Information Systems for Business and Beyond David .docx

Information Systems for Business and Beyond
David T. Bourgeois, Ph.D.
tombryan
Typewritten Text
tombryan
Typewritten Text
Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/courses/bus206
Attributed to: David T. Bourgeois, Ph.D.
saylor.org
tombryan
Typewritten Text
Information Systems for Business and Beyond © 2014 David T.
Bourgeois, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution

(CC BY) license made possible by funding from The Saylor
Foundation's Open Textbook Challenge in order to be
incorporated into Saylor.org's collection of open courses
available at http://www.saylor.org. Full license terms may be
viewed at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode
tombryan
Typewritten Text
tombryan
Typewritten Text
tombryan
Typewritten Text
tombryan
Typewritten Text
tombryan
Typewritten Text
tombryan
Typewritten Text
tombryan
Typewritten Text
tombryan
Typewritten Text
tombryan
Typewritten Text
tombryan
Typewritten Text

tombryan
Typewritten Text
tombryan
Typewritten Text
tombryan
Typewritten Text
tombryan
Typewritten Text
tombryan
Typewritten Text
tombryan
Typewritten Text
tombryan
Typewritten Text
tombryan
Typewritten Text
Contents
1Introduction
Part 1: What Is an Information System?
Chapter 1: What Is an Information System?
5David T. Bourgeois
Chapter 2: Hardware
14David T. Bourgeois

Chapter 3: Software
Chapter 4: Data and Databases
Chapter 5: Networking and Communication
Chapter 6: Information Systems Security
Part 2: Information Systems for Strategic Advantage
Chapter 7: Does IT Matter?
Chapter 8: Business Processes
Chapter 9: The People in Information Systems
Chapter 10: Information Systems Development
Part 3: Information Systems Beyond the Organization
Chapter 11: Globalization and the Digital Divide
Chapter 12: The Ethical and Legal Implications of Information
Systems

Chapter 13: Future Trends in Information Systems
150Answers to Study Questions
162Bibliography
iv Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/courses/bus206
saylor.org
Introduction
Welcome to Information Systems for Business and Beyond. In
this book, you will be introduced to the
concept of information systems, their use in business, and the
larger impact they are having on our world.
Audience
This book is written as an introductory text, meant for those
with little or no experience with computers
or information systems. While sometimes the descriptions can
get a little bit technical, every effort has
been made to convey the information essential to understanding
a topic while not getting bogged down in
detailed terminology or esoteric discussions.
Chapter Outline

The text is organized around thirteen chapters divided into three
major parts, as follows:
• Part 1: What Is an Information System?
Chapter 1: What Is an Information System? – This chapter
provides an overview of
information systems, including the history of how we got where
we are today.
Chapter 2: Hardware – We discuss information systems
hardware and how it works. You
will look at different computer parts and learn how they
interact.
Chapter 3: Software – Without software, hardware is useless. In
this chapter, we discuss
software and the role it plays in an organization.
Chapter 4: Data and Databases – This chapter explores how
organizations use
information systems to turn data into information that can then
be used for competitive
advantage. Special attention is paid to the role of databases.
Chapter 5: Networking and Communication – Today’s
computers are expected to also be
communication devices. In this chapter we review the history of
networking, how the
Internet works, and the use of networks in organizations today.
Chapter 6: Information Systems Security – We discuss the
information security triad of
confidentiality, integrity, and availability. We will review
different security technologies,
and the chapter concludes with a primer on personal information
security.
• Part 2: Information Systems for Strategic Advantage
Chapter 7: Does IT Matter? – This chapter examines the impact
that information systems
have on an organization. Can IT give a company a competitive

advantage? We will
1Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/courses/bus206
saylor.org
discuss seminal works by Brynjolfsson, Carr, and Porter as they
relate to IT and
competitive advantage.
Chapter 8: Business Processes – Business processes are the
essence of what a business
does, and information systems play an important role in making
them work. This chapter
will discuss business process management, business process
reengineering, and ERP
systems.
Chapter 9: The People in Information Systems – This chapter
will provide an overview of
the different types of people involved in information systems.
This includes people who
create information systems, those who operate and administer
information systems, those
who manage information systems, and those who use
information systems.
Chapter 10: Information Systems Development – How are
information systems created?
This chapter will review the concept of programming, look at
different methods of
software development, review website and mobile application

development, discuss end-
user computing, and look at the “build vs. buy” decision that
many companies face.
• Part 3: Information Systems beyond the Organization
Chapter 11: Globalization and the Digital Divide – The rapid
rise of the Internet has
made it easier than ever to do business worldwide. This chapter
will look at the impact
that the Internet is having on the globalization of business and
the issues that firms must
face because of it. It will also cover the concept of the digital
divide and some of the steps
being taken to alleviate it.
Chapter 12: The Ethical and Legal Implications of Information
Systems – The rapid
changes in information and communication technology in the
past few decades have
brought a broad array of new capabilities and powers to
governments, organizations, and
individuals alike. This chapter will discuss the effects that these
new capabilities have had
and the legal and regulatory changes that have been put in place
in response.
Chapter 13: Future Trends in Information Systems – This final
chapter will present an
overview of some of the new technologies that are on the
horizon. From wearable
technology to 3-D printing, this chapter will provide a look
forward to what the next few
years will bring.
For the Student
Each chapter in this text begins with a list of the relevant
learning objectives and ends with a chapter

summary. Following the summary is a list of study questions
that highlight key topics in the chapter. In
order to get the best learning experience, you would be wise to
begin by reading both the learning objectives
and the summary and then reviewing the questions at the end of
the chapter.
2 Information Systems for Business and Beyond
saylor.org
For the Instructor
Learning objectives can be found at the beginning of each
chapter. Of course, all chapters are recommended
for use in an introductory information systems course. However,
for courses on a shorter calendar or
courses using additional textbooks, a review of the learning
objectives will help determine which chapters
can be omitted.
At the end of each chapter, there is a set of study questions and
exercises (except for chapter 1, which
only offers study questions). The study questions can be
assigned to help focus students’ reading on the
learning objectives. The exercises are meant to be a more in-
depth, experiential way for students to learn
chapter topics. It is recommended that you review any exercise
before assigning it, adding any detail needed
(such as length, due date) to complete the assignment.

Introduction 3
saylor.org
Part 1: What Is an Information System?
saylor.org
Chapter 1: What Is an Information System?
David T. Bourgeois
Learning Objectives
Upon successful completion of this chapter, you will be able to:
• define what an information system is by identifying its major
components;
• describe the basic history of information systems; and
• describe the basic argument behind the article “Does IT
Matter?” by Nicholas Carr.
Introduction

If you are reading this, you are most likely taking a course in
information systems, but do you even know
what the course is going to cover? When you tell your friends or
your family that you are taking a course
in information systems, can you explain what it is about? For
the past several years, I have taught an
Introduction to Information Systems course. The first day of
class I ask my students to tell me what they
think an information system is. I generally get answers such as
“computers,” “databases,” or “Excel.”
These are good answers, but definitely incomplete ones. The
study of information systems goes far beyond
understanding some technologies. Let’s begin our study by
defining information systems.
Defining Information Systems
Almost all programs in business require students to take a
course in something called information systems.
But what exactly does that term mean? Let’s take a look at some
of the more popular definitions, first from
Wikipedia and then from a couple of textbooks:
• “Information systems (IS) is the study of complementary
networks of hardware and software that
people and organizations use to collect, filter, process, create,
and distribute data.”1
• “Information systems are combinations of hardware, software,
and telecommunications networks
that people build and use to collect, create, and distribute useful
data, typically in organizational
settings.”2
• “Information systems are interrelated components working

together to collect, process, store, and
disseminate information to support decision making,
coordination, control, analysis, and
viualization in an organization.”3
1. Wikipedia entry on "Information Systems," as displayed on
August 19, 2012. Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. San
Francisco:
Wikimedia Foundation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_systems_(discipline).
2. Excerpted from Information Systems Today - Managing in
the Digital World, fourth edition. Prentice-Hall, 2010.
3. Excerpted from Management Information Systems, twelfth
edition, Prentice-Hall, 2012.
5
saylor.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_systems_(discipline)
As you can see, these definitions focus on two different ways of
describing information systems:
the components that make up an information system and the role
that those components play in an
organization. Let’s take a look at each of these.
The Components of Information Systems
As I stated earlier, I spend the first day of my information
systems class discussing exactly what the
term means. Many students understand that an information

system has something to do with databases
or spreadsheets. Others mention computers and e-commerce.
And they are all right, at least in part:
information systems are made up of different components that
work together to provide value to an
organization.
The first way I describe information systems to students is to
tell them that they are made up of five components: hardware,
software, data, people, and process. The first three, fitting under
the category technology, are generally what most students think
of
when asked to define information systems. But the last two,
people and process, are really what separate the idea of
information
systems from more technical fields, such as computer science.
In order to fully understand information systems, students must
understand how all of these components work together to bring
value to an organization.
Technology
Technology can be thought of as the application of scientific
knowledge for practical purposes. From the
invention of the wheel to the harnessing of electricity for
artificial lighting, technology is a part of our lives
in so many ways that we tend to take it for granted. As
discussed before, the first three components of
information systems – hardware, software, and data – all fall
under the category of technology. Each of
these will get its own chapter and a much lengthier discussion,
but we will take a moment here to introduce
them so we can get a full understanding of what an information
system is.
Hardware

