Many people seem to like the psychological tests I find and put up as diaries every so often, and so I thought I would do so again, especially again when my name was brought up in the context of one last night. ;)
So...I found out that the main test used in the area actually has an online version
V2:
Scoring:
The words are what we, as society associatewith them, so for example "cheese" in and of itself we might not give it any gender id, but if we get 100 people and ask them to rate a word with either neutral, masculine or fem identity, most people might say it is a masculine word, in this day and age. So if you identify as high in that trait, this is what that test measures by then saying you would be high in masculine traits, etc.
More after the break.
So, what exactly is a gender role? You don't know how hard it is for me to fight off bad puns here...but, I will stay as the psychologist I am and avoid the puns ;)
Basically there are norms that come from the society in which we live and the past that define what is acceptable and not acceptable for individuals of different genders. Some people of course are going to find fault with the whole simple issue of gender being able to be defined in any sort of meaningful way, others with the idea that some traits being more fitting with one gender compared to another, and others are going to say "Hey...where are the puns?!"
I would answer yes...I agree, gender is not a binary issue, and I am not talking about one's 'external' showing sex-organ based gender rather what one person senses themselves to be.
I think we can all agree that at least in part gender roles are socially constructed, and that even if not everything is based on society a portion (I would suggest large) is, and this is how things are perceived by the society at the time. This is not to say these definitions are stagnant and cannot nor will not change, but that as a rule it is based on the definition of what we perceive as 'masculine' 'feminine' and 'androgynous' at this point in time at this place we all find ourselves in.
The Bem Sex Role Inventory is a widely used test, and so I will let them explain their own test:
The Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) provides independent assessments of masculinity and femininity in terms of the respondent’s self-reported possession of socially desirable, stereotypically masculine and feminine personality characteristics. This can also be seen as a measurement of the extent to which respondents spontaneously sort self-relevant information into distinct masculine and feminine categories.
It consists of 60 words (Again, the link is at the top of the diary) that you click on how well, or not well it describes you for each word) and it then computes how you scored for each gender role category.
My scores?
Masculine: 45
Feminine: 56.667
Neutral: 46.667
So...if you're interested, please take the quiz, post the results. Do you think gender is at all a social construct? Where did/do gender rolls come from? How well, or not well, did the test do, do you think, in scoring where you are?