Changing gender roles and attitudes and their implications for well-being around the new millennium

Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, May 2014

Purpose Given evidence that gender role attitudes (GRAs) and actual gender roles impact on well-being, we examine associations between GRAs, three roles (marital status, household chore division, couple employment) and psychological distress in working-age men and women. We investigate time-trends reflecting broader social and economic changes, by focusing on three age groups at two dates. Methods We used British Household Panel Survey data from 20- to 64-year-olds in heterosexual couple households in 1991 (N = 5,302) and 2007 (N = 6,621). We examined: levels of traditional GRAs according to gender, age, date, household and employment roles; associations which GRAs and roles had with psychological distress (measured via the GHQ-12); whether psychological distress increased when GRAs conflicted with actual roles; and whether any of these associations differed according to gender, age or date. Results Gender traditionalism was lower among women, younger people, those participating in 2007 and in ‘less traditional’ relationships and households. Psychological distress was higher among those with more traditional GRAs and, particularly among men, for those not employed, and there was some evidence of different patterns of association according to age-group. There was limited evidence, among women only, of increased psychological distress when GRAs and actual roles conflicted and/or reductions when GRAs and roles agreed, particularly in respect of household chores and paid employment. Conclusions Although some aspects of gender roles and attitudes (traditionalism and paid employment) are associated with well-being, others (marital status and household chores), and attitude-role consistency, may have little impact on the well-being of contemporary UK adults.

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Changing gender roles and attitudes and their implications for well-being around the new millennium

Helen Sweeting 0 1 Abita Bhaskar 0 1 Michaela Benzeval 0 1 Frank Popham 0 1 Kate Hunt 0 1 0 M. Benzeval Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex , Colchester CO4 3SQ, UK 1 H. Sweeting (&) A. Bhaskar F. Popham K. Hunt MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow , 4 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow G12 8RZ, UK Purpose Given evidence that gender role attitudes (GRAs) and actual gender roles impact on well-being, we examine associations between GRAs, three roles (marital status, household chore division, couple employment) and psychological distress in working-age men and women. We investigate time-trends reflecting broader social and economic changes, by focusing on three age groups at two dates. Methods We used British Household Panel Survey data from 20- to 64-year-olds in heterosexual couple households in 1991 (N = 5,302) and 2007 (N = 6,621). We examined: levels of traditional GRAs according to gender, age, date, household and employment roles; associations which GRAs and roles had with psychological distress (measured via the GHQ-12); whether psychological distress increased when GRAs conflicted with actual roles; and whether any of these associations differed according to gender, age or date. Results Gender traditionalism was lower among women, younger people, those participating in 2007 and in 'less traditional' relationships and households. Psychological distress was higher among those with more traditional GRAs and, particularly among men, for those not employed, and there was some evidence of different patterns of association according to age-group. There was limited evidence, among women only, of increased psychological distress when GRAs and actual roles conflicted and/or reductions when GRAs and roles agreed, particularly in respect of household chores and paid employment. Conclusions Although some aspects of gender roles and attitudes (traditionalism and paid employment) are associated with well-being, others (marital status and household chores), and attitude-role consistency, may have little impact on the well-being of contemporary UK adults. - Over the latter part of the twentieth century and into the first decades of the twenty-first century, societal gender role attitudes (henceforth GRAs, also termed gender role beliefs or ideology) have become more egalitarian among both men and women [1], paralleling broader social and economic changes. There have been striking increases in the proportion of adults choosing to cohabit rather than marry [2] and also, among women, particularly those with children, in the proportion in employment (UK employment rates in 1974 and 2003, respectively, were 95 and 86 % in men, 67 and 73 % in childless women and 36 and 58 % in mothers) [3]. In contrast, although mens involvement in domestic work rose from the 1960s, it reached a plateau in the mid 1990s, changing little in the following decade [1]. The implications of these changes in attitudes and roles for other aspects of life are not well understood. In particular, it has been suggested that internalisation of sex roles and gender stereotypes and the ramifications of these roles, both of which can be measured at an individual level, are rarely among the inputs studied when health is the output (p. 370) [4]. Changes in GRAs and roles, or changes in the meanings associated with particular roles are, therefore, important in respect of the impact they might have on patterns of psychological distress in men and women [5, 6]. In this paper we focus on how GRAs and indicators of mens and womens actual roles in the home and the labour market are associated with psychological distress. Inclusion of both GRAs and roles means we can investigate the relative importance of each. Analyses are based on data from the UK British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) which allows us to look at men and women from three different working age groups (2034, 3549 and 5064) at two different dates (1991 and 2007). Gender roles and attitudes: patterning and associations with well-being Traditional GRAs privilege mens roles in paid work and their status as the family breadwinner, while assuming women should prioritise caring for the home and family over other roles. Egalitarian GRAs, in contrast, support equality in all domains [7]. More traditional GRAs are more common among men [79] and older generations [1012]. Several studies suggest they may be also associated with greater psychological distress. For example, more traditional GRAs were associated with poorer well-being among Dutch mainstreamers and both Caribbean and Mediterranean immigrant men and women living in the Netherlands [8], while a study of 45- to 79-year-olds in the UK found GRAs was unrelated to mental health among men, but women with more traditional GRAs had poorer mental health [13]. Another UK study found more traditional GRAs were positively associated with suicidal thoughts in early and late middle-aged cohorts [14]. Exist (...truncated)


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Helen Sweeting, Abita Bhaskar, Michaela Benzeval, Frank Popham, Kate Hunt. Changing gender roles and attitudes and their implications for well-being around the new millennium, Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 2014, pp. 791-809, Volume 49, Issue 5, DOI: 10.1007/s00127-013-0730-y