Information systems hardware is the part of an information
system you can touch – the physical components
of the technology. Computers, keyboards, disk drives, iPads,
and flash drives are all examples of
information systems hardware. We will spend some time going
over these components and how they all
work together in chapter 2.
Software
Software is a set of instructions that tells the hardware what to
do. Software is not
tangible – it cannot be touched. When programmers create
software programs,
what they are really doing is simply typing out lists of
instructions that tell the
hardware what to do. There are several categories of software,
with the two main
categories being operating-system software, which makes the
hardware usable, and
application software, which does something useful. Examples of
operating systems
include Microsoft Windows on a personal computer and
Google’s Android on a
mobile phone. Examples of application software are Microsoft
Excel and Angry Birds. Software will be
explored more thoroughly in chapter 3.
saylor.org

http://bus206.pressbooks.com/files/2012/07/hwswappuser.png
http://bus206.pressbooks.com/files/2012/07/hwswappuser.png
Data
The third component is data. You can think of data as a
collection of facts. For example, your street address,
the city you live in, and your phone number are all pieces of
data. Like software, data is also intangible. By
themselves, pieces of data are not really very useful. But
aggregated, indexed, and organized together into
a database, data can become a powerful tool for businesses. In
fact, all of the definitions presented at the
beginning of this chapter focused on how information systems
manage data. Organizations collect all kinds
of data and use it to make decisions. These decisions can then
be analyzed as to their effectiveness and the
organization can be improved. Chapter 4 will focus on data and
databases, and their uses in organizations.
Networking Communication: A Fourth Technology Piece?
Besides the components of hardware, software, and data, which
have long been considered the core
technology of information systems, it has been suggested that
one other component should be added:
communication. An information system can exist without the
ability to communicate – the first personal
computers were stand-alone machines that did not access the
Internet. However, in today’s hyper-connected
world, it is an extremely rare computer that does not connect to
another device or to a network. Technically,
the networking communication component is made up of
hardware and software, but it is such a core

feature of today’s information systems that it has become its
own category. We will be covering networking
in chapter 5.
People
When thinking about information systems, it is easy to get
focused
on the technology components and forget that we must look
beyond these tools to fully understand how they integrate into
an
organization. A focus on the people involved in information
systems is the next step. From the front-line help-desk workers,
to
systems analysts, to programmers, all the way up to the chief
information officer (CIO), the people involved with information
systems are an essential element that must not be overlooked.
The
people component will be covered in chapter 9.
Process
The last component of information systems is process. A
process is a series of steps undertaken to
achieve a desired outcome or goal. Information systems are
becoming more and more integrated with
organizational processes, bringing more productivity and better
control to those processes. But simply
automating activities using technology is not enough –
businesses looking to effectively utilize information
systems do more. Using technology to manage and improve
processes, both within a company and externally with suppliers
and
customers, is the ultimate goal. Technology buzzwords such as
“business process reengineering,” “business process
management,”

and “enterprise resource planning” all have to do with the
continued improvement of these business procedures and the
integration
of technology with them. Businesses hoping to gain an
advantage over their competitors are highly focused on this
component of
information systems. We will discuss processes in chapter 8.
Ch.1:What Is an Information System? 7
saylor.org
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASteve_Jobs_and_Bi
ll_Gates_(522695099).jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASteve_Jobs_and_Bi
ll_Gates_(522695099).jpg
IBM 704 Mainframe (Copyright: Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory)
Registered trademark of
International Business Machines
The Role of Information Systems
Now that we have explored the different components of
information systems, we need to turn our attention
to the role that information systems play in an organization. So
far we have looked at what the components
of an information system are, but what do these components
actually do for an organization? From our

definitions above, we see that these components collect, store,
organize, and distribute data throughout the
organization. In fact, we might say that one of the roles of
information systems is to take data and turn it
into information, and then transform that into organizational
knowledge. As technology has developed, this
role has evolved into the backbone of the organization. To get a
full appreciation of the role information
systems play, we will review how they have changed over the
years.
The Mainframe Era
From the late 1950s through the 1960s, computers were
seen as a way to more efficiently do calculations. These
first business computers were room-sized monsters, with
several refrigerator-sized machines linked together. The
primary work of these devices was to organize and store
large volumes of information that were tedious to manage
by hand. Only large businesses, universities, and
government agencies could afford them, and they took a
crew of specialized personnel and specialized facilities to
maintain. These devices served dozens to hundreds of
users at a time through a process called time-sharing.
Typical functions included scientific calculations and
accounting, under the broader umbrella of “data processing.”
In the late 1960s, the Manufacturing Resources Planning (MRP)
systems
were introduced. This software, running on a mainframe
computer, gave
companies the ability to manage the manufacturing process,
making it
more efficient. From tracking inventory to creating bills of
materials to

scheduling production, the MRP systems (and later the MRP II
systems)
gave more businesses a reason to want to integrate computing
into their
processes. IBM became the dominant mainframe company.
Nicknamed
“Big Blue,” the company became synonymous with business
computing. Continued improvement in
software and the availability of cheaper hardware eventually
brought mainframe computers (and their little
sibling, the minicomputer) into most large businesses.
The PC Revolution
In 1975, the first microcomputer was announced on the cover of
Popular Mechanics: the Altair 8800.
Its immediate popularity sparked the imagination of
entrepreneurs everywhere, and there were quickly
dozens of companies making these “personal computers.”
Though at first just a niche product for computer
hobbyists, improvements in usability and the availability of
practical software led to growing sales. The
most prominent of these early personal computer makers was a
little company known as Apple Computer,
headed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, with the hugely
successful “Apple II.” Not wanting to be left
out of the revolution, in 1981 IBM (teaming with a little
company called Microsoft for their operating-
saylor.org

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AIbm704.gif
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AIbm704.gif
Registered trademark of
SAP
system software) hurriedly released their own version of the
personal computer, simply called the “PC.”
Businesses, who had used IBM mainframes for years to run
their businesses, finally had the permission
they needed to bring personal computers into their companies,
and the IBM PC took off. The IBM PC was
named Time magazine’s “Man of the Year” for 1982.
Because of the IBM PC’s open architecture, it was easy for
other companies to copy, or “clone” it.
During the 1980s, many new computer companies sprang up,
offering less expensive versions of the PC.
This drove prices down and spurred innovation. Microsoft
developed its Windows operating system and
made the PC even easier to use. Common uses for the PC during
this period included word processing,
spreadsheets, and databases. These early PCs were not
connected to any sort of network; for the most part
they stood alone as islands of innovation within the larger
organization.
Client-Server
In the mid-1980s, businesses began to see the need to connect
their computers together as a way to
collaborate and share resources. This networking architecture
was referred to as “client-server” because
users would log in to the local area network (LAN) from their

PC (the “client”) by connecting to a powerful
computer called a “server,” which would then grant them rights
to different resources on the network (such
as shared file areas and a printer). Software companies began
developing applications that allowed multiple
users to access the same data at the same time. This evolved
into software applications for communicating,
with the first real popular use of electronic mail appearing at
this time.
This networking and data sharing all stayed within the confines
of each business,
for the most part. While there was sharing of electronic data
between companies,
this was a very specialized function. Computers were now seen
as tools to
collaborate internally, within an organization. In fact, these
networks of computers
were becoming so powerful that they were replacing many of
the functions
previously performed by the larger mainframe computers at a
fraction of the cost.
It was during this era that the first Enterprise Resource Planning
(ERP) systems were developed and run on
the client-server architecture. An ERP system is a software
application with a centralized database that can
be used to run a company’s entire business. With separate
modules for accounting, finance, inventory,
human resources, and many, many more, ERP systems, with
Germany’s SAP leading the way, represented
the state of the art in information systems integration. We will
discuss ERP systems as part of the chapter on
process (chapter 9).
The World Wide Web and E-Commerce

