Masculine and Feminine: Gender Roles Over The Life Cycle

Designed for use in courses on gender and sex roles offered in Sociology, Psychology, and Women’s Studies, this book offers a useful organizational perspective by devoting equal coverage to men’s and women’s concerns in a developmental or life cycle framework. It updates treatment of possible hormonal influences on mathematical reasoning and spatial ability, looks at adolescent concerns about appearance as evidenced by anorexia and bulimia, and deals with adolescent sexuality and sexual preference. There is a new chapter on how institutions like religion, the health profession, and marriage and family reinforce gender role prescriptions and control gender role behavior. It includes extensive research-based information on gender roles in single-parent families and among the elderly, the latest information about men and women in occupations (percentages, salaries, types of discrimination) and politics (the gender gap, women in political elites, policy questions), and finally, looks at what the future may hold in terms of men’s and women’s movements and liberation.