Gender relativism: How context shapes what is seen as male and female.

Abstract

This research explores the concept of gender relativism, whereby “gender”—or what is seen as “male” and “female”—changes as a function of context. Seven studies find that people attach gender to seemingly “gender-neutral” stimuli—bifurcating information by “male” and “female”—but that the gender of the stimuli changes as a function of the comparison set. Using stimuli from past work, including shapes (Study 1), species (Study 2), “gender-neutral” traits (Studies 3–4), faces (Study 5), and names (Studies 6–7), these studies demonstrate that gender is relative, where characteristics deemed “female” or “male” exist within a given context. Importantly, these relative evaluations shift perceptions of both gender (i.e., stereotypes) and physical sex (i.e., height, weight) characteristics, with downstream consequences for bias and target judgments (Studies 4–7). In contrast to most work in psychology, which studies gender as an independent variable (to predict differences in stereotypes and outcomes), this work calls for gender to also be considered as a dependent variable that can change as a function of context. Together, these results have theoretical implications for the construct and measurement of gender in psychology, as well as practical implications for gender stereotyping, bias, and discrimination.

The Significant Factors Influencing Individual’s Perceptions of Pay Gap

“…The recognition of the discrimination of women is also increasing. These gaps may have happened in part due to the sex roles theories and stereotypes in society (Hanek & Garcia, 2022;Martin, 2023;Kundro & Rothbard, 2023). Gender role theory is the difference in social behaviours between men and women that arises due to the different social positions within society (Hanek & Garcia, 2022).…”

“…In society, there are unfair and unbalanced roles that are represented by each gender. Women are viewed as individuals who nurture, tender, and assist behaviour (Hanek & Garcia, 2022) due to their ability to give birth, which created a role or trait that is associated with being a caretaker and delicate appearance (Martin, 2023;Kundro & Rothbard, 2023).…”

Tokenism in the workplace: does brand activism benefit LGBTQ+ employees in the hospitality industry?

“…Diversity considerations in talent management prompted two ideologies in gender perceptionsgender awareness, focused on gender differences and gender blindness, which downplays them (Martin andPhillips, 2017, 2019). While diversity management champions awareness to make dominant males aware of other genders, gender-blindness increases selfconfidence and leadership emergence of working women by ignoring lay beliefs about stereotypical gender roles and leadership abilities (Gündemir et al, 2019;Martin et al, 2016).…”

“…Service-oriented hospitality establishments increasingly use diversity management strategies (Kalargyrou and Costen, 2017). Affirmative action, diversity policies and training are well-institutionalized initiatives that increase representation of underrepresented groups in the short run, but may be ineffective for their upward mobility (Martin, 2022). Discrimination against LGBTQþ hospitality employees stems from internal supervisors (e.g.…”

“…Furthermore, gender and gender-related judgments are shaped by context, e.g. workplace (Martin, 2022).…”