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Chapter Summary

Chapter 1

First, we reviewed some important terms in the psychological study of gender. Sex, the biological category, was distinguished from gender, the psychological category. An important term is gender role, which refers to the expectations that society has for being female or male; we expect men to be masculine and women to be feminine—in other words, to act in accordance with their gender role. Other terms defined include gender identity, sexual orientation, sex or gender typing, sexism, gender-role stereotype, and sex discrimination. I discussed the multiple meanings of feminism, concluding that equality for men and women was the most central component of the definition. Because each society has its own definitions of gender and ways of defining female and male roles, I also described several cultures that have alternative ways of constructing gender.

Next, I presented various political and philosophical issues in the study of gender. The minimalists, who emphasize the similarities between men and women, were distinguished from the maximalists, who emphasize the differences. A brief history of the women's movements was provided along with a description of the more recent men's movements. The chapter concluded with a discussion of sexist language.

Chapter 2

In the first half of the chapter, the scientific method that is used to study gender was reviewed. The scientific method rests on empiricism; it includes the collection of data that are then used to make statements, develop theories, and generate hypotheses. The correlational method, the experimental method, and field experiments were presented. The advantage of the experimental method is internal validity, and the advantage of the correlational method is external validity. The importance of random selection and random assignment was explained. I also described the differences between cross-sectional and longitudinal studies; longitudinal designs may provide stronger tests of causality and are able to distinguish cohort effects from age effects.

We face a number of difficulties in the scientific study of gender. The experimenter can be a source of bias by influencing the question asked, the way a study is designed (including the participants chosen and the way variables are manipulated and measured), the way the data are collected, how the data are interpreted, and whether the data are reported. Participants also can influence the outcome of a study, in particular by demand characteristics and concerns with self-presentation. Other difficulties that researchers encounter when studying gender include the problem of generalizing from the laboratory to the real world, isolating the effects of participant's sex from variables that are confounded with sex such as status and gender role, and considering how the context influences behavior.

In the second half of the chapter, I reviewed the history of the psychology of gender. The field began by addressing the question of whether women were intellectually inferior to men. When there was insufficient evidence to support this claim, the field shifted to focus on the mental or psychological differences between men and women, that is, masculinity and femininity. The first comprehensive measure of masculinity and femininity was the AIAS, but numerous other inventories soon followed. A major shift in the conceptualization and measurement of masculinity and femininity occurred in 1974 with the development of the BSRI and the PAQ. These two instruments challenged the bipolar assumption that masculinity and femininity are opposites and the view that the healthiest people are masculine men and feminine women. Instead, the model of mental health was embodied in the androgynous person, someone who incorporates both feminine and masculine traits.

The most recent approaches to the conceptualization of femininity and masculinity have emphasized their multiple components. We now realize that femininity and masculinity consist of behaviors, roles, and physical characteristics as well as personality traits. Researchers have also emphasized how the social context influences the display of sex differences and the meaning of gender. An area of research that emphasizes the role society plays in shaping gender-role norms is gender-role strain. Gender-role strain is experienced when the norms for our gender role conflict with our naturally occurring tendencies or with what would be psychologically adaptive. This area of research has largely been applied to men.

Chapter 3

In this chapter, I moved beyond conceptions of gender roles to the study of attitudes toward gender roles and to the category of gender. Attitudes consist of three components: affective, cognitive, and behavioral. With respect to gender, the affective component is sexism, the cognitive component is gender-role stereotyping, and the behavioral component is sex discrimination. I reviewed instruments that measure traditional and modern sexism as well as distinguished between benevolent sexism (positive view of gender category) and hostile sexism (negative view of gender category). Despite the difference in valence, benevolent and hostile sexism are positively correlated, both rooted in the belief that women are less competent than men. I also discussed unfavorable attitudes toward LGBT persons, in the form of homophobia and transphobia. I presented the components of gender-role stereotypes and how those components are influenced by race and ethnicity, sexual orientation, and age. I presented data on the problems with gender-role stereotypes, including how they affect perception and behavior. There are difficulties in changing gender-role stereotypes, in particular because stereotype-inconsistent behavior is often unnoticed, attributed to situational causes, or viewed as more extreme. Sexism and gender-role stereotyping are antecedents to sex discrimination, which I discussed in the context of a Supreme Court ruling that utilized data on gender-role stereotyping in reaching its decision.

