Shifts in Sex-Role after a Decade of Cultural Change

Abstract

Traits and behaviors shift with cultural changes. During the past decade substantial changes have occurred in our society in the definition of appropriate sex-role behaviors. Consequently, a shift toward more androgynous sex-role behaviors, especially by individuals in their formative years, would be expected. The Bem Sex-role Inventory was administered to 98 women and 113 men at Brigham Young University and to 38 women and 84 men at the University of Tulsa. t tests between corresponding mean scores for the two universities were nonsignificant indicating the equivalence of those two samples of contemporary students. However, as expected, t tests showed that current students differed significantly from students a decade ago in that their scores represented an increase in androgynous sex-roles.