First invented in 1969, the Internet was confined to use by
universities, government agencies, and
researchers for many years. Its rather arcane commands and user
applications made it unsuitable for
mainstream use in business. One exception to this was the
ability to expand electronic mail outside the
confines of a single organization. While the first e-mail
messages on the Internet were sent in the early
1970s, companies who wanted to expand their LAN-based e-
mail started hooking up to the Internet in the
1980s. Companies began connecting their internal networks to
the Internet in order to allow communication
between their employees and employees at other companies. It
was with these early Internet connections
that the computer truly began to evolve from a computational
device to a communications device.
In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee developed a simpler way for
researchers to share information over the
network at CERN laboratories, a concept he called the World
Wide Web.4 This invention became the
launching point of the growth of the Internet as a way for
businesses to share information about themselves.
Ch.1:What Is an Information System? 9
saylor.org

Registered trademark of Amazon
Technologies, Inc.
As web browsers and Internet connections became the norm,
companies rushed to grab domain names and
create websites.
In 1991, the National Science Foundation, which governed how
the
Internet was used, lifted restrictions on its commercial use. The
year 1994
saw the establishment of both eBay and Amazon.com, two true
pioneers in
the use of the new digital marketplace. A mad rush of
investment in
Internet-based businesses led to the dot-com boom through the
late 1990s,
and then the dot-com bust in 2000. While much can be learned
from the speculation and crazy economic
theories espoused during that bubble, one important outcome for
businesses was that thousands of miles of
Internet connections were laid around the world during that
time. The world became truly “wired” heading
into the new millenium, ushering in the era of globalization,
which we will discuss in chapter 11.
As it became more expected for companies to be connected to
the Internet, the digital world also
became a more dangerous place. Computer viruses and worms,
once slowly propagated through the sharing
of computer disks, could now grow with tremendous speed via
the Internet. Software written for a
disconnected world found it very difficult to defend against
these sorts of threats. A whole new industry of

computer and Internet security arose. We will study information
security in chapter 6.
Web 2.0
As the world recovered from the dot-com bust, the use of
technology in business continued to evolve at
a frantic pace. Websites became interactive; instead of just
visiting a site to find out about a business and
purchase its products, customers wanted to be able to customize
their experience and interact with the
business. This new type of interactive website, where you did
not have to know how to create a web page or
do any programming in order to put information online, became
known as web 2.0. Web 2.0 is exemplified
by blogging, social networking, and interactive comments being
available on many websites. This new
web-2.0 world, in which online interaction became expected,
had a big impact on many businesses and
even whole industries. Some industries, such as bookstores,
found themselves relegated to a niche status.
Others, such as video rental chains and travel agencies, simply
began going out of business as they were
replaced by online technologies. This process of technology
replacing a middleman in a transaction is called
disintermediation.
As the world became more connected, new questions arose.
Should access to the Internet be
considered a right? Can I copy a song that I downloaded from
the Internet? How can I keep information
that I have put on a website private? What information is
acceptable to collect from children? Technology
moved so fast that policymakers did not have enough time to
enact appropriate laws, making for a Wild
West–type atmosphere. Ethical issues surrounding information

systems will be covered in chapter 12.
The Post-PC World
After thirty years as the primary computing device used in most
businesses, sales of the PC are now
beginning to decline as sales of tablets and smartphones are
taking off. Just as the mainframe before it, the
PC will continue to play a key role in business, but will no
longer be the primary way that people interact
and do business. The limited storage and processing power of
these devices is being offset by a move to
“cloud” computing, which allows for storage, sharing, and
backup of information on a massive scale. This
4. CERN's "The Birth of the Web."
http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/about/web-en.html
10 Information Systems for Business and …
Encyclopedia of Gender in Media
Stereotypes
Contributors: Rachel E. Silverman
Edited by: Mary Kosut
Book Title: Encyclopedia of Gender in Media
Chapter Title: "Stereotypes"
Pub. Date: 2012

Access Date: March 31, 2020
Publishing Company: SAGE Publications, Inc.
City: Thousand Oaks
Print ISBN: 9781412990790
Online ISBN: 9781452218540
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781452218540.n155
Print pages: 373-375
© 2012 SAGE Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
This PDF has been generated from SAGE Knowledge. Please
note that the pagination of the online
version will vary from the pagination of the print book.
javascript:void(0);
http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781452218540.n155
Stereotypes are overly simplified conceptions, images, or
beliefs about individuals and specific social groups.
Popular stereotypes rely on assumptions, are often mistaken for
reality, and usually have negative connota-
tions. The term stereotype was first coined in 1798 in the field
of typography. It originally meant “duplicate
impression” and described the process of casting a print mold.
In 1922, American journalist Walter Lippmann
redefined the term as a perpetual “picture in our heads.” The
power of the image in our heads is its ability to
perpetuate without change. Unfortunately, that image, the

stereotype, is usually negative and constricts indi-
vidual identities to preconceived group characteristics.
Theories of Stereotypes
Perspectives on the development of stereotypes vary; views
range from a belief that stereotypes help to frame
an individual's experience with different groups of people to a
belief that stereotypes are patterns of com-
munication that are, by definition, inaccurate representations
and projections of one to another. Early studies
suggested that stereotypes were used only by repressed
authoritarians as a form of prejudicial thinking. More
recent theories acknowledge the complexity of stereotypes and
stereotyping and conclude that both are com-
monplace.
Social psychologists attribute the stereotyping process to the
human need for mental categorizing. There are
two generally agreed-upon perspectives about stereotypes and
how they operate. The first perspective sug-
gests that stereotypes are automatic (subconscious) and explicit
(conscious). Automatic stereotyping is the
stereotyping everyone does without notice and is accompanied
by an explicit stereotype, which creates more
concrete ideas in the mind. In this case, stereotypes act first as
mental categories with which to contain new
information (people, groups, places, and so forth) and then as a
set of perceptions about the new information.
For example, the stereotype of people from New Jersey as loud
and obnoxious, with a taste for ostentatious
clothing and usually Italian-American, will cast all state
residents in such a light even though the state's pop-
ulation is quite diverse. The power of stereotypes is reinforced
when the stereotype is mass-produced in the
media, as in shows like The Real House Wives of New Jersey,

The Jersey Shore, and Jerseylicious.
The second perspective on stereotypes relies on the notion of
in-groups and out-groups. In-groups are per-
ceived as normal and thus the superior group of which to be a
member, whereas out-groups are simply all
other, less desirable groups. In this second perspective on
stereotypes, the members of the in-group are not
stereotyped because they are seen as normal individuals with
distinct identities. Members of the out-group
are treated en masse and are ascribed few discernible or notable
differences. In the United States, heterosex-
uals are an in-group, leaving all other sexual orientations to be
stereotyped as deviant. There are no stereo-
types about heterosexuals, because heterosexuality is the
nonste-reotypical in-group.
In general, stereotypes are constructed for people and groups of
people with whom individuals have little to
no contact. Lack of familiarity encourages the lumping together
of unknown people. Most often, the lack of
distinction combined with the lack of specific knowledge results
in stereotypes that are largely negative as-
sumptions about a group or individual person within that group.
However, social scientists and psychologists
tend to agree that stereotypes help humans manage the
complexities of other people as individuals. Even
though stereotyping can be problematic, it is an efficient way to
organize large blocks of information. The need
to categorize is an essential human characteristic that allows
people to simplify and operate within the world.
By assigning general traits to members of groups, humans are
more apt to avoid processing new information
and are better able to predict the social world in a general
sense.

A very different view of stereotypes suggests that the reason
people stereotype is that they need to feel good
about themselves. Stereotypes enhance self-esteem and protect
people from feelings of anxiety by desig-
nating one's own group as normal and superior and making all
other groups abnormal and inferior. In other
words, stereotypes can help provide people with a sense of
worth and pride in their identity. It is important to
note that groups that are negatively stereotyped can, over time,
enact the labels that are placed on them and
assume, even if subconsciously, that a negative stereotype
applied to them by a dominant group is a norm
SAGE
© 2012 by SAGE Publications, Inc.
SAGE Reference
Page 2 of 6
to emulate. Furthermore, stereotypes can prevent or discourage
members of an in-group from forming any
emotional identification with members of an out-group, leading
to erroneous judgments and scapegoating.
Characteristics subject to stereotyping range from age and
gender to race and religion, always with the idea
that there is one ideal way to be and all other identities can be
lumped together and stereotyped.
In media, the recognizable nature of stereotypes has assured
their use in contemporary advertising and com-
edy. Moreover, throughout history, literature and art have relied
on stereotyped stock characters. Storytellers

