Sex Discrimination: Effects of Sex-Role Incongruence, Evaluator Sex, and Stereotypes

Abstract

To clarify the limiting conditions for sex discrimination, the effects of several sex and sex-typing variables were investigated in a factorial design. Male and female college students were classified as traditional or egalitarian according to their responses on the Attitudes Toward Women Scale and the Stereotype Scale of the Personal Attributes Questionnaire. Five weeks later, subjects participated in a supposedly unrelated study in which they evaluated a male or female candidate on ability to perform five masculine sex-typed jobs and five feminine sex-typed jobs. Analysis of variance showed that the male candidate was rated higher for the masculine jobs and the female candidate higher for the feminine jobs. Some same-sex favoritism also was exhibited. Male subjects viewed the masculine jobs as more difficult and female subjects viewed the feminine jobs as more difficult. Also, each sex rated candidates of their own sex higher than the other sex on ability to perform sex-role incongruent jobs. Finally, subjects' categorization as traditional or egalitarian was not related to their evaluations; nor were their scores on the scales correlated with their ratings of female candidates for masculine jobs.