Chapter 4

I reviewed the evidence for sex differences in cognitive abilities, specifically spatial skills, math skills, and verbal skills. Overall, most of the differences are small. For each domain, the size of the sex difference varies with how the ability is assessed. For example, in the spatial skills domain, there is a more substantial sex difference favoring males for one particular skill, the mental rotation task, but negligible differences for the other spatial skills. Sex differences in math skills seem to have disappeared with time, although a sex difference in SAT scores persists. In terms of verbal skills, many differences are small, but the female advantage in writing is an exception. The size of many sex differences depends on the nature of the population. For example, sex differences in verbal skills are influenced by the population studied; among children with verbal difficulties, there is a preponderance of boys over girls. For many of these areas of cognition, the differences seem to be getting smaller with time.

I also reviewed the evidence for sex differences in a number of social behaviors. Many domains show larger sex differences when self-report methods are used compared to more objective measures of behavior. For example, self-reports of empathy demonstrate a substantial sex difference favoring women, but observational measures are less clear. Other sex differences in social behavior are influenced by the environment; for example, sex differences in aggression are reduced under conditions of provocation. One limitation of much of this research is a lack of external validity because social behavior is often studied in the laboratory, where the natural context is removed.

Two stage theories of development, moral development and social development, may differ for women and men. Men may define morality in terms of justice and women in terms of responsibility or connection to others. If true, previous theories of moral development may unfairly represent women as inferior. However, it appears that women and men have similar views of morality but face different moral dilemmas that call for construing morality differently. The problem with previous theories of social development is that the sequence of establishing an identity before achieving intimacy may describe men's experiences more than women's.

Chapter 5

I reviewed the different theories that explain the origins of the sex differences discussed in Chapter 4 as well as how gender roles are acquired. Biological theories of sex differences focus largely on the role of hormones and the effects of the structure of the brain on sex differences in cognition and behavior. The evidence for each of these subject areas is fairly controversial. The role of hormones is difficult to study because it is difficult to manipulate hormone levels in humans; thus we are left to rely on correlational research among humans and experimental research on animals. Evolutionary psychology and sociobiology are theories that introduce evolutionary principles to explain cognitive and social behavior. Although a number of social behaviors, such as sexual behavior and aggression, can be explained by sociobiology, it is difficult to test this theory experimentally.

Psychoanalytic theory began with Freud but has been updated by Chodorow. The basis of the theory, whether traditional or modern, is how identifying with the same-sex parent influences the acquisition of gender roles. Social learning theory states that reinforcement and modeling apply to the acquisition of gender-role behavior just as they do to any other behavior. The principles of social learning theory have been applied directly to gender-role acquisition in the form of gender-role socialization theory. Gender-role socialization emphasizes the role that social agents, in particular parents, play in developing children's gender roles. The evidence for parents' differential treatment of daughters and sons is contradictory; put simply, parents treat sons and daughters more similarly than differently, but the few differences may have a large impact. In particular, parents provide sons and daughters with different toys, ones suitable for their gender. Social role theory is similar to gender-role socialization in that it emphasizes the social forces that shape gender-role behavior. However, social role theory examines those forces at a higher level, for example, by claiming that the division of labor between men and women in society (men working outside the home, women caring for children) fosters agentic and communal behavior. Interesting cross-cultural research confirms the notion that the different opportunities societies present to girls and boys can lead to the development of gender-distinct behavior. By contrast, cognitive development theory emphasizes the child as an active processor of the environment rather than a passive recipient of modeling and reinforcement. Gender schema theory integrates the principles of social learning theory (and gender-role socialization) with cognitive development theory. The principles of social learning theory are responsible for the content of the gender categories in society, and cognitive development theory is responsible for our acting in accordance with those categories. Gender schema theory is really a theory of process, rather than content; people who are gender schematic behave in ways consistent with the gender schema of a given society; people who are gender aschematic do not use gender as a guiding principle for behavior.

Finally, Deaux and Major offer a theory that describes the more proximal determinants of men's and women's behavior. According to Deaux and Major, characteristics of the perceiver, the target, and the situation will determine at any given moment how people behave and whether a sex difference is observed.