have used clichéd or predictable characters and situations in
order to quickly connect with readers and audi-
ences.
Gender and Sexual Stereotypes
Stereotypes about gender and sexuality are the most prolific
form of stereotyping. Stereotypes about sexuality
work to maintain society's strict notion of a gender binary. That
is, male and female stereotypes perpetuate the
idea that only male and female genders exist. Common gender
stereotypes claim that men are promiscuous
whereas women are sexually repressed, men are aggressive and
brutish whereas women are demure and
passive, and men are insensitive and detached whereas women
are naturally caring and nurturing. These
stereotypical gender roles place women at home, raising
children and completely satisfied by their husbands,
and men away at work, with few emotional ties to their families
and eyes for every woman who passes them
by. Gender stereotypes assume that all men must act
stereotypically male, all women must act stereo-typ-
ically female, and any deviation from the norm is intensely
problematic. Living up to sexual stereotypes is
damaging for people and creates ideas about one gender being
better than another, leading to the notion of
one person being better simply because of the person's
biological reproductive capabilities or genitalia.
Sexual stereotypes also affect how we conceive of hetero-,
homo-, and bisexuality. Heterosexuality is often
considered the norm, or in-group, which causes all other sexual
orientations to be stereotyped as out-groups
and thus deviant and abnormal. Sexual stereotypes are damaging
to nonheterosexual people and often result
in the denial or limitation of civil rights, as well as violence and

discrimination. Some sexual stereotypes sug-
gest that lesbians are unrefined, unattractive, and overweight
(similar to heterosexual men) and that gay men
are stereotypically thin, effeminate, and vain (similar to
heterosexual women).
Racial and Ethnic Stereotypes
In the United States, some of the longest-held and potentially
most detrimental stereotypes are those about
African Americans. Stereotypes about African American people
date back to the colonial years of settlement,
particularly after slavery became a racial institution. Blacks
have been stereotyped as lazy, primitive, reli-
gious, and violent. They have been depicted as loving fried
chicken, Kool-Aid, and watermelon. The arche-
typal African American image comes primarily from the
minstrel shows of the 19th century. In these shows,
white people wore blackface makeup and performed African
Americans as buffoonish and ignorant charac-
ters. Some of the most well-known black stereotypes are the
Sambo (a trickster), the Mammy (a large, dark-
skinned woman who raises white folks' babies), the Uncle Tom
(an African American man who acquiesces in
everything white people want), the Magical Black Man (a
character who saves white people from their own
mistakes), and the Welfare Queen (an African American woman
who has babies only to get money from the
government). In news media today, the stereotype of angry,
violent black men and women has led to some
of the most racist images seen in American culture. Sports are
the one place where African American stereo-
types are somewhat positive, but the assumption that all black
people are natural-born athletes can still be
damaging and limiting: The more positive image is only made
negative by the resulting stereotype that as-

sumes that black communities place a low priority on education.
Similarly, Hispanics are cast as a group of people uninterested
in education. Rather, the stereotypical Hispan-
SAGE
SAGE Reference
Page 3 of 6
ic person cares only for his or her family and having more and
more children—especially because the most
prominent stereotype of Hispanic people is that they all hail
from a common country of origin. In the United
States, Hispanic and Latino people are incorrectly given racial
identities and are often depicted as part of one
homogeneous culture or ethnic group with no defining
characteristics. If a country of origin is specified, it is
invariably Puerto Rico or Mexico, regardless of an individual's
actual home country.
Recently, a rise in stereotypes about Middle Eastern, Arab, and
Muslim people has occurred. Although a fas-
cination with the Near East has long existed in literature and
film and characters have long been depicted as
billionaires on camels or belly dancers in tents, the more
common stereotype today is of a bomber or terrorist.
After the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade
Center in New York City, a wave of anti-Arab im-
ages and stereotypes emerged. Racial profiling done at airports
has become a common form of stereotyping

and another example of the ways in which out-groups are
demeaned and degraded by stereotypes.
Stereotyping people from “the Orient” has long been a cultural
fascination of Americans. A major stereotype
of East Asia is its exotic and mysterious nature compared to the
bland, ordinary aspect of Western culture
and customs. An interestingly detrimental effect of the East's
mystique places all Asian cultures in a perpetual
state of ancient timelessness, whereas the West is seen as
constantly emerging, innovating, and reconstruct-
ing itself. In the late 19th century, a fear of the “Yellow Peril”
overwhelmed Western countries, including the
United States, where anti-Asian sentiments were readily
expressed on the West Coast as Chinese, Japanese,
and other Asians began immigrating to America. Since then,
Asians have been stereotyped as the “model
minority;” that is, positive traits have been ascribed to all Asian
individuals as part of their stereotype. Asians
are seen as studious, productive, intelligent, and inoffensive
people who have elevated their social standing
through diligence and hard work. Asians are also stereotyped by
their choice of professions: as dry cleaners,
grocery store owners, and scientists. When Asians are not
performing a stereotypical job or operating as part
of an ideal minority, then they fall into one of these even more
limiting roles: the Fu Manchu (an evil, Satan-
like character), the Charlie Chan (a “good” Asian who has good
manners), the Dragon Lady (a hypersexual
woman manifested in the war bride as well as the prostitute),
and the China Doll (a subservient maiden).
Another minority that has been subjected to both positive and
negative stereotypes are Jews. Throughout the
centuries, Jewish people have been made scapegoats for a
multitude of societal problems. However, they

are also praised for their ability to survive and be successful.
Jews have been cast as greedy, cheap, loud,
and obnoxious. They are often depicted counting money or
diamonds. Jewish female stereotypes include
guilt-inflicting mothers and spoiled, materialistic daughters (the
Jewish American “princess”). Caricatures of
Jews show them as having curly hair, large hook noses, thick
lips, and olive-brown skin. Usually somewhere
in the picture is also an image of a bagel, yarmulke, or menorah,
and the character is often playing the violin,
haggling with a customer, or undergoing circumcision. One of
the most famous Jewish stereotypes is William
Shakespeare's character Shylock from The Merchant of Venice.
Shylock is a moneylender who insists on be-
ing repaid in full and attempts to claim his “pound of flesh”
when Antonio (the lead character and clearly a
member of society's in-group) is unable to repay him with
money.
The gendered specificity of ethnic and cultural stereotypes adds
a layer to the process whereby groups are
belittled through stereotypes. In the United States, because the
ideal in-group woman displays the character-
istics of attractive, demure, and nurturing, stereotypes of
nonwhite women are the opposite. For example, the
African American Mammy may take care of children, but they
are not her own and she is usually depicted as
obese and thus unattractive. The China Doll may be demure, but
too much so; white men cannot take her
seriously enough to consider her worthy of marriage. Nonwhite
stereotypical women are never pretty and al-
most always overly sexual if not completely asexual. Likewise,
the stereotypical nonwhite male is also always
“too much” or “not enough;” he is either too weak, like the
Uncle Tom; too aggressive, like the Fu Manchu; too
smart and cunning, like the Jewish Shylock; or too lazy and

unintelligent, like African American and Hispanic
men. Particularly damaging nonwhite male stereotypes have
marked many minority males as not only defec-
tive but also completely nonhuman, as animals to be handled.
SAGE
SAGE Reference
Page 4 of 6
Because stereotypes affect at least one aspect of everyone's
identity, the potential damaging or limiting im-
pact of stereotyping is endless. However, awareness of and
education about stereotypes, and of how they
are proliferated in various media depictions, can work to
mitigate, if not fully correct, that damage. With
that awareness and a fuller personal experience with people
different from ourselves, how we as individuals
choose to use stereotypes—whether as guides and mental
frameworks about large quantities of information
or as distinctive and determinative knowledge about individuals
in groups—is up to us.
• stereotypes
• stereotypes and stereotyping
• gender stereotypes
• ethnic stereotypes
• African Americans
• mammy
• caucasians

Rachel E. SilvermanEmbry Riddle Aeronautical University
http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781452218540.n155
See also
• Affirmative Action
• Class Privilege
• Cultural Politics
• Diversity
• Empowerment
• Gender and Femininity: Motherhood
• Gender and Femininity: Single/Independent Girl
• Gender and Masculinity: Black Masculinity
• Gender and Masculinity: Fatherhood
• Gender and Masculinity: Metrosexual Male
• Gender and Masculinity: White Masculinity
• Hegemony
• Heterosexism
• Homophobia
• Identity
• Ideology
• Intersectionality
• Minority Rights
• Misogyny
• Patriarchy
• Prejudice
• Queer Theory
• Racism
• Sexism
• Social Construction of Gender
• Transgender Studies
• Tropes
Further Readings
Foxman, Abraham.Jews and Money: The Story of a
Stereotype.New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

SAGE
SAGE Reference
Page 5 of 6
http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781452218540.n155
http://sk.sagepub.com/reference/genderinmedia/n2.xml

