Gender-Role Attitudes 69job opportunities? Second, the ATWS fails to
capture some of the contemporary concerns
about men’s and women’s roles, such as
whether women should serve in the military,
whether women and men should participate
equally in child care, whether women have
the right to an abortion, and whether women
should take their husband’s last name upon
marriage. See if you can come up with some
other domains that reflect contemporary
gender-role attitudes in Do Gender 3.1.
There are ethnic and cultural differ-
ences in attitudes toward men’s and women’s
roles. Black women seem to have less tradi-
tional gender-role attitudes than Black menand paid employment. Although the scale’s
title specifies attitudes toward women, many
of the items really measure attitudes toward
both women’s and men’s roles. Here are
some sample items from the 15-item scale
(Spence & Helmreich, 1972):■Swearing and obscenity are more
repulsive in the speech of a woman
than a man.
■Women should worry less about
their rights and more about becom-
ing good wives and mothers.
■It is ridiculous for a woman to run
a locomotive and for a man to darn
socks.
■Sons in a family should be given
more encouragement to go to col-
lege than daughters.
■There are many jobs in which men
should be given preference over
women in being hired or promoted.You probably noticed that these items
are quite outdated. Today, it is more than
common for daughters to go to college and
“run a locomotive.” Not surprisingly, attitudes
toward men’s and women’s roles using the
ATWS have become more liberal over time
(Twenge, 1997). Although women’s attitudes
have always been more egalitarian than men’s
across a variety of cultures, the size of the sex
difference seems to be getting smaller over
time. Today, most people appear to have egali-
tarian attitudes using the ATWS.
However, the ATWS is not a good
measure of contemporary gender-role atti-
tudes. First, there are demand characteristics
in responding to this scale. Who wouldn’t
agree at least on a self-report instrument
that women and men should have similarDO GENDER 3.1
Creating a Contemporary
Gender-Role Attitudes ScaleDecide on some ways in which women
and men are not treated equally—at your
institution, in your town, in your cul-
ture. Create a scale to assess people’s be-
liefs about whether the treatment should
be equal. Identify more subtle ways in
which differential treatment exists and is
often accepted (e.g., If there were a draft,
women should be just as likely to men to
serve in the military; Mothers are better
than fathers at caring for a sick child.)
After you have created the scale, de-
cide on some variables—both personality
and situational—that you believe might be
related to scores on your scale. What per-
sonality characteristics do you think might
be associated with more liberal gender-
role attitudes? What situational variables
(perhaps features of the home environ-
ment in which the participant was raised)
might contribute to more liberal gender-
role attitudes?M03_HELG0185_04_SE_C03.indd 69 6/21/11 12:22 PM