Obviously, no one theory is correct in terms of explaining all sex differences or in terms of explaining how men and women come to possess male and female gender roles. Some theories have more evidence than others. Some theories are more easily testable than others. Some theories are more relevant to one aspect of gender than others; for example, hormones may play a greater role in aggression than in verbal ability. Each of these theories appears throughout this text, but the predominant theories discussed are ones that focus on social or environmental contributors to the impact of gender on relationships and health.

Chapter 6

In the first part of the chapter, I examined a number of individual difference variables that might explain differences in the nature of women’s and men’s achievements. The early work in this area suggested women have a lower need for achievement compared to men. This hypothesis was later dismissed by suggesting that women’s lack of achievement compared to men’s stems from women’s “fear of success.” The fear of success literature was and continues to be fairly controversial, in part due to the projective nature of the fear of success measures. Recent studies, however, suggest there is still a concern among some women that success may have negative implications for relationships. Another reason women are thought to achieve less than men is that women have lower levels of self-confidence compared to men or lower levels of general self-esteem. Women’s lower self-confidence and lower self-esteem are limited to certain circumstances, specifically when the task is in a masculine domain. Women also seem to take feedback more to heart than men, which means that their self-esteem is affected by others’ positive and negative evaluations of their performance. In areas where women are presumed to be inferior to men, making those stereotypes salient adversely affects women’s performance. In regard to self-esteem, it is more accurate to say men and women have different beliefs about their strong points and derive their self-esteem from different sources. Evidence suggests that men derive self-esteem more from individuating themselves from others (i.e., feeling unique in comparison to others), whereas women derive self-esteem from their connection to others.

A final individual difference factor that may have implications for women’s and men’s achievement has to do with the way they explain their successes and failures—at least in the area of masculine endeavors. In those domains, women are more likely than men to attribute success to effort or luck (unstable causes), whereas men are more likely to attribute success to ability (an internal, stable cause). Women are more likely to attribute failure to stable causes, such as lack of ability or task difficulty, whereas men are more likely to attribute failure to unstable causes, such as lack of effort or bad luck. Sex differences in attributions for performance on feminine tasks are less clear. Importantly, the different attributions women and men make for performance may have implications for the decisions they make about how hard to try in an area or even whether to pursue a particular area of achievement.

In the second half of the chapter, I explored social factors that might contribute to women’s and men’s beliefs about their abilities as well as their attributions for performance. According to the expectancy/value model, people pursue achievement in an area in which they expect to succeed and they regard as important and interesting. Whereas expectancies influence performance, values seem to have a stronger link to areas that women and men pursue. Children’s expectancies and values are a function of gender-role socialization. One source of socialization is parents. Parents often have stereotyped views of boys’ and girls’ abilities, believing boys have greater math ability and girls have greater verbal ability, which they translate into beliefs about their specific sons’ and daughters’ abilities. Parents seem to hold these sex-differentiated beliefs even when girls and boys receive the same grades in school. Some evidence indicates that parents’ beliefs about their children’s abilities influence children’s own self-perceptions and children’s actual abilities. In other words, parents’ stereotypes about girls’ and boys’ abilities may become self-fulfilling prophecies. The feedback and experiences that parents provide to their children may lead the children to develop the different abilities parents initially expected.

A second source of influence on children’s beliefs about their abilities is teachers. Teachers pay more attention to boys than girls in the classroom. This may be due, in part, to boys’ misbehavior demanding more attention. Teachers are more likely to criticize boys than girls; interestingly, criticism is linked to greater self-confidence. More important, the nature of the feedback that teachers provide to girls and boys differs. Boys seem to receive a great deal of negative feedback about work-irrelevant domains, which then leads boys to discount negative feedback about their work and maintain a belief in their abilities. This type of negative feedback also may undermine boys’ interest in school. Girls, by contrast, seem to receive more positive feedback about work-irrelevant domains, which, unfortunately, leads girls to discount positive feedback about their work and make more unstable attributions for success.

Chapter 7

Boys and girls clearly have different styles of interacting with one another. Boys play in groups that are loud, boisterous, and hierarchical, whereas girls play in dyads that are quiet, conversational, and egalitarian. A strong preference to play with same-sex peers likely exacerbates the difference in play styles. The source of the different styles is not clear. The distinct play styles map onto the differences in adult interaction styles. In general, studies of small groups show that women are more socioemotional and men are more task oriented. However, these findings are qualified by a number of variables: the nature of the task, the sex of the interaction partner, and the length of the interaction. Sex differences are strongest for gender-typed tasks, for interactions with same-sex people, and when interactions are brief.

