20 Waldron I. Contributions of changing gender differentials in behaviour to changing gender differences in mortality. In: Sabo D, Gordon G, eds. Men's health and illness: gender, power and the body. ...London: Sage Publications, 1995.
Objective
The primary aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between gender role orientation and eating disorder attitudes and behaviors and body dissatisfaction in a sample of ...homosexuals, heterosexuals, and transsexuals.
Method
We screened 132 homosexuals, 178 heterosexuals (both male and female), and 15 MtF transsexuals by means of an ad hoc socio-demographic schedule; the Eating Disorders Inventory-2 and Symptom Checklist; the Body Uneasiness Test and the Bem Sex Role Inventory.
Results
Differences between homosexual, heterosexual, and transsexual participants emerged, but those data seem to be best explained by the constructs of femininity and masculinity than by the biological gender.
Discussion
The empirical evidence of a positive correlation between femininity and eating problems, and the negative correlation between masculinity and eating problems, is full of implications. Eating disorders appear to be diseases of femininity; masculinity seems to be a protective factor, independently by the biological gender.
Diversity in both biological attributes and the external, lived environment gives rise to different susceptibilities, exposures, health outcomes, and longevity. Public policy can modify the effects ...of external differences, if groups at greatest risk are identified and pathways to excess vulnerability are understood, by rebalancing and redistributing the inputs or social determinants that work their way under the skin to ultimately cause biological disadvantage. In the past three decades, a large volume of research has identified the nature of these social determinants of health—including income, socioeconomic status (SES), income inequality, social connectedness, and social capital—and the pathways by which they undermine or reinforce innate health. Often listed among these, but rarely studied, is gender. Medical research may identify sex differences when they exist; however, the varied social roles, expectations, and constraints experienced by men and women in a given society go well beyond the individual and sex differences and are rarely examined as inputs responsible for variation in health outcomes. As a result, health-affirming policies tend to homogenize groups (e.g., assuming that all women are the same) or target individual behaviors, and do so in a gender-blind fashion rather than addressing structural biases and inequities that undermine those behaviors. This article explores the nature of gender as a determinant of health and describes how the effects of gender inequities can be included in health outcomes research that can then shape health planning and policy.
The human body's shape and motion afford social judgments. The body's shape, specifically the waist-to-hip ratio, has been related to perceived attractiveness. Early reports interpreted this effect ...to be evidence for adaptation, a theory known generally as the waist-to-hip ratio hypothesis. Many of the predictions derived from this perspective have been empirically disconfirmed, leaving the issue of natural selection unresolved. Knowing the cognitive mechanisms undergirding the relationship between judgments of attractiveness and body cues is essential to understanding its evolution. Here we show that perceived attractiveness covaries with body shape and motion because they cospecify social percepts that are either compatible or incompatible. The body's shape and motion provoke basic social perceptions, biological sex and gender (i.e., masculinity/femininity), respectively. The compatibility of these basic percepts predicts perceived attractiveness. We report evidence for the importance of cue compatibility in five studies that used diverse stimuli (animations, static line-drawings, and dynamic line-drawings). Our results demonstrate how a proximal cognitive mechanism, itself likely the product of selection pressures, helps to reconcile previous contradictory findings.
Two experiments investigated 3- to 5-year-olds' inductive generalizations about social categories. In Experiment 1, participants were shown pictures of children contrasting in appearance and either ...gender or classmate status, and were asked to generalize either biological properties or behaviors. Contrary to expectations, performance did not differ for chance for gender, but children generalized on the basis of appearance more than classmate status. Experiment 2 further examined children's use of gender for inductive inferences. Children were asked to generalize either stereotyped behaviors (stereotype condition) or novel behaviors (neutral condition) and novel biological properties (both conditions). In the stereotype condition, children generalized both behaviors and biological properties on the basis of gender more than appearance, but, in the neutral condition, children's performance usually did not differ from chance. The implications of these results for essentialism, similarity-based induction, and cognitive variability are discussed.
