Child Sexual Abuse History and Feminine Gender-Role Identity

Abstract

The association between child sexual abuse (CSA) and feminine gender-role identity was examined among 75 women with and 107 without a history of CSA. Undergraduates and hospital employees from a university in the Southern United States completed questionnaires on the internet. Three aspects of feminine identity were assessed, including how much participants identified with feminine versus masculine traits, endorsed stereotypes about women, and viewed themselves as meeting feminine self-standards. Participants with a history of CSA reported greater feminine self-discrepancy and endorsed more derogatory stereotypes about women than the comparison group. CSA was also linked to identifying with more feminine than masculine traits, but only among hospital employees. Results suggest that feminine identity is a meaningful construct to consider in the adjustment of CSA survivors.

Gender role strain, core schemas, and psychotic experiences in ethnically diverse women: A role for sex‐ and gender‐based analysis in psychosis research?

“…Examination of correlations between GRS and childhood sexual trauma, although indicating a significant association in the nonclinical group, consistent with previous research suggesting that childhood sexual abuse may sensitize survivors to sociocultural messages regarding normative femininity (Krause & Roth, ), failed to show any effect in the clinical group. Although it is not entirely clear why this should be the case, it is possible that low within‐group variance was responsible.…”

“…3 In the light of research suggesting a relationship between GRS and child sexual abuse (CSA; Krause & Roth, 2011;Krugman, 1995;Lebowitz & Roth, 1994;Lisak, 1994) and the well-documented links between CSA and psychosis (Varese et al, 2012), we hypothesize that GRS will be associated with a history of CSA.…”

“…It is possible that GRS contributes to associations between adverse experiences, schemas, and psychotic symptoms. For example, Krause and Roth () found that women who were victims of childhood sexual abuse experienced greater feminine self‐ discrepancy than nonabused women. Because childhood sexual abuse increases the risk of developing psychosis (Bechdolf et al, ; Thompson et al, ; Varese et al, ) and there is a disproportionate risk of sexual trauma in women with psychosis (Conus, Cotton, Schimmelmann, McGorry, & Lambert, ; Cotton et al, ; Morgan & Fisher, ; Riecher‐Rössler et al, ), GRS may help to explain this relationship.…”

Childhood Trauma, Adult Sexual Assault, and Adult Gender Expression among Lesbian and Bisexual Women

“…It is noteworthy that we also found an association between a masculine gender role and childhood sexual abuse with our sample. Recent research with adult (presumably heterosexual) women has found mixed results, with one study finding that those with a childhood sexual abuse history were more likely to identify with feminine rather than masculine traits (Krause and Roth 2011), and another finding the opposite (McMullin et al 2007). …”

Relationship between experiences of adverse childhood events and intimate partner violence in adult same sex monogamous relationships

“…D'Augelli, Grossman, and Starks (2006) also examined the role of gender atypicality in female children and found 66% of the sample of lesbian and bisexual youth reported greater verbal and physical victimization than those not reporting gender atypicality. However, additional research involving identification with feminine or masculine traits and resulting levels of abuse has resulted in mixed findings (Krause & Roth, 2011;McMullin, Wirth, & White, 2007). Further research regarding traits which may predispose children who later identify as lesbian to occurrences of physical abuse is thus further warranted to fully examine effects of sexual identification traits apparent at the individual system level beginning in childhood.…”