Women and men differ in their use of some features of language. Men's language is more instrumental, succinct, and directive, whereas women's language is more affective, elaborative, and indirect. Women's language has been described as promoting relationships but also as being unassertive. Women's style of speaking appears to have negative implications when used by women but not men. In particular, men like—but view as less competent—a woman who uses feminine rather than masculine language.

There are a number of sex differences in nonverbal behavior: Women smile more, gaze more, are better at conveying emotion, and are better at decoding others' emotions compared to men. Sex differences in touch are more complicated. Among children, touch is more frequent among same-sex peers than cross-sex peers. Among adults, touch is more frequent among cross-sex dyads than same-sex dyads. Within adult cross-sex dyads, touch is determined by relationship status: Men initiate touch during the early stages of a relationship, and women initiate touch during the later stages. In general, sex differences in nonverbal behavior are more frequently observed among same-sex dyads than cross-sex dyads.

Research on social influence generally shows that men are more influential and more likely to emerge as leaders than women. Women are more easily influenced, largely because people are nicer and more agreeable to women. Agreement leads to influence, but disagreement does not. Despite the fact that men are more likely than women to be leaders, women leaders are more likely than men leaders to use the transformational style of leadership, which has been determined to be the most effective style.

Women who adopt agentic styles of leadership are viewed negatively—especially by men. This bias stems in part from the inference that agentic women lack communal characteristics. Women are more influential and viewed more positively as leaders when they are perceived to have both agentic and communal qualities.

In general, men and women seem to experience emotion similarly, although women are more emotionally expressive than men. Sex differences in emotional expression depend on the specific emotion: Women are more likely to express sadness, love, and fear, whereas men are more likely to express anger and pride. In terms of physiological reactivity, either men are more reactive than women or there is no sex difference in physiological reactivity to emotion. People attribute women's emotional states to internal causes and men's emotional states to external factors.

There are two primary explanations for sex differences in communication: status and social role. According to status theory, men's communication is a function of their higher status, and women's communication is a function of their lower status. A number of compelling studies show that men and women behave the same when status is held constant. Evidence for status theory is especially strong in studies of group interactions. According to social role theory, men's communication is a function of their instrumental orientation, and women's communication is a function of their expressive orientation. Support for this theory comes largely from studies showing that nonverbal differences between men and women persist across situations, including different statuses.

Chapter 8

Studies on children and adult friendship do not reveal consistent differences in the number of friends that females and males have. However, females' friendships seem to be closer than those of males. One reason for this is the nature of male and female friendship: Men's relationships are agentic—activity focused—and women's relationships are communal—emotion focused. Sex differences in the nature of friendship emerge with age. Boys emphasize the instrumental aspects of friendship (shared activities), and girls emphasize the emotional aspects of friendship (self-disclosure). These differences persist into adulthood.

Girls' and women's friendships are closer or more intimate than those of males. Traditionally, intimacy has been defined by self-disclosure, but this has been a subject of contention. Some people maintain that self-disclosure is a feminine version of intimacy and men define intimacy through shared experiences. Research shows that self-disclosure is important to both men's and women's conceptions of intimacy, but men's conceptions may also include shared activities. For both women and men, an intimate interaction is one in which they feel understood, cared for, and appreciated. These feelings may come from self-disclosure, shared activities, or some combination of the two. The closeness of male friendships is restricted by competition, homophobia, and emotional inhibition.

Women self-disclose more than men, and women receive more self-disclosure than men. However, it is not the case that men are not capable of self-disclosure. Men simply prefer not to disclose. One reason for sex differences in disclosure is that both women and men view self-disclosure as a feminine activity and view men who self-disclose less favorably than women who self-disclose.

Friendships are not only a source of affection, intimacy, and support but also are a source of conflict. Although women's friendships are closer than those of men, they also may be characterized by more conflict. Women and men handle conflict somewhat differently in their friendships. Women are more likely to confront conflict directly with the intent of resolution and in a way that does not harm the relationship; men raise the issue of conflict, but with less concern about its effect on the relationship.

