American women seem to be becoming less stereotypically feminine and more dominant

By Christian Jarrett True gender equality may be a work in progress, but since the Women’s Liberation Movement beginning in the 1950s and 60s, there has been a lot of positive change, at least in most industrialised nations: a shift towards women having more control over whether and when to have children, for example, and increased opportunities in education and careers, and less tolerance of sexism (though of course it hasn’t gone away). How might these cultural and social changes have influenced women, in terms of how much they act and behave in stereotypically “feminine” ways? A new study by Constance Jones and her colleagues at California State and San Francisco State Universities in the Journal of Adult Development tried to find out by comparing two cohorts of women, one born in the 1920s and the other featuring “Baby Boomers” born in the 1950s. The findings support past work that’s shown how women tend to change through their lives, and they provide evidence for a generation effect: over time, at least in California, women seem to be becoming less stereotypically feminine – that is, less deferential, and more confident and ambitious. The 180 women born in the 1920s took the same California Psychological Inventory five times over as many decades, beginning when they were in their 50s and through into their 80s. The researchers were particularly interested in how they scored on the 32 items of the Inventory that mea...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Developmental Gender Personality Source Type: blogs