The Bedside Book of Psychology: From Ancient Dream Therapy to Ecopsychology: 125 Historic Events and Big Ideas to Push the Limits of Your Knowledge - Wade E. Pickren 2021

1944 Sex Roles

Georgene Seward (1902—92)

THE TERMS SEX ROLES and, since the 1970s, gender roles have been used by psychologists and other social scientists to refer to the socially designated behaviors, attitudes, and activities that have been deemed appropriate for men and women. Sex roles have been a source of research interest for psychologists since the late 1800s. At that time, female psychologists like Helen Thompson Woolley and Leta Hollingworth published empirical studies to challenge beliefs about male and female differences that contributed to the sex-role stereotypes of the time.

In the post—World War II period, interest in sex roles intensified because many women had taken on nontraditional employment during the war. In 1944, psychologist Georgene Seward chaired a committee on Sex Roles in Postwar Society for the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. She called for a radical restructuring of traditional sex roles in the postwar reconstruction so that men and women could participate equally in the world of work. Her call was supported by an analysis of the cultural conflict faced by women under contemporary gender arrangements and was followed by a 1946 book, Sex and the Social Order.

When the women’s movement of the late 1960s and 1970s gained momentum, feminist psychologists conducted studies to investigate the effects of sex-role stereotypes on attitudes and behaviors in a wide variety of domains. In one line of research, the relationship between sex-role stereotypes and perceptions of mental health was assessed. Some results showed that while mentally healthy men were described as stereotypically masculine and mentally healthy women were described as feminine, a healthy adult (sex unspecified) was described more often as having masculine traits. In 1975, the journal Sex Roles was established to publish sociological and psychological research on a wide range of gender issues.

Three aviation machinist mates work on a training plane at Naval Air Station Jacksonville, in Florida, 1944. The movement toward equal-opportunity employment for men and women that began during World War II intensified after the war, with many women assuming occupations traditionally held by men.

SEE ALSO Variability Hypothesis: Gender and Genius (1914), Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1963)