An emerging area of research is cross-sex friendship. Although cross-sex friends are not as common as same-sex friends, cross-sex friendship is not unusual. Cross-sex friendship is most common among young adults and least common among children and older adults. Social norms and structural barriers discourage children from playing with the other sex, discourage married adults from spending time with the other sex, and inhibit the elderly from developing relationships with the other sex. Women rate same-sex friends as closer than cross-sex friends. However, men are sometimes closer to cross-sex friends than same-sex friends. Cross-sex friendship can serve important functions for women and men, such as insight into the other sex, a source of emotional support for men, and relief from the intensity and conflict of same-sex friendship for women. A number of barriers to cross-sex friendship have been postulated, but little empirical evidence indicates these barriers actually pose serious difficulties with the exception of romantic/sexual attraction. Some evidence suggests this is more of a problem for men than for women. Data are meager on the outcome of cross-sex friendships: Do they last, dissolve, or evolve into romantic relationships?

Cross-race friendships are more common among children than adults. Prejudice and school diversity are related to cross-race friendship.

Friendship is especially important to gay/lesbian/bisexual persons because they receive less support from family members. Gay/lesbian/bisexual persons value the same qualities in a friendship as do heterosexuals. And, friendships with gay/lesbian/bisexual persons are similar to friendships with heterosexuals. The communal/agentic dimensions of friendship used to evaluate heterosexual friendship do not apply to homosexual friendship. Sexuality plays a greater role among the friendships of gay men. Because of the potential for sexual attraction, studies of friendship among gay men and lesbians may benefit from comparisons to cross-sex friendship among heterosexuals.

Friendships at work are increasingly common. Despite the concerns that organizations often have about fraternization among employees, there is evidence that friendship at work is good for productivity. Work presents opportunities for cross-sex friendships but the challenges of cross-sex friendship remain. Friendships at work face some difficulties due to the inherent conflict between the roles of friend and coworker.

The study of friendship is greatly limited by its focus on middle-class White people. Interesting differences appear in the nature of friendship due to ethnicity, social class, and cultural ideology. Friendship also is affected by age and by stage in the life cycle—being married, having children, working. All these factors influence the availability of friends as well as the place of friendship in life.

Chapter 9

Men and women are equally interested in romantic relationships and generally expect to get the same things out of a romantic relationship: love, companionship, intimacy, and sex. Men and women also desire similar characteristics in a partner, such as trustworthiness and kindness. There is an overall sex difference such that women attach more importance to most characteristics compared to men, which implies that women are choosier. There also are consistent sex differences in preferences for some of the less important characteristics; across cultures, men attach greater importance to the physical appearance of their partner and women attach greater importance to the financial status of their partner. Evolutionary theory and social role theory provide explanations for these differences.

Romantic relationships are characterized by intimacy, expressions of love and caring, self-disclosure, and sexuality for both women and men. There is little evidence that women and men define intimacy in their relationship differently. Some evidence suggests that men hold more romantic beliefs about relationships compared to women, and there are some sex differences in styles of love. Men tend to adopt a more game-playing strategy of love, whereas women tend to adopt a more practical and friendship-based approach.

Men have more permissive attitudes toward sex, but these differences are limited to less serious relationships. Men can separate sex from love, but women are more likely to see the two as co-occurring. In fact, men are more likely to seek sex for physical pleasure, whereas women are more likely to seek sex for emotional intimacy.

Who are the happiest couples? Couples who share power seem to be the happiest. Regardless of what one puts into a relationship, women and men are most happy when they perceive their contributions as equitable. It also turns out that characteristics of men (gender roles, personality traits, well-being) are related to women’s relationship satisfaction, whereas characteristics of women have less impact on men’s relationship satisfaction.

Women and men manage conflict somewhat differently. In laboratory studies of conflict discussions, women are more negative than men and remain engaged in the conflict, whereas men withdraw from the conflict and try to de-escalate it with positive behavior. Because the behavior of women is different in distressed versus non distressed couples, women have been referred to as the “emotional barometers” of relationships. Much research has focused on a particular pattern of conflict behavior known as the demand/withdraw pattern. Research suggests that women are more likely to demand and men to withdraw, largely because women desire more change in relationships than men do.

Jealousy is equally likely to be evoked in women and men. Evolutionary psychologists have suggested that men are more upset by sexual infidelity and women are more upset by emotional infidelity. The evidence for this proposition is mixed. Men are more likely than women to monitor their partner’s fidelity.

