Gender roles and gender-related self-concept measures assess how people describe themselves in relation to culturally gendered traits, roles, expectations, and social norms. This domain includes several related but distinct constructs: masculinity and femininity, conformity to gender norms, beliefs about gender roles, gender prejudice, gender-related interpersonal experiences, and gender role stress.
These instruments should not be treated as measuring a single unified trait. Some describe gendered self-perception, others assess adherence to norms, social attitudes, prejudice, discrimination, objectification, or distress caused by conflict with gender-role expectations.
These measures assess how people describe themselves in relation to culturally gendered traits, qualities, and behavioral patterns. They focus on gendered self-concept rather than attitudes toward gender roles or judgments about other people.
The Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) assesses self-attributed masculine and feminine traits, reflecting internalized gender role schemas rather than explicit attitudes toward gender roles.
The Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ) measures instrumental and expressive traits, providing an alternative operationalization of gender-related self-description.
These instruments assess the extent to which people endorse, follow, or organize their behavior around culturally prescribed norms of masculinity or femininity. Unlike self-concept measures, they focus specifically on conformity to normative expectations.
The Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory (CMNI, CMNI-46, CMNI-22) assesses conformity to culturally defined masculine norms, including emotional control, dominance, self-reliance, and related dimensions.
The Conformity to Feminine Norms Inventory (CFNI, CFNI-45) measures conformity to culturally prescribed feminine norms, such as relational orientation, modesty, and concern with appearance.
The Male Role Norms Inventory (MRNI-SF) assesses endorsement of traditional male role norms, including beliefs about emotional restriction, self-reliance, toughness, dominance, avoidance of femininity, and sexual norms.
These measures assess beliefs about gender roles, equality, family and parental expectations, sexual norms, and the distribution of social roles between women and men. They describe views about gender arrangements rather than gendered self-description or prejudice alone.
The Gender Role Beliefs Scale (GRBS, GRBS-S) assesses endorsement of traditional versus egalitarian beliefs about gender roles.
The Attitudes Toward Women Scale (AWS) assesses attitudes toward women's roles, rights, and participation in social, educational, occupational, and family contexts.
The Sex-Role Egalitarianism Scale (SRES) assesses attitudes toward equality between women and men across life domains such as marital roles, parental roles, employment, education, and social-interpersonal relationships. Unlike some traditional gender-attitude measures focused mainly on women's roles, it evaluates egalitarian beliefs about the rights, responsibilities, and opportunities of both sexes.
The Feminist Perspectives Scale measures endorsement of different ideological positions related to gender roles, feminism, and equality.
These instruments assess prejudiced, hostile, benevolent, ambivalent, or stereotyped attitudes toward women, men, or gender groups. They are separated from broader gender-role beliefs because they focus more directly on bias, devaluation, resentment, or unequal evaluation.
The Sexist Attitudes Toward Women Scale (SATWS) assesses traditional and discriminatory beliefs about women and gender roles.
The Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (ASI) distinguishes between hostile sexism and benevolent sexism, which reflects subjectively positive but patronizing beliefs about women.
The Ambivalence Toward Men Inventory (AMI) captures hostile and benevolent attitudes toward men, reflecting the complexity of gender-related evaluations.
The Modern Sexism Scale assesses more indirect forms of sexism, including denial of ongoing discrimination and resentment toward efforts to promote gender equality.
The Neosexism Scale assesses opposition to gender equality framed in terms of merit, fairness, or resistance to perceived special treatment.
The Internalized Misogyny Scale (IMS) assesses the extent to which individuals endorse negative beliefs about women directed toward themselves or others.
These measures assess how people experience gender-related treatment in interpersonal and social contexts, including discrimination, objectification, sexist events, microaggressions, unwanted attention, and unfair treatment. They describe exposure to social experience rather than personal endorsement of gender beliefs.
The Interpersonal Sexual Objectification Scale (ISOS) assesses experiences of being sexually objectified, including unwanted sexual attention, body evaluation, and treatment as a sexual object rather than as a whole person.
The Schedule of Sexist Events (SSE) assesses lifetime and recent experiences of sexist discrimination, including sexism in close relationships, distant relationships, sexual degradation, and gender-based barriers.
The Everyday Discrimination Scale (EDS) assesses routine experiences of unfair treatment, disrespect, and social exclusion; gender can be specified as one possible attribution for these experiences.
The Gender Microaggressions Scale assesses subtle everyday slights, invalidations, and biased interpersonal messages related to gender.
These measures assess distress, tension, or inner conflict associated with gender-role expectations. They focus on situations where cultural norms of masculinity or femininity become psychologically restrictive, threatening, contradictory, or difficult to reconcile with personal experience.
The Feminine Gender Role Stress Scale (FGRS) assesses stress associated with perceived threats or challenges to traditional feminine gender-role expectations, including appearance, emotional expression, nurturance, assertiveness, and vulnerability.
The Masculine Gender Role Stress Scale (MGRS) assesses stress associated with perceived threats or challenges to traditional masculine gender-role expectations, including physical inadequacy, emotional expression, subordination, intellectual inferiority, and performance failure.
The Gender Preoccupation and Stability Questionnaire (GPSQ-2) assesses gender-related preoccupation and perceived stability of gender identity, including distress, uncertainty, and persistent concern about gender-related experience.
⇒ Identity and Self-Concept. Gendered self-concept is part of broader identity and self-description.
⇒ Social Attitudes. Gender-role beliefs, sexism, egalitarianism, and attitudes toward women and men overlap with broader social attitudes.
⇒ Culture. Gender norms are culturally shaped and may vary across societies, communities, and historical periods.
Gender-related measures should be interpreted according to the specific construct they assess. A high score on a masculinity or femininity scale does not have the same meaning as a high score on a conformity scale, a gender-role belief measure, a sexism scale, or a gender role stress measure.
Self-concept instruments describe how people see themselves in relation to culturally gendered traits. Conformity measures assess adherence to gender norms. Belief and attitude measures describe views about gender roles and equality. Prejudice measures assess biased or unequal evaluations of gender groups. Experience-based measures capture exposure to discrimination, objectification, or gender-related treatment, while conflict and stress measures focus on distress caused by gender-role expectations.
Because gender norms vary across cultures, historical periods, communities, and social contexts, scores should be interpreted cautiously. These instruments are most useful for describing patterns of self-understanding, role expectations, social attitudes, interpersonal experience, and gender-related stress rather than for making categorical judgments about a person's identity.