Lee, Stacey J.Unraveling the “Model Minority” Stereotype:
Listening to Asian American Youth.New York:
Teachers College Press, 2009.
Macrae, C. N., C.Stangor, and M.Hewstone, eds. Stereotypes
and Stereotyping.New York: Guilford Press,
1996.
Said, Edward.Orientalism.New York: Pantheon Books, 1978.
Steele, Claude M.Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us
and What We Can Do.New York: W. W. Nor-
ton, 2011.
Turner, Patricia A.Ceramic Uncles and Celluloid Mammies:
Black Images and Their Influence on Culture.New
York: Anchor Books, 1994.
SAGE
SAGE Reference
Page 6 of 6
Encyclopedia of Gender in MediaStereotypes
Psychological Review
1981, Vol. 88, No. 4, 354-364
Copyright 1981 by the American Psychological Association,
Inc.
0033-295X/81/8804-0354$00.75
Gender Schema Theory: A Cognitive Account of Sex Typing

Sandra Lipsitz Bern
Cornell University
Gender schema theory proposes that the phenomenon of sex
typing derives, in
part, from gender-based schematic processing, from a
generalized readiness to
process information on the basis of the sex-linked associations
that constitute the
gender schema. In particular, the theory proposes that sex
typing results from
the fact that the self-concept itself gets assimilated to the
gender schema. Several
studies are described which demonstrate that sex-typed
individuals do, in fact,
have a greater readiness to process information—including
information about
the self—in terms of the gender schema. It is speculated that
such gender-based
schematic processing derives, in part, from the society's
ubiquitous insistence on
the functional importance of the gender dichotomy. The
political implications
of gender schema theory are discussed, as is the relationship of
the theory to the
concept of androgyny.
The distinction between male and female
serves as a basic organizing principle for
every human culture. Although societies dif-
fer in the specific tasks they assign to the
two sexes, all societies allocate adult roles
on the basis of sex and anticipate this allo-
cation in the socialization of their children.
Not only are boys and girls expected to ac-

quire sex-specific skills, they are also ex-
pected to have or to acquire sex-specific self-
concepts and personality attributes, to be
masculine or feminine as defined by that
particular culture (Barry, Bacon, & Child,
1957). The process by which a society thus
transmutes male and female into masculine
and feminine is known as the process of sex
typing.
The universality and importance of this
process is reflected in the prominence it re-
ceives in psychological theories of develop-
ment, which seek to elucidate how the
developing child learns the appropriate
repertoire. Psychoanalytic theory empha-
Preparation of this article was supported in part by
National Science Foundation Grant BNS-78-22637 to
Sandra Lipsitz Bern and in part by a small seed grant
from the Center for Research on Women at Stanford
University. The author would like to express her thanks
to Daryl J. Bern and Lee D. Ross for critical comments
on the manuscript and to Nancy Van Derveer and Mary
Milne for computer programming.
Requests for reprints should be sent to Sandra Lipsitz
Bern, Department of Psychology, Uris Hall, Cornell
University, Ithaca, New York 14853.
sizes the importance of identification with
the same-sex parent (e.g., Sears, Rau, &
Alpert, 1965); social learning theory em-
phasizes the explicit rewards and punish-
ments for behaving in sex-appropriate ways
as well as the vicarious learning that obser-

vation and modeling can provide (e.g., Mis-
chel, 1970); cognitive-developmental theory
emphasizes the ways in which children so-
cialize themselves once they have firmly la-
beled themselves as male or female (Kohl-
berg, 1966). (See Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974,
and Mussen, 1969, for reviews of these the-
ories.)
But what is it that is learned? Clearly the
developing child is learning content-specific
information, the particular behaviors and
attributes that are to be linked with sex. In
most societies, this is a diverse and sprawling
network of associations encompassing not
only those features directly related to male
and female persons, such as anatomy, re-
productive function, division of labor, and
personality attributes, but also features more
remotely or metaphorically related to sex,
such as the angularity or roundedness of an
abstract shape and the periodicity of the
moon. Indeed, there appears to be no other
dichotomy in human experience with as
many entities assimilated to it as the dis-
tinction between male and female.
But there is more. It is proposed here that
in addition to learning such content-specific
354
GENDER SCHEMA THEORY 355

information, the child is also learning to in-
voke this heterogeneous network of sex-re-
lated associations in order to evaluate and
assimilate new information. The child, in
short, learns to process information in terms
of an evolving gender schema, and it is this
gender-based schematic processing that con-
stitutes the heart of the present account of
sex typing.
The Gender Schema
A schema is a cognitive structure, a net-
work of associations that organizes and
guides an individual's perception. A schema
functions as an anticipatory structure, a
readiness to search for and to assimilate in-
coming information in schema-relevant
terms. Schematic processing is thus highly
selective and enables the individual to im-
pose structure and meaning onto the vast
array of incoming stimuli. Schema theory—
if it can be called a theory—construes per-
ception as a constructive process wherein
what is perceived is a product of the inter-
action between the incoming information
and the perceiver's preexisting schema
(Neisser, 1976; Taylor & Crocker, in press).
The readiness with which an individual in-
vokes one schema rather than another is re-
ferred to as the cognitive availability of the
schema (Nisbett & Ross, 1980; Tversky &
Kahneman, 1973, 1974).
Schematic processing can manifest itself
in a number of ways. For example, individ-

uals who have a generalized readiness to
process information in terms of a particular
schema should be able to encode schema-
consistent information quickly; they should
organize information in schema-relevant
categories; they should make highly differ-
entiated judgments along schema-relevant
dimensions; and when given a choice, they
should spontaneously choose to make dis-
criminations along those same dimensions.
In general, their perceptions and actions
should reflect the kinds of biases that schema-
directed selectivity would produce (Nisbett
& Ross, 1980; Taylor & Crocker, in press).
What gender schema theory proposes,
then, is that the phenomenon of sex typing
derives, in part, from gender-based sche-
matic processing, from a generalized readi-
ness to process information on the basis of
the sex-linked associations that constitute
the gender schema. In particular, the theory
proposes that sex typing results, in part, from
the fact that the self-concept itself gets as-
similated into the gender schema. As chil-
dren learn the contents of the society's gen-
der schema, they learn which attributes are
to be linked with their own sex and, hence,
with themselves. This does not simply entail
learning where each sex is supposed to stand
on each dimension or attribute—that boys
are to be strong and girls weak, for exam-
ple—but involves the deeper lesson that the
dimensions themselves are differentially ap-
plicable to the two sexes. Thus the strong-

weak dimension itself is absent from the
schema that is to be applied to girls just as
the dimension of nurturance is implicitly
omitted from the schema that is to be applied
to boys. Adults in the child's world rarely
notice or remark upon how strong a little girl
is becoming or how nurturant a little boy is
becoming, despite their readiness to note
precisely these attributes in the "appropri-
ate" sex. The child learns to apply this same
schematic selectivity to the self, to choose
from among the many possible dimensions
of human personality only that subset de-
fined as applicable to his or her own sex and
thereby eligible for organizing the diverse
contents of the self-concept. Thus do self-
concepts become sex typed, and thus do the
two sexes become, in their own eyes, not only
different in degree but different in kind.
Simultaneously, the child also learns to
evaluate his or her adequacy as a person in
terms of the gender schema, to match his or
her preferences, attitudes, behaviors, and
personal attributes against the prototypes
stored within it. The gender schema becomes
a prescriptive standard or guide (Kagan,
1964; Kohlberg, 1966), and self-esteem be-
comes its hostage. Here, then, enters an in-
ternalized motivational factor that prompts
the individual to regulate his or her behavior
so that it conforms to the culture's defini-
tions of maleness and femaleness. And that
sex-typed behavior, in turn, further rein-
forces the gender-based differentiation of
the self-concept through the individual's ob-

servation of his or her own behavior (cf.
Bern, 1972). Thus do cultural myths become
356 SANDRA LIPSITZ BEM
self-fulfilling prophecies, and thus do we ar-
rive at the phenomenon known as sex typing.
It is important to note that gender schema
theory is a theory of process, not content.
Because sex-typed individuals are seen as
processing information in terms of and con-
forming to whatever definitions of masculin-
ity and femininity the culture happens to
provide, it is the process of partitioning the
world into two equivalence classes on the
basis of the gender schema, not the contents
of the equivalence classes, that is central to
the theory. Accordingly, sex-typed individ-
uals are seen as differing from other indi-
viduals not primarily in terms of how much
masculinity or femininity they possess, but
in terms of whether or not their self-concepts
and behaviors are organized on the basis of
gender. Many non-sex-typed individuals may
describe themselves as, say, dominant or
nurturant without implicating the concepts
of masculinity or femininity. When sex-
typed individuals so describe themselves,
however, it is precisely the gender conno-
tations of the attributes or behaviors that are
presumed to be salient for them (cf. Bern
& Allen, 1974).