Finally, the chapter concludes with a discussion of cohabiting relationships. Cohabiting relationships are of a lower quality than marital relationships, and cohabitation prior to marriage is predictive of divorce. The negative outcomes of cohabitation may be due to the kinds of people who enter into cohabitation, the nature of the cohabiting relationship itself, or to actual adverse effects of cohabitation on people’s relationships.

Chapter 10

Men have higher mortality rates than women, but women have higher morbidity rates than men. In this chapter, I have reviewed the different classes of explanations for this paradox. Although biological factors certainly contribute to health, biology alone cannot explain the increase in the size of the sex difference in life expectancy that occurred over the 20th century and the changes in the size of the sex difference in life expectancy that have occurred more recently. SES factors contribute to health but are unable to explain sex differences in health. Although heart disease is the leading cause of death for women as well as men, women are not treated as aggressively as men for heart disease and have poorer outcomes.

A major contributor to sex differences in morbidity and mortality is health behavior. Women engage in more preventive health care compared to men. Although this difference should theoretically lead to women's lower mortality rates, no evidence supports this conjecture. Instead, women's preventive behavior gets counted as physician visits in indexes of morbidity. Smoking is a major contributor to mortality. That men smoke more than women accounts for a portion of the sex difference in mortality as well as the sex difference in specific diseases (e.g., coronary heart disease, lung cancer). That women have increased their rates of smoking during the last half of the 20th century accounts for the fact that the sex difference in life expectancy has narrowed. Men also have higher rates of alcohol and drug usage compared to women.

Other health behaviors pose greater risks to women's than men's health: obesity and lack of exercise. More women than men are obese in the United States, and the sex difference is particularly striking among Blacks and Hispanics. Women also exercise less than men, although more girls are becoming involved in sports.

Another explanation for sex differences in mortality and morbidity focused on the contribution of women's and men's social roles. One of men's social roles is working outside the home, and men are exposed to more hazards at work compared to women. It is also men's social role to drive: Men drive more than women, drive less safely, and are involved in more driving accidents. In general, many of the behaviors that pose dangers for men's health can be conceptualized as general risk-taking behavior. Men's work, home, and leisure activities are riskier than those of women, which undoubtedly contribute to men's higher death rates from accidents.

The female social role has the advantage of making women more concerned with health matters, but the disadvantage of making women the caretakers of other people's health. The nurturant role exposes women to more illness, is a source of fatigue among women, makes them more susceptible to illness, and prevents women from taking care of themselves when they are ill.

Other explanations for sex differences in morbidity have to do with women being more sensitive than men to symptoms, more likely to enact the sick role, and more likely to seek medical care. Women appear to have a lower threshold and tolerance for pain in experimental studies of pain perception. The explanation for this sex difference is not clear. It does not appear that women are more sensitive than men to changes within their bodies. However, women are more likely to respond to symptoms by restricting their activities and taking care of themselves, in other words, enacting the sick role.

One explanation for this sex difference is that women have fewer fixed role obligations than men, and fewer role obligations are associated with a greater willingness to respond to health problems. Women use health services more frequently than men, but the sex difference is limited to minor symptoms. In the case of serious illness, there is less evidence that either women or men are more likely to seek the attention of a health care professional.

Taken collectively, different explanations are more and less relevant to men and women. A few health behaviors explain a good portion of men's higher mortality rates compared to women. These health behaviors can be construed in terms of a larger framework reflecting men's risk-taking behavior. Women's higher morbidity rates are more likely to reflect women's social roles than their health behaviors.

Chapter 11

It is not clear if there are sex differences in the structural dimensions of support, but women perceive and receive greater support functions. Supportive relations are a double-edged sword for women: The mere existence of social relationships means women have more support available to them but also that women have greater caregiving burdens. This is a likely explanation for why structural measures of support are more consistently related to men's health than women's health. However, the functional aspects of support seem to be more strongly related to women's than men's health.

Marriage is associated with better health for both women and men, but men accrue more benefits than women. Longitudinal research shows that initial health also influences the likelihood of getting married; however, even adjusting for these selection effects, marriage benefits health. Marriage is more beneficial for men because it provides greater support and promotes better health behavior, and because men are more satisfied with marriage compared to women.

The loss of marriage through widowhood seems to have more adverse effects on men's than women's health. The effects of widowhood on health can be understood in terms of the different strains women and men suffer when they lose their spouse. The primary reason widowhood has stronger effects on men's health has to do with men's loss of support; women have alternative sources of support available after widowhood. Men are more likely than women to remarry after widowhood and to do so sooner, and remarriage is associated with health benefits for men.

