Gender Stereotype
Gender stereotype – stable, recurring, and generally accepted ideas or opinions about the place and roles performed by a particular gender in society, as well as about the personality of people with a particular gender identity.
Gender stereotypes, as simplified, stable, and emotionally charged images of the behavior and character traits of men and women, manifest themselves in all spheres of human life: in self-consciousness, interpersonal communication, and intergroup interaction. Like any other social stereotypes, they shape the process of perceiving other people and influence the active construction of social reality through the information embedded in them.
Gender stereotypes may be grouped into three categories:
- Stereotypes of masculinity and femininity, which prescribe certain ideas about the somatic, psychological, and behavioral qualities considered characteristic of men and women;
- Stereotypes of family and professional roles associated with gender;
- Stereotypes related to the content of men’s and women’s activities.
Manifestations of gender stereotypes with asymmetric content include:
- Sexism – a biased attitude toward representatives of a particular gender, accompanied by their discrimination, as well as a specific institutional practice expressed in the imposition of a subordinate position on representatives of a particular gender;
- Face-ism – the tendency to emphasize the face and the body to different degrees in images of men and women;
- Gender segregation – the preference for different types of activity and communication, different friends, and different social roles; the emphasis on gender differences; the formation of a biased attitude toward one’s own gender and prejudice toward another; and the emergence of gender conflicts.
Gender stereotypes function as social norms – the basic rules that determine permissible gender representations. Often, what are called gender roles are nothing other than stereotypes: generalized information about the qualities attributed to a particular gender.
Individuals are compelled to conform to these stereotypes by social-psychological mechanisms of normative and informational pressure. Normative pressure consists in the fact that a person tries to conform to gender stereotypes in order to gain social approval and avoid social disapproval. Informational pressure consists in the fact that a person’s expanding knowledge of themselves and of the world is often connected not with their own experience, but with information provided by others. What is considered correct is often what others consider correct, and an individual tends to regard their own behavior as correct as long as they observe it among other members of their reference group.
Conformity to gender norms may occur in three forms: compliance, internalization, and identification. Compliance occurs when a person does not accept the norm, but, in order to avoid punishment, brings their gender representations into conformity with it. Internalization occurs when a person fully agrees with the norms. Identification is the simple repetition of normative patterns out of a desire to resemble a member of the reference group.
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