full-time spend an average of 24.5 h, the equivalent of a part-time job [8,58,59]" (Fetterolf, J.C., Rudman, L.A Paragraph 1). A lesser amount of people felt gender stereotyped in school compared to the other options, but they feel it more often in the workplace and at home regardless of their gender. This may be because they spent less time at school than they did/will at home and the workplace. Both our survey and the excerpt from the above study shows significance towards women experiencing more gender stereotyping, and more so in the home and workplace going well back into gender roles from the 50s. You can find from the above study that men averagely work less, and might not notice that there is any difference in women's workload because the men don't always feel the exhaustion of working more. This may conclude that some men don't think there really are gender roles in the workplace or at home. "Additionally, because men have historically occupied the role of the primary breadwinner, they may feel more entitled to the domestic power that this role provides, compared with women." (Fetterolf, J.C., Rudman, L.A Paragraph 10). The relation of this statement back to our previous statement on when shows that men work less and are often considered the breadwinners even though they don't work as much as women; this most likely contributes to the hyper-masculinity discussed above. Additionally, a study by Andreea Constantin concluded that even in the 1970s mother's stayed home and didn't work because the men were the breadwinners. "A number of empirical studies have proved the robustness of gender ideology in explaining gender relations in terms of division of work between men in women (Aassve et. al., 2014; Lachance-Grzela and Bouchard, 2010: 773)." (Constantin 24). Comparing our survey to this piece of information, it's apparent that women were suppressed by men in the home in the 70s and today; our survey concluded that 60.44% of people agreed to it still being apparent in today's society. A study done by Peter Smith states, "The LFGI constructed from the LFS focused primarily on the dimensions of gender roles and institutionalized gender among labor force participants. Given the data available, the LFGI was comprised of four main measures: responsibility for caring for children; occupational segregation; hours of work relative to partner/spouse; and education relative to partner/spouse" (Smith 10). Smith's survey also went in-depth with their gender stereotyping and asked their participants in the four main areas that are perceived as work. Our survey results (mostly taken by women) show that these types of experiences still happen.

Another subject the survey touched heavily on was "traditional" gender roles." Our survey reported a staggering 79.12% of participants answered yes to traditional gender roles still being supported in our society today. Another survey done by Jessica Walter says, "An example 830 J. G. Walter 123 is: 'A man’s job is to earn money; a woman’s job is to look after the home and family' (British Social Attitudes Survey 1984). Therefore, the distinction between role ascription, role conflict, and role segregation approximates a distinction made by Funk (1991) between role segregation, role combination, and role conflict." (Walter J.G, 330-331). In Walter's study, it was still very apparent of men being the main breadwinners, while the mothers did it all. From housework, taking care of the children, and sometimes even having a job outside of the home themselves. This is what was to be imagined by the participants when asked about gender roles. "All in all, our analysis found that measures often are too strongly focused on traditional roles. Societal developments have raised new questions about, for example, the evaluation of more egalitarian models of the division of labor in the family and public sphere that cannot be answered with these traditionally focused measures. In other words, items are missing that could help, for example, to evaluate the models that are more widespread in society today, such as part-time work for women and full-time work for men" (Walter, J.G. 844). Between the two surveys ours and Walters, it is apparent that traditional gender stereotyping is ingrained into a majority of people. With this survey, we hope that with the times changing those traditional gender roles will change as well.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we found through our survey that the majority of adults in America did have at least some sort of awareness of gender roles even if there were differing opinions. The more common idea that the majority of the partakers of this survey had was that women went through more struggles regarding stereotypes about them, but men also experienced it. There was not enough information from the survey to conclude anything with non-binary people or any other gender. Traditional gender roles such as women should cook and clean while men should make all the money was said by the majority of the results of the survey to be prevalent in society, but many of the respondents seemed indifferent or unsure whether or not they supported those gender roles.

Limitations

While we did get a total of 91 completed responses and that was about how many we expected, it was truly not enough to determine exactly how aware US citizens were of gender roles in their everyday life. Another limitation was uncompleted surveys; we actually got 120 responses, but only 91 of them were completed. Along with uncompleted responses, there might have also been dishonest answers. Some people have not thought there were gender roles in the U.S, and just put random answers which could have skewed the results if enough people did this. Differing interpretations may have also limited this survey. When asked about children and the children's conforming to gender roles, a typed answer one respondent put was asking to specify which stereotypes the surveyor was asking about, so we did not get an actual answer to the question. One last limitation of this survey was that it had to be completely online including all advertising which meant it could not be reached to as many people, and it was not a completely random sample because it was limited to just people on our social media.

Works Cited

Constantin, Andreea, and Malina Voicu. “Attitudes towards Gender Roles in Cross-Cultural Surveys: Content Validity and Cross-Cultural Measurement Invariance.” Social Indicators Research, vol. 123, no. 3, Sept. 2015, pp. 733–751. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1007/s11205-014-0758-8.

CORPREW III, CHARLES S., et al. “Men at the Crossroads: A Profile Analysis of Hypermasculinity in Emerging Adulthood.” Journal of Men’s Studies, vol. 22, no. 2, Spring 2014, p. 105. EBSCOhost, doi:10.3149/jms.2202.105.

Fetterolf, Janell, and Laurie Rudman. “Gender Inequality in the Home: The Role of Relative Income, Support for Traditional Gender Roles, and Perceived Entitlement.” Gender Issues, vol. 31, no. 3/4, Dec. 2014, p. 219. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1007/s12147-014-9126-x.

Hack, Tay, et al. “When It Is Not so Funny: Prevalence of Friendly Sexist Teasing and Consequences to Gender Self-Esteem.” Psychological Reports, vol. 123, no. 5, Oct. 2020, pp. 1934–1965. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1177/0033294119896045.

Halliwell, Pamuela. “The Psychological & Emotional Effects of Discrimination within the Lgbtq, Transgender, & Non-Binary Communities.” Thomas Jefferson Law Review, vol. 41, no. 2, Spring 2019, pp. 222–237. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=lgs&AN=137804082&site=eds-live&scope=site.

Smith, Peter M., and Mieke Koehoorn. “Measuring Gender When You Don’t Have a Gender Measure: Constructing a Gender Index Using Survey Data.” International Journal for Equity in Health, vol. 15, May 2016, pp. 1–9. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1186/s12939-016-0370-4.

Walter, Jessica Gabriele. “The Adequacy of Measures of Gender Roles Attitudes: A Review of Current Measures in Omnibus Surveys.” Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, vol. 52, no. 2, Mar. 2018, pp. 829–848. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1007/s11135-017-0491-x.

YA-LUN TSAO. “Gender Issues in Young Children’s Literature.” Reading Improvement, vol. 57, no. 1, Spring 2020, p. 16. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=aqh&AN=143771384&site=eds-live&scope=site.