Both women's and men's health suffers upon relationship dissolution. It is not clear whether men suffer greater ill effects compared to women. Marital dissolution seems to be associated with different strains for women and men and to have different consequences for women's and men's social networks. Women are more likely to initiate the breakup of relationships, and women may be better prepared than men for relationships to end.

Although the state of being married seems to have more benefits for men's than women's health, when the quality of marriage is examined, women are more strongly affected than men. Marital interaction studies show that communication patterns influence women's more than men's physiology, especially when those communications have to do with discussing a marital conflict.

One important aspect of the marital relationship that has implications for relationship satisfaction as well as health is how labor is divided in the family. In general, women contribute more to household labor than men regardless of their employment status. Sex differences in the division of labor are greatest among married couples. Factors that influence how labor is divided are based on power and status, such as gender, income, education, and hours worked outside the home. Gender-role attitudes also influence the division of labor within the family. Further evidence that status and power influence the division of labor in the heterosexual family comes from studies of homosexual couples, where household labor is divided more equally.

In general, the more men contribute to household labor, the more satisfied women are. In fact, the division of labor in the family has a stronger effect on women's than men's marital satisfaction and well-being. However, men do not have to participate equally in household chores for women to be satisfied. It is perhaps remarkable that more women are not dissatisfied with the current state of affairs. A primary reason has to do with the fact that women make within-sex rather than between-sex social comparisons.

Aside from marriage, the other important relationship role held by many adults is the parent role. Unlike the marital role, there is no clear evidence that the parent role benefits women's and men's health. The mixed effects are due to the fact that so many factors qualify the effect of parenthood on health: ages and number of children, whether the children live in the home, income, and other roles that parents possess. Women report more strains in the parent role than men do. The quality of this role influences both women's and men's health, but the relation may be stronger among women. Parenthood has a negative effect on marital satisfaction. These effects are stronger for women than men, largely due to the greater restrictions on freedom and the greater role changes that women face when they become parents. The quality of parenting has become an important issue for homosexuals, especially lesbian mothers. However, research shows heterosexual and homosexual parents are similar, and there are few differences among the children they raise.

Serious threats to relationships include IPV and rape. Surprisingly, women are more likely than men to perpetrate IPV—although most IPV is mutual. There are different kinds of IPV. Women are more likely than men to be victims of intimate terrorism, but women and men are equally likely to be victims to the more common situational couple violence. Intimate terrorism is the kind of violence that is characterized by domination and control on the part of males over females. Intimate terrorism escalates and poses serious threats to women's health. Situational couple violence is the kind of violence that erupts from stress and does not escalate.

Rape and sexual coercion are difficult to define. Although women are more likely than men to be victims of rape, reports of sexual coercion are more similar between women and men. Yet, like IPV, women report more severe consequences of sexual coercion compared to men. Perpetrators of rape are more likely to hold rape myths. Both rape and sexual coercion are influenced by situational factors, such as the tendency to interpret neutral behaviors in sexual terms.

Chapter 12

In this chapter, I evaluated the effect of paid worker roles on women's and men's health. The paid worker role is associated with health benefits for both women and men. The effect of the paid worker role on women's and men's health is largely due to its influence on resources and demands. To the extent that women's employment increases women's economic resources and detracts from men's economic resources, women benefit and men suffer. To the extent that women's employment increases men's participation in household chores and decreases women's, women benefit and men suffer. This presents a challenge for couples in which wives and husbands both work outside the home.

Having multiple roles, such as the roles of paid worker, spouse, and parent, has the potential to provide resources that can be used to buffer strains arising from any one role. This is referred to as the role expansion hypothesis. However, multiple roles also can lead to role strain or role conflict, which is known as the role scarcity hypothesis. That is, stress from one role can exacerbate problems in another role. Taken collectively, more evidence supports the role expansion hypothesis than the role scarcity hypothesis. More roles seem to be associated with better health for women and men, but this does not mean role strains do not occur. Women, in particular, face difficulties combining work and family roles when children are at home. These women do not necessarily suffer, however, when they have resources to cope with the increased demands—resources in terms of a high income or a husband who shares household responsibilities.

One reason it is difficult to compare the effect of paid work on health for men and women is that men and women have different employment experiences. One aspect of the paid worker role with consequences for women's well-being is discrimination. I distinguished between access and treatment discrimination: Access discrimination reflects the differential opportunities women and men have to hold certain jobs; once hired, treatment discrimination occurs in the form of the glass ceiling and pay disparity. Women make less money than men even when characteristics of women and men such as education and experience are taken into consideration. However, the wage gap is closing. Factors that contribute to the wage gap include sex segregation of occupations and parenthood. Women with children earn less than women without children, and both concrete and abstract explanations account for this difference. Interestingly, women are not as dissatisfied with pay disparity as we would expect. Although women believe other women suffer discrimination, a majority of women deny any personal discrimination; this phenomenon is referred to as the denial of personal disadvantage. One theory of why women deny disadvantage involves social comparison theory: Women compare themselves to other women rather than to men.

Another aspect of work that has consequences for well-being is sexual harassment. Women are more likely to be harassed than men, and sexual harassment is associated with an array of adverse outcomes. There are a variety of forms of sexual harassment. Women are more likely than men to label a given behavior as harassment, but both women and men agree on the more severe forms of harassment. Both person factors and situational factors combine to produce sexual harassment.

Chapter 13

There is a consistent and pervasive sex difference in depression in the United States that extends to other cultures. Sex differences in depression emerge during adolescence and persist over the life span. Sex differences in depression may be affected by a response bias on the part of clinicians and respondents; clinicians may be more likely to recognize or interpret symptoms as depression in women than in men, and men may be more reluctant than women to admit, report, or seek help for depression.

There are numerous theories of sex differences in depression, tapping biological, psychological, and social factors. Little evidence indicates that genes can explain sex differences in depression. Although hormonal changes have been associated with mood changes, the evidence is inconsistent as to which hormone is protective or harmful at what time. It is more likely that hormonal fluctuation rather than a level of a particular hormone is involved in depression.

Psychological theories of depression suggest women are socialized in ways that lead them to perceive less control than men over their environment. Thus, women are more vulnerable to learned helplessness, which can lead to depression. Other theories of sex differences in depression focus on the stressors that women and men face and how they cope with them. The coping literature suggests that women may be more likely than men to engage in most coping strategies, which may be a result rather than a cause of women's distress. One promising theory of sex differences in depression focuses on a particular maladaptive form of coping, rumination. A great deal of evidence suggests women are more likely than men to respond to stressful events by ruminating about them, and rumination is linked to depression.

There is little evidence that women experience more trauma or stressful life events than men, but women do experience more of a specific kind of trauma or stressor—those that involve relationships. Women report more stressful events that involve relationships, and the association of relationship stressors to distress is stronger for women than for men. It is women's differential vulnerability to stress rather than differential exposure to stress that best explains depression.

There are characteristics of the female gender role implicated in depression. Whereas communion is unrelated to depression, unmitigated communion is consistently associated with depression. People characterized by unmitigated communion take on others' problems as their own and become overly involved in helping others. Aside from this specific personality trait, caregiving has been linked more broadly to the female gender role and may be linked to depression.

Regardless of which theory best explains sex difference in depression, the onset during adolescence must be addressed. Several challenges of adolescence were reviewed that might explain this onset, including body image changes and strains in relationships. These events might activate depression in girls who are at risk for depression.

In terms of adjustment to chronic illness, it is not clear if there are sex differences. However, gender provides an important framework within which we can understand the issues that women and men with a chronic illness face. The male gender role is advantageous to the extent a chronic illness is construed as a problem meant to be solved, but disadvantageous to the extent it implies weakness and limits men's feelings of control. The female gender role can facilitate adjustment to chronic illness by providing support resources but can impede adjustment when physical attractiveness and caregiving issues interfere with taking proper care of oneself.

Another mental health problem discussed in this chapter was eating disorders, which are more common in women than in men and more likely to arise during adolescence than at any other time in life. Many of the theories of eating disorders are linked to adolescence. During adolescence, girls' bodies change and girls become more aware of societal pressures to be thin. It is also during adolescence that women recognize the limitations placed on the female gender role and on their control more generally. Eating disorders may be a manifestation of attempts to exert control.

The last mental health problem reviewed was suicide. Men commit suicide more frequently than women at all ages and across most cultures, but women contemplate suicide and attempt suicide more frequently than men. Substance abuse, depression, and impaired social relations all play a role in suicidal behavior among adolescents and adults.