To locate the underlying cause of biological gender errors of oral English pronouns by proficient Chinese-English learners, two self-paced reading experiments were conducted to explore whether the ...reading time for each ‘he’ or ‘she’ that matched its antecedent was shorter than that in the corresponding mismatch situation, as with native speakers of English. The critical manipulation was to see whether highlighting the gender information of an antecedent with a human picture would make a difference. The results indicate that such manipulation did make a difference. Since oral Chinese does not distinguish ‘he’ and ‘she’, the findings suggest that Chinese speakers probably do not usually process biological gender for linguistic purposes and the mixed use of ‘he’ and ‘she’ is probably a result of deficient processing of gender information in the conceptualizer. Theoretical and pedagogical implications are discussed.
Can a linguistic device of a language orient its speakers to a particular aspect of the world and result in increased sensitivity to that aspect? The question was examined with respect to the ...biological gender marker in English and the lack of it in Chinese. In Experiment 1, English and Chinese participants listened to stories and answered gender and non-gender related questions immediately after. It was found that, relative to the non-gender-related questions, the English participants were much faster and more accurate than the Chinese participants in answering the gender-related questions. In Experiment 2, English and Chinese participants were asked to determine which of two pictures matched the sentence shown immediately before. Relative to the non-gender-related sentences, the English participants were less slower and more accurate than the Chinese participants in responding to the gender-related sentences. The findings support the view that language can have an effect on information processing in human cognition.
Résumé Introduction Les conséquences psychologiques de la violence au travail sont multiples et ont été souvent décrites dans la littérature. Dans notre recherche, ces différences sont analysées en ...fonction de l’identité de genre des victimes. Ce concept distingue quatre types d’identité : les typés féminins, masculins, androgynes et indifférenciés. Objectifs L’objectif de cet article est de mettre en évidence le lien entre l’identité de genre de salarié(e)s victime(s) d’agressions sur leur lieu de travail et l’intensité de l’impact traumatique. Les spécificités liées à chacune de ces identités de genre nous conduisent à poser les hypothèses suivantes. Les sujets (homme versus femme) disposant d’une identité de genre féminine seront rendus moins vulnérables que les autres aux effets d’une agression (hypothèse 1). Un résultat similaire est attendu pour les sujets disposant d’un schème identitaire de type androgyne (hypothèse 2). Inversement, les sujets typés masculins et typés indifférenciés seront particulièrement touchés psychologiquement par les effets de la violence et leur niveau de stress post-traumatique sera plus important que ceux des sujets à schèmes identitaires féminins et androgynes (hypothèse 3). Méthode L’identité de genre des sujets a été évaluée à l’aide du Bem Sex Role Inventory (Bem, 1974) et les caractéristiques de l’impact psychotraumatiques à l’aide d’une version révisée de l’échelle d’Horowitz : l’Impact Events Scale Revised. Notre étude porte sur un échantillon de 367 salariés : 230 ont été victimes d’agressions, 137 n’ont jamais vécu d’agression. Résultats Les résultats obtenus montrent que les salariés victimes d’agressions présentent des scores significativement plus importants à l’IES-R que les salariés n’ayant jamais fait l’objet de violence sur leur lieu de travail. Cette différence s’observe pour toutes les dimensions de l’IES-R qu’il s’agisse de symptômes d’intrusion, d’évitement et d’hypersensibilité. Les analyses montrent, en outre, que ce sont les sujets avec une identité de genre indifférenciée et masculine qui présentent des scores les plus importants par opposition aux sujets avec une identité de genre androgyne et féminine. Conclusion La prise en compte de l’identité de genre dans la problématique globale de la violence au travail, s’avère être une dimension intéressante à considérer pour une compréhension plus fine encore des impacts psychotraumatiques sur les salariés victimes et dans un second temps pour leur prise en charge. Si cela met en lumière un nouveau paramètre permettant la mesure et la compréhension des effets de la violence au travail, il est nécessaire d’être prudent quant à sa possible généralisation qui supposerait préalablement de répliquer l’étude dans des contextes professionnels différents. Toutefois, cette étude a le mérite de proposer un nouvel angle de compréhension et de proposition de prise en charge psychothérapeutique. Enfin, il serait intéressant de voir les effets d’une prise en charge psychothérapeutique, à court et à long terme en fonction de l’identité de genre.
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