ABSTRACT

This chapter examines how attitudes and gender reciprocally intertwine: Each shapes how the other is constructed and expressed. Attitudes influence how personal and societal gender roles develop, are maintained, and change over time. Consistent with the constructivist notion that gender represents a continuously enacted performance or activity (West & Zimmerman, 1987), we explore evaluation (and devaluation) as a core mechanism by which people “do gender.” That is, people enact gender because they anticipate and experience favorable evaluations from self and others for conforming to gender roles and unfavorable evaluations for failing to do so. Attitudes hold particular power because they can influence an individual’s behavior even when simply imagining others’ likely attitudinal reactions.