As a recent review by Taylor and Crocker
(in press) points out, the schema concept has
been a heuristically valuable, if ill-defined,
concept within psychology. The gender
schema is currently at a comparable level of
conceptual maturity. For example, although
it is likely that much of the information in
the gender schema consists of "fuzzy sets"
organized around male and female proto-
types (e.g., Cantor & Mischel, 1979; Rosch,
1975), the theory does not explicitly commit
itself with respect to the exact nature or
structure of the gender schema. The intent
of this article is not to specify the precise
structural representation of gender knowl-
edge nor even to establish that the gender
schema satisfies some well-defined set of nec-
essary and sufficient conditions for calling
it a schema. Rather, the purpose is to provide
a new perspective on the process of sex typ-
ing and to test a set of empirical propositions
deriving from that perspective.
The Gender-Based Schematic Processing
of the Sex-Typed Individual
As noted earlier, schematic processing can
manifest itself in a number of ways, and cog-
nitive psychologists have found studies of
memory a fruitful way of probing schema-
like structures. For example, if an individual
is spontaneously inclined to encode and or-
ganize information on the basis of some un-
derlying schema or network of associations,
then thinking of one schema-related item

should enhance the probability of thinking
of another. Thus, if the individual has been
given a number of items to memorize and
is then asked to recall them in whatever or-
der they happen to come to mind, the se-
quence of recall should reveal runs or clus-
ters of items that were linked in memory via
the schema (Bousfield & Bousfield, 1966;
Hamilton, Katz, & Leirer, 1980). In the fol-
lowing study, we used this clustering para-
digm to provide a first test of gender schema
theory. If sex-typed individuals do, in fact,
organize information in terms of the gender
schema, then they should show more clus-
tering of gender-relevant items in free recall
than non-sex-typed individuals.
Study 1: Gender Clustering in Free
Recall1
Method. Forty-eight male and 48 female Stanford
undergraduates were preselected for this study on the
basis of their scores on the Bern Sex Role Inventory
(BSRI; Bern, 1974), an instrument that identifies sex-
typed individuals on the basis of their self-concepts or
self-ratings of their personal attributes. The BSRI asks
the respondent to indicate on a 7-point scale how well
each of 60 attributes describes himself or herself. Al-
though it is not apparent to the respondent, 20 of the
attributes reflect the culture's definition of masculinity
(e.g., assertive) and 20 reflect its definition of femininity
(e.g., tender), with the remaining attributes serving as
filler. Each respondent receives both a masculinity and
a femininity score, and those who score above the me-
dian on the sex-congruent scale and below the median
on the sex-incongruent scale are defined as sex typed.

Those who show the reverse pattern are designated as
cross-sex typed; those who score above the median on
both scales are designated as androgynous; and those
who score below the median on both scales are desig-
nated as undifferentiated.2
' This study was conducted as part of a senior honors
thesis at Stanford University by Rachel Moran.
2 The BSRI was chosen as the selection instrument
because it has a number of features that make it es-
pecially appropriate for identifying sex-typed individu-
als. Most importantly, previous research has indicated
that individuals classified as sex typed by the BSRI are
sex typed in their behavior (Bern, 1975; Bern, Martyna,
& Watson, 1976) and are motivated to select sex-typed
activities (Bern & Lenney, 1976). In addition, the mas-
culine and feminine items on the BSRI were specifically
In the experimental session, subjects were presented
with a sequence of 61 words in random order. These
words included 16 proper names, 15 animal names, 15
verbs, and 15 articles of clothing. Half of the proper
names were male and half were female. One third of
the items within each of the other semantic categories
had been consistently rated by undergraduate judges as
masculine (e.g., gorilla, hurling, trousers), one third as
feminine (e.g., butterfly, blushing, bikini), and one third
as neutral (e.g., ant, stepping, sweater). The words were
presented on slides at 3-sec intervals, and subjects were
told that their recall would later be tested. Three seconds
after the presentation of the last word, they were given

a period of 8 min to write down on a sheet of paper as
many words as they could, in any order.
Results. It will be noted that subjects
could cluster words in recall both according
to the semantic categories and according to
gender. The particular list of words recalled
by each subject was scored for gender clus-
tering by counting the number of sequential
pairs that belonged to the same gender. In-
trusions—words "recalled" that had not
been on the stimulus list—were categorized
by two independent judges and included in
the clustering computation. Two types of
sequential pairs were counted: gender clus-
tering within semantic category (e.g., go-
rilla/eagle or bikini/nylons) and gender clus-
tering across semantic categories (e.g., hurl-
ing/Daniel or butterfly/dress). In order to
control for the total number of items recalled
as well as for the extent of an individual's
category clustering, the amount of gender
clustering within and across semantic cate-
gories was expressed as the percentage of
category and noncategory pairs, respec-
tively, that were clustered on the basis of
gender. The mean of these two percentages
defined the total amount of an individual's
gender clustering.
The hypothesis that sex-typed individuals
would show the most gender clustering was
tested by means of a planned comparison
selected so as to reflect the definitions of sex appropri-
ateness held by American society at large (Bern, 1974,

1979). In principle, however, sex-typed individuals could
have been selected by means of any instrument or pro-
cedure that assesses the extent to which one's self-con-
cept and/or behavior matches the culture's definitions
of masculinity and femininity, and studies using other
selection procedures will be described below. Similarly,
the BSRI itself can be scored in several alternate ways
(e.g., Bern, 1977; Orlofsky, Aslin, & Ginsburg, 1977).
For research purposes in which group data are analyzed,
it seems unlikely that the differences among the various
scoring systems would be of much consequence.
35 -r-
30 --
25 --
Sex- Cross- Androg- Undiffer-
Typed Sex- ynous entiated
Typed
Figure 1. Mean percentage of sequential pairs within
and across categories clustered on the basis of gender
by sex-typed, cross-sex-typed, androgynous, and undif-
ferentiated subjects.
contrasting the gender clustering of sex-
typed subjects with the gender clustering of
cross-sex-typed, androgynous, and undiffer-
entiated subjects combined. Additional
planned comparisons tested whether cross-
sex-typed subjects differed significantly from
androgynous and undifferentiated subjects
combined and whether androgynous and un-

differentiated subjects differed significantly
from one another. The results are presented
in Figure 1. Because there were no main
effects or interactions on this measure in-
volving sex, the results for male and female
subjects have been combined.
As can be seen in Figure 1, sex-typed sub-
jects clustered a significantly higher per-
centage of words on the basis of gender than
the other three groups, f(88) = 2.01,
p < .025, one-tailed. There were no signifi-
cant differences among the groups in the
amount of category clustering, F(3, 88) < 1,
ns. As can also be seen in Figure 1, cross-
sex-typed subjects did not differ significantly
from androgynous or undifferentiated sub-
jects, f(88) = 1.07, ns; and androgynous and
undifferentiated subjects did not differ sig-
nificantly from one another, f(88) < 1, ns.
Although there were no sex differences in
the total amount of gender clustering, sex-
typed males differed from other males pri-
marily in the amount of gender clustering
within semantic category, male /(8 8) = 2.51,
p < .01, one-tailed; female f(88) < i, ns
whereas sex-typed females differed from
other females primarily in the amount of
gender clustering across semantic categories,
female f(88) = 2.30, p < .025, one-tailed;
male ?(88) < 1, ns.

In addition to this clustering study, there
are a number of other memory studies al-
ready in the literature that are also consis-
tent with gender schema theory's major
proposition that sex-typed individuals en-
gage in gender-based schematic processing
more than do non-sex-typed individuals. In
one such study, for example, Kail and Levine
(1976) selected 7- and 10-year-old girls who
had been identified as sex-typed or non-sex-
typed on the basis of toy preferences and
asked them to recall words that had been
presented to them immediately before a brief
distractor task. This procedure was repeated
over several trials. Previous research in
short-term memory has demonstrated that
recall declines over trials if all of the stim-
ulus words are members of a single category
(e.g., all color names or all spelled-out num-
bers) but that recall improves again follow-
ing a shift from one category to another—
a phenomenon known as release from proac-
tive inhibition (Wickens, 1972). This im-
provement in performance is taken as evi-
dence that the individual has, corre-
spondingly, shifted his or her encoding
categories for the stimulus words. Kail and
Levine reasoned that sex-typed individuals
should show this effect when stimulus words
shifted from masculine to feminine or vice
versa, whereas non-sex-typed individuals
should be relatively less sensitive to this shift
in gender connotation and hence should fail
to show as much release from proactive in-
hibition. Their results supported this hy-

pothesis.
In a second memory study with children,
Liben and Signorella (1980) found that 6-,
7-, and 8-year-old children with highly ste-
reotyped views of sex-appropriate behavior
were significantly more likely than less ste-
reotyped children to remember pictures that
were consistent with the culture's gender ste-
reotypes. And, in a study with college stu-
dents using the BSRI, Taylor (in press)
found that when sex-typed subjects were
asked to recall and identify "who said what"
after listening to a group discussion, they
were more likely than androgynous subjects
to make within-sex rather than cross-sex er-
rors, that is, to confuse women with women
and men with men.
Studies using other paradigms have also
yielded supporting results. For example, it
was suggested earlier than an individual who
engages in schematic processing should make
highly differentiated judgments along
schema-relevant dimensions and when given
the opportunity should spontaneously choose
to make discriminations along these same
dimensions. In another study with college
students using the BSRI, sex-typed subjects
made significantly more differentiated judg-
ments of masculinity-femininity than did
androgynous subjects when rating hand-
writing samples, and they also weighted the
dimension of masculinity—femininity more
heavily than did androgynous subjects when

making similarity judgments of these sam-
ples (Lippa, 1977). And finally, subjects
identified as sex-typed on the BSRI differ-
entiated between male and female stimulus
persons significantly more than did androg-
ynous subjects when asked to segment each
person's videotaped sequence of behaviors
into units that seemed natural and mean-
ingful to them (Deaux & Major, 1977).
Although these several studies support the
proposition that sex-typed individuals pro-
cess gender-relevant information in terms of
a gender schema, they do not address the
critical issue of whether the self-concept it-
self gets assimilated to the schema. Accord-
ingly, the following study was designed to
demonstrate that sex-typed individuals or-
ganize their self-concepts in terms of the sex-
linked associations that constitute the gender
schema.
Study 2: Gender-Schematic Processing of
the Self-Concept3
When describing themselves on the BSRI,
sex-typed individuals by definition rate sex-
congruent attributes as more self-descriptive
than sex-incongruent attributes. But what
3 This study was completed as part of a doctoral dis-
sertation at Stanford University by Brenda Girvin. The
assistance of Virginia Coles, Colombus Cooper, Tim
Reagan, and Michael Wilkins is gratefully acknowl-
edged.

process do sex-typed individuals go through
when deciding that a particular attribute is
or is not self-descriptive? Gender schema
theory implies that they may simply "look
up" the attribute in the gender schema and
answer in the affirmative if the attribute is
sex-congruent; that is, they do not go through
the time-consuming process of recruiting
behavioral evidence from memory and then
judging whether the evidence warrants an
affirmative answer. This implies that sex-
typed individuals ought to be faster than
non-sex-typed individuals when they make
schema-consistent judgments, such as, that
a sex-congruent attribute is self-descriptive
or that a sex-incongruent attribute is not.
Conversely, sex-typed individuals ought to
be slower than non-sex-typed individuals in
those few instances when they make schema-
inconsistent judgments, such as, that a sex-
congruent attribute is not self-descriptive or
that a sex-incongruent attribute is (Markus,
1977; Taylor & Crocker, in press).
This reasoning was tested in a doctoral
dissertation on self-schemata by Girvin
(1978), who sought the same kind of evi-
dence for the schematic processing of "self
information on the gender dimension that
had previously been found on the indepen-
dence-dependence dimension by Markus
(1977). The measure most directly relevant

here was the individual's response latency
when asked to make a dichotomous me/not
me judgment about each of the 60 attributes
on the BSRI itself.4
Method. Forty-eight male and 48 female Stanford
undergraduates were preselected on the basis of a me-
dian split on the BSRI as sex typed, cross-sex typed,
androgynous, or undifferentiated. During an individual
experimental session, the 60 attributes from the BSRI
were projected on a screen one at a time and the subject
was requested to push one of two buttons, "ME" or "NOT
ME," to indicate whether the attribute was self-descrip-
tive. The subject's response latency was recorded for
each judgment.
Results. For purposes of this discussion,
two measures of gender-schematic process-
ing were computed for each subject, the
mean latency of schema-consistent judg-
ments (sex-congruent ME and sex-incon-
gruent NOT ME) and the mean latency of
schema-inconsistent judgments (sex-con-
gruent NOT ME and sex-incongruent ME). In
order to control for individual differences in
general response latency, both measures
were expressed as difference scores between
these schema-relevant latencies and the sub-
ject's mean latency for the sex-neutral at-
tributes on the BSRI. There were no overall
differences among the sex types in their re-
sponse latencies to the neutral attributes
themselves, F(3, 88) < 1, ns.
The hypothesis that sex-typed subjects

would show the most gender-schematic pro-
cessing was tested by means of a planned
comparison contrasting sex-typed subjects
with cross-sex-typed, androgynous, and un-
differentiated subjects combined. Addi-
tional orthogonal planned comparisons tested
whether cross-sex-typed subjects differed
significantly from androgynous and undif-
ferentiated subjects combined and also
whether androgynous and undifferentiated
subjects differed significantly from one an-
other. The results for both schema-consistent
and schema-inconsistent judgments are pre-
sented in Figure 2. Positive scores signify
faster responding for schema-relevant than
for neutral judgments; negative scores sig-
nify slower responding. Because there were
no main effects or interactions involving sex,
the results for male and female subjects have
been combined.
As can be seen, sex-typed subjects were,
in fact, significantly faster than the other
three groups when making schema-consis-
tent judgments about themselves, f(88) =
5.13,/>< .001, one-tailed; and they were also
significantly slower than the others when
making schema-inconsistent judgments,
*(83) = 2.97, p < .005, one-tailed. These
results support the central hypothesis of gen-
der schema theory that sex typing is accom-
panied by a readiness to process information
about the self in terms of the gender schema,
and they indicate that the attributes on the
BSRI are themselves processed in this fash-
ion.5

4 More recently, Markus and her colleagues have
themselves begun to investigate the schematic process-
ing of "self information related to gender (Markus,
Crane, Bernstein, & Salidi, in press). Their preliminary
findings appear to be consistent with gender schema the-
ory in many respects.
5 The same pattern of significant results is obtained
when the schema-consistent and schema-inconsistent
judgments themselves are analyzed before converting
them into difference scores. Moreover, the main effect
of sex type is significant in a two-way analysis of vari-
ance, using either the judgments themselves or the dif-
Schema-Inconsistent
Judgments
Sex- Cross- Androg- Undiffer- Sex-
Typed Sex- ynous entiated Typed
Typed
Cross- Androg- Undiffer-
Sex- ynous entiated
Typed
Figure 2. Gender-schematic processing in response latencies for
schema-consistent and schema-incon-
sistent judgments by sex-typed, cross-sex-typed, androgynous,
and undifferentiated subjects.

The data in Figure 2 also explicitly raise
a question about cross-sex-typed individuals.
Like sex-typed subjects, cross-sex-typed sub-
jects partition the attributes on the BSRI
into gender categories, but they rate the sex-
incongruent set as more self-descriptive. Do
they invoke a gender schema to process self-
relevant information or not? If they do, then
their results should be the mirror image of
the sex-typed subjects' results. That is, they
should reach their judgments slowly in those
few instances when they decide that sex-con-
gruent attributes are self-descriptive or that
sex-incongruent attributes are not (the
schema-consistent judgments), and con-
versely, they should reach their judgments
quickly in these modal instances when they
decide that sex-congruent attributes are not
ference scores. And finally, although ME judgments have
shorter latencies overall than NOT ME judgments for all
subjects, this difference is not artifactually producing
either the short latencies of sex-typed subjects when they
make schema-consistent judgments nor the long laten-
cies when they make schema-inconsistent judgments. In
fact, the obtained differences among the groups in their
proportions of ME and NOT ME judgments work against
the hypothesis.
self-descriptive or that sex-incongruent at-
tributes are (the schema-inconsistent judg-
ments). Unfortunately the data in Figure 2
are mixed. In the orthogonal planned com-
parison, cross-sex-typed subjects are signif-
icantly different from androgynous and
undifferentiated subjects when making

schema-consistent judgments about the self,
?(88) = 3.17, p<.0, two-tailed, but not
when making schema-inconsistent judg-
ments, f(83)=1.64, ns. The question thus
remains unanswered, although it should be
recalled that in the clustering study, cross-
sex-typed subjects displayed the least amount
of gender clustering of all the groups, im-
plying that they are not inclined to process
information in terms of a …
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Gender Inequality in Housework Across 20 European Nations:
Lessons from Gender Stratification Theories
Judith Treas1 & Tsuio Tai2
Published online: 9 January 2016
# Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016
Abstract The gendered division of housework is the linchpin
in a broader system of gender inequality. Consistent with
pioneering feminist theories of gender stratification, this
cross-national study demonstrates this approach with multi-
level models that consider individual as well as cultural and
structural variables that are associated with the absolute time
men and women spend doing housework. Building on re-
search relating national gender ideology to the husband-wife
shares of housework, this paper asks how gender ideology
relates to the absolute amount of time that men and women
spend doing housework. Complementing this cultural indica-
tor, the paper introduces a previously neglected constraint on
domestic practices, asking whether the quality of a country’s

housing stock predicts weekly hours in housework. Drawing
on 2012 International Social Survey Program data for 20
European countries, we study nationally representative sam-
ples totaling 7733 respondents who were ages 18–65 and le-
gally married, cohabiting, or in civil partnerships. Even con-
trolling for individual-level covariates, results confirm that
men and women perform less housework in countries where
public opinion supports gender equality. In countries with
more substandard housing, however, women, but not men,
spend more time in housework than they do elsewhere.
Keywords Housework . Gender inequality . Housing
quality . Attitudes . Feminist theory . Cross-national research
Introduction
Housework continues to be stereotyped as largely women’s
work (Tai and Treas 2013). In spite of the rise in their labor
force participation, women still do most of the household la-
bor, even in 13 European countries, such as Norway and the
UK, where gender egalitarian values receive general support
(Apparala et al. 2003). Considering the UK and three English
heritage countries, together with five countries from
Scandinavia and Continental Europe, Sayer (2010) document-
ed substantial country-to-country differences in how much
time women and men spend doing housework. Given that
household labor perpetuates gender inequality (Chafetz
1991), this paper builds on feminist theorizing on gender strat-
ification. Of broad international interest, this cross-national
research on housework evaluates how the cultural and struc-
tural context of European nations shapes the absolute time that
women and men spend in household labor.
This study of household labor is inspired by the second
wave feminist perspective that calls attention to the broad
social institutions sustaining gender inequality (Budig 2004).

The paper draws on recent cross-national scholarship on the
key contextual influences that are associated with the gen-
dered division of work in the home (Treas and Lui 2013). In
sociology, pioneering theorizing by feminists describes gen-
der stratification as the product of an integrated, multi-level
system of domination operating at the individual, household,
and societal levels (Blumberg 1984; Chafetz 1991). Based on
this insight, multi-level models have analyzed how country-
level factors, together with the characteristics of individuals,
are associated with the division of housework between men
* Judith Treas
[email protected]
Tsuio Tai
[email protected]
1 Department of Sociology, University of California-Irvine,
Social
Science Building 3151A, Irvine, CA 92697, USA
2 Department of Sociology, National Taipei University, Social
Science
Building, No. 151 University Road, San Shia, Taipei 237,
Taiwan
Sex Roles (2016) 74:495–511
DOI 10.1007/s11199-015-0575-9
http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s11199-015-
0575-9&domain=pdf
and women (Fuwa 2004; Hook 2010). At the individual-level,
predictors are used to explain who does the housework–the
relative resources that partners bring to bargaining over house-
work, their time available for household chores, their attitudes
toward women’s and men’s appropriate activities, and the

housework their situation demands (Coltrane 2000; Geist
2005; Lachance-Grzela and Bouchard 2010). At the societal
level, research traces participation in housework to cultural
understandings and related social structures (Bergh 2007).
For example, examining 24 industrialized countries (e.g.,
U.S., Australia, Japan, Israel, Germany, Hungary, Norway),
Fuwa (2004) concludes that cultural beliefs supporting tradi-
tional gender roles for men and women are associated with a
higher share of housework done by women. Geist (2005)
determined that couples in so-called conservative welfare
states (e.g., Austria) where policies favored one-
breadwinner families were less likely to share housework
than in market-oriented, liberal welfare states (e.g., U.S.)
or Nordic social democratic ones (e.g., Sweden), where
policies were either more neutral or favorable toward
two-earner families. Recognizing culture and structure as
complementary explanations, this paper considers both as
critical aspects of the multiple and interconnected forces
that buttress gender inequality by sustaining taken-for-
granted domestic practices (Treas and Lui 2013).
Using 2012 data on men and women in 20 European coun-
tries from the International Social Survey Program (ISSP)
(GESIS 2012), we build on feminist thinking about house-
work that emphasizes the link between micro-level gender
inequality and country-level contextual factors (Cooke
2011). An investigation of individual and household charac-
teristics (working hours, attitudes, partners’ relative incomes,
household income, number of children, education, and age)
sets the stage for analyses that ask how cultural beliefs and
structural constraints of countries are associated with the time
men and women spend doing housework. The paper makes
two contributions. First, it extends previous research on how a
country’s gender ideology relates to the husband-wife division
of housework to analyze the implications of an egalitarian
ideology for the absolute time that men and women spend

doing housework. Specifically, the expectation is that men
and women will spend less time in housework in societies
where public opinion favors more egalitarian gender roles
(H1). Second, the paper tests the association of housework
time with a previously unexplored country characteristic, the
quality of housing stock that is argued to affect housework
demands. That is, men and women in countries with poorer
housing quality are hypothesized to spend more time doing
housework than their counterparts elsewhere (H2).
Introducing the novel housing explanation for time spent on
housework, the paper offers a check on the robustness of the
gender ideology association with housework practices. It also
provides an acknowledgement of the multifaceted complexity
which feminist theory attributes to the maintenance of gender
inequality and oppression.
Background
In setting the research context, this paper begins with a brief
description of the challenge that household labor poses to
gender equality before moving to feminist theories that inform
the problem. These theories identify gender domination as a
multi-faceted system sustained at multiple levels in the social
order. We describe key structural and cultural characteristics
that researchers on housework have identified with countries,
as well as the concepts informing their analyses of individual
respondents. Drawing on prior research, we elaborate on the
rationale for our testable hypotheses. They anticipate that less
time will be devoted to housework in countries with more
gender egalitarian ideologies and higher quality housing
stock. Lastly, we situate our study in terms of different re-
search designs that have been used to advance cross-national
understanding of housework.
Contributions of Feminist Theories

Women have come a long way toward realizing the aspira-
tions of trail-blazing liberal feminists, such as the 18th
Century British writer, Mary Wollstonecraft, who argued that
gender inequality would end if women received the same ed-
ucation as men. As Budig (2004) describes in an overview of
developments in feminist theory, liberal feminism advocated
removing legal and social barriers to women’s access to higher
education and employment (Budig 2004). Women now sur-
pass men in higher education enrollment and graduation in a
majority of the world’s nations (McDaniel 2012).
Furthermore, an ambitious analysis of eight Western
European countries, plus the U.S. and Japan, documents the
decline in gender segregation for higher status, non-manual
occupations (Charles and Grusky 2004). However, as pointed
out so memorably in a feminist classic, The Second Shift
(Hochschild and Machung 1989), women’s progress in the
household has lagged their gains in the workplace. Despite
the rise in women’s labor force participation, women around
the globe continue to do the large share of housework (Treas
and Drobnič 2010). In country after country, what change has
occurred in the gendered division of household work has
mostly been due to women, who have abandoned more house-
work than men have taken on (Bianchi et al. 2006; Sayer
2010).
Contemporary research on household labor is indebted to
feminist thinking linking the circumstances of individual
women to the social institutions of a society. Acker’s (1973)
pioneering critique pointed out the failure of sociological the-
ories of social stratification to acknowledge gender as a critical
dimension of differentiation and inequality. Arguing that the
496 Sex Roles (2016) 74:495–511

position of women was highly relevant to the structure of the
larger social system, Acker invited analyses linking women’s
micro-level disadvantages to broader social structures. With
the rise of second wave feminism, Marxist feminists empha-
sized broad societal forces of capitalism and patriarchy that
worked against women in the struggle for equality in the
household (Hartmann 1981). In setting forth a general theory
of gender stratification, Blumberg (1984) described gender
inequality as being sustained by an integrated system of male
domination at all levels of society–micro, meso, and macro.
Feminists in the historical-comparative tradition advanced this
perspective by theorizing the interplay of state welfare ap-
proaches with systems of gender, work, and caring (Orloff
1993; Sainsbury 1996). Among European countries, for in-
stance, Pfau-Effinger (2010) identifies several national pat-
terns of child care, such as a high reliance on public care where
full-time employment of mothers with young children is com-
mon. This is the case not only for Finland and France, but also
for the former East Germany where the pattern carries over
from the socialist period despite the limited child care charac-
terizing the rest of Germany.
Pointing to the gender-based division of labor as the basis
for gender stratification, Chafetz (1991) attributed the perpet-
uation of women’s disadvantage to both structural and cultural
forces that reinforce one another at different levels. To take
one example, women’s housework limits their paid employ-
