Traditional Gender Roles and Their Connections to Relational Uncertainty and Relational Satisfaction

ABSTRACT

The current study utilised an adult population (N = 294) to investigate the relationships between traditional gender role endorsement, relational uncertainty and relational satisfaction. Specifically, it was hypothesised that individuals who more strongly endorsed traditional gender roles would report significantly less relational uncertainty. Further it was proposed that relational uncertainty would mediate a significant association between endorsement of traditional gender roles and relational satisfaction. Both hypotheses were supported. Implications of these results on the literature surrounding masculine and feminine gender roles are discussed, as well as some considerations for how future research might consider traditional gender role endorsement.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender roles
• interpersonal communication
• relational uncertainty
• relational satisfaction
• gender

Notes

1. It is important to note that the degree to which individuals are sanctioned for departing from expected gender roles varies by gender (see Hoskin, 2017, for a review).

2. It should be noted that much of the findings reviewed in this paper were drawn from heterosexually-identifying individuals in mixed-sex couples.

3. A Welch’s t-test was used in place of the Student’s t to examine if significant differences were present between queer- and heterosexually-identified participants to account for the discrepancy in sample sizes. Additionally, given the small sample of queer participants, a power analysis was undertaken to guard against Type I or Type II error. Power was estimated at .80 in the sample.

4. While Cohen’s cut-offs provide a relatively standard and accepted set of values for interpreting effect sizes, recent scholarship (e.g. Lakens, 2013; Thompson, 2007) has warned against being too strict in applying benchmarks. A small statistical effect may actually be felt in a quite large manner when it is repeated or made salient many times, as is likely the case with gender.

5. Models 7, 8, 14 and 59 all allow for inspection of conditional indirect effects. Model 59 was run first, to allow for the possibility that all paths in the mediating model might be moderated. Analyses revealed that significant moderation was only present for paths between perceived endorsement of traditional gender roles and dimensions of uncertainty. In light of these results, the results from Model 7 (assessing only moderation of the paths between the independent and mediating variables) are reported.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Madeleine H. Redlick

Madeleine H. Redlick is an Assistant Professor of Instruction in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She is grateful for the guidance and support given to this project by Dr. Germine Awad.