ABSTRACT
Sex stereotypes are beliefs about the personal characteristics of women and men. Generally, women are seen as more supportive, dependent, and emotional; men as stronger, more independent, and objective (Lueptow 1984, pp. 54-55). Research over four decades has shown consensus between the sexes on the stereotypic traits, stability in the content over the years (Bergen and Williams 1991; Lueptow and Garovich 1992), and universality across cultures (Williams and Best 1990). While the stability and universality of the trait descriptions point to biological predispositions, most researchers assume stereotypic traits result from socialization and are artifactual and changeable. Whatever their source, given the segregation of work, sex stereotypes have implications for both selection and recruitment and directly relate to the sex typing of work (Reskin and Hartmann 1986, chap. 3). Stereotypes also have implications for personal well-being. In spite of the great early enthusiasm for the concept of androgyny among feminist writers (see Kaplan and Bean 1976) and early conclusions that androgynous persons experienced better psychological adjustment (Bern 1974), more recent research has shown the effect to have been because of the fact that androgynous women possess masculine as well as feminine traits. Masculinity, not androgyny, is related to psychological adjustment in both sexes (Cook 1985).
