Sex Role Ideology

Finding that gender stereotype beliefs and self-concepts are related to differences in cultural comparison variables suggests that they may also be related to beliefs about the appropriate roles of females and males within various cultural groups. 

What is considered appropriate behavior for males and females varies across societies, but there are two possible cultural universals: At least to some degree, every society assigns traits and tasks on the basis of gender, and in no society is the status of women superior to that of men (Munroe & Munroe, 1975/1994). In virtually all human groups, women have greater responsibility for “domestic” activities while men have greater responsibility for “external” activities. Women are responsible for cooking, food preparation, carrying water, caring for clothing, and making household things, and men are involved with hunting, metalwork, and weapon making, and travel further from home (D’Andrade, 1966). Women are responsible for child rearing (Weisner & Gallimore, 1977), and men have major responsibilities for child rearing in only 20% of the 80 cultures examined (Katz & Konner, 1981; West & Konner, 1976). Such pancultural similarities may originate from the biological differences between the sexes.

However, in many cultures these socially assigned duties are now being shared, with men engaging in more domestic activities and women in more external, particularly economic, activities. Nevertheless, even in societies where women have moved actively into the labor force, they have not had a comparable reduction in household duties. In the United States, Switzerland, Sweden, Canada, Italy, Poland, and Romania, the overwhelming majority of household work is performed by women, regardless of their occupational status (Population Crisis Committee, 1988).