Assignment 16 - Palmer Lee

Gender Roles and Mental and Physical Health: Annotated Bibliography

Juster, Robert-Paul, et al. “Sex and Gender Roles in Relation to Mental Health and Allostatic Load.” Psychosomatic Medicine, vol. 78, no. 7, 2016, pp. 788–804., doi:10.1097/psy.0000000000000351. 

Robert-Paul Juster among others performed a study in 2016 over the effects of sex and gender roles on a person’s mental health. Overall, the results seemed to say that sex didn’t have much impact on mental health. However, a person’s feelings towards and compliance with their gender roles did have a significant impact on their overall mental health. Those who actively attempted to go against their gender roles seemed to have the worst mental health - they had the lowest levels of self esteem and general well-being. On the other hand, people who freely floated between societal gender norms had the best mental health. These “androgynous” individuals, as they are labeled in the study, had the lowest rates of depressive symptoms and the highest rates of self esteem. This shows that gender roles have a great impact on people’s mental health, and even going against them can have consequences. This is why it’s important to attempt to normalize behavior that deviates from the typically socially accepted norm for one’s gender, while also allowing the person to fall within those gender roles if they feel as though it works for them personally. Psychosomatic Medicine is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal, so it is a credible source for this type of research.

McDermott, Tom. “Two Hotel Kits, a Blue One Marketed towards Men, and a Pink One Marketed towards Women; the One for Women Is 30% More Expensive. Other than the Color, They Are Exactly the Same.” Twitter, 12 Aug. 2018, twitter.com/tomkatmpls/status/1028816922077478918?lang=en. 

Back in 2018, Tom McDermott was browsing in his local Ace Hardware store, where he found two hotel kits hung next to each other. Both had exactly the same contents inside, being small sizes of essentials that would be good to take on a brief vacation, such as a toothbrush and a small container of shampoo. The only difference between the two kits was the color; one was blue, and the other was pink. The blue was presented as a men’s kit, while the pink was presented as a women’s kit. This shows how extensive gender roles are in today’s society, even to the point where the exact same kit is advertised differently to the two binary genders just because of the color of the case. In addition, the pink “hers” kit was $2.40 more expensive than the blue “his” kit. This is a phenomenon known as the “pink tax,” which is defined as when products marketed towards women are more expensive than the equivalents marketed towards men for no reason other than profit and taking advantage of people who don’t notice the difference. This proves that not only are gender roles very present in today’s society, they often create prejudice towards those affected by them.

Read, Sanna, and Grundy, Emily. “Mental Health among Older Married Couples: the Role of Gender and Family Life.” Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, vol. 46, no. 4, 2010, pp. 331–341., doi:10.1007/s00127-010-0205-3.

This study, performed by Sanna Read and Emily Grundy, evaluated the effects on familial and gender roles on the mental health of elderly persons. The study found that on average, the more faithful a person was to traditional gender roles, the less likely they were to meet the standard of good mental health. However, that isn’t all - the study also highlighted the difference in how the two sexes belonging in this group responded to their below average happiness. While men were typically less happy than their female counterparts, women often expressed more distress. The journal the study was published in, Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, is a monthly academic peer-reviewed journal, so it is a credible source to find a study of this variety in. This proves that gender roles not only have a negative impact on a person’s mental health and well-being, but also that the effect of gender roles vary depending on the socially assigned gender. As a result, the study also further defines the difference between the two traditional gender roles, in that women are traditionally more expressive with their emotions, while men are meant to bottle them up and carry on pretending nothing is wrong.

Rosen, Nicole L., and Nofziger, Stacey. “Boys, Bullying, and Gender Roles: How Hegemonic Masculinity Shapes Bullying Behavior.” Gender Issues, vol. 36, no. 3, 2018, pp. 295–318., doi:10.1007/s12147-018-9226-0. 

The study “Boys, Bullying, and Gender Roles: How Hegemonic Masculinity Shapes Bullying Behavior” performed in 2-18 by Nicole Rosen and Stacey Nofziger (the latter of whom often researches and writes about self-control and juvenile violence, and would therefore be qualified to perform a study of this nature) evaluated the effects of societal masculinity on bullying and vice versa. The study found that bullying promotes the traits that society deems as masculine (e.g. dominance) which, in turn, prompt the bully to continue harassing others who don’t fit in with the norm, creating a vicious cycle. For example, according to the study, homosexual males and gender nonconformists are often particular targets for bullying as a result of them not fitting in with the aggressive, dominant, independent male stereotype that’s often used as the definition of what it is to be a man. This shows that gender norms, while still dangerous for a person’s own mental health and happiness, can also have a negative impact on others if someone feels the need to pressure those around them into fitting in with their assigned gender norms, especially among boys, in whom traditionally masculine traits compel to bully those around them into complying with their own gender roles.

Sánchez–López, María Del Pilar, et al. “The Impact of Gender Roles on Health.” Women & Health, vol. 52, no. 2, 2012, pp. 182–196., doi:10.1080/03630242.2011.652352. 

The 2012 study “The Impact of Gender Roles on Health,” performed by María Del Pilar Sánchez-López, Isabel Cuellar-Flores, and Virginia Dresch, evaluated the effects of and correlation between gender norms and physical health as opposed to exclusively mental health. The study found that higher alcohol and tobacco consumption rates were associated with more masculine gender norms such as dominance, while the opposite is true for typically feminine roles. On the contrary, domesticity - typically a feminine trait -  was associated with higher rates of chronic diseases such as diabetes and arthritis, while traditionally masculine traits seemed to have no impact on these chronic diseases. This proves the correlation between traditional gender roles and physical health, showing that they don’t only have a negative impact on the mental aspect of health, but on the physical aspect as well. It also proves that each gender norm has a different impact on one’s physical health, as opposed to each trait having the same effect. The study can be used to further support the argument that gender roles have more of a negative impact on people’s health than a positive one. The journal the study was published in, Women & Health, is a peer-reviewed academic journal that frequently delves into gender studies, so it is a reliable source to find an article of this nature.