Agency and communion: Their implications for gender stereotypes and gender identities

Sczesny, Sabine; Nater, Christa; Eagly, Alice H. (2019). Agency and communion: Their implications for gender stereotypes and gender identities. In: Abele, Andrea E.; Wojciszke, Bogdan (eds.) Agency and Communion in Social Psychology. Current Issues in Social Psychology (pp. 103-116). Routledge

Text Sczesny, Nater, Eagly (2019) Agency and communion_Chapter.pdf - Published Version Restricted to registered users only Available under License Publisher holds Copyright. Download (1MB) | Request a copy

Sczesny, Nater, and Eagly show that agency and communion are essential to understanding the psychology of gender. Gender stereotypes, in their descriptive and prescriptive forms, follow from a societal division of labor whereby women tend to be concentrated in communally demanding roles and men in agentically demanding roles. People’s inferences of communal and agentic traits underlying the typical role behaviors of women and men yield gender stereotypes. These stereotypes in turn can enhance or compromise the ability of women and men to occupy and succeed in social roles that demand agentic or communal qualities. To the extent that people internalize stereotypes pertaining to their gender, they gain gender identities by which women regard themselves as especially communal and men as especially agentic. In addition, these identities and related personal goals regulate the attraction of each sex to social roles that afford opportunities to meet communal or agentic goals.

Interest & Impact

Downloads

30 since deposited on 20 Aug 2018
2 in the past 12 months

Citations

5 Citations in Web of Science ®
6 Citations in Scopus

Search

in Google Scholar™

Services

Actions (login required)

Edit item

Actions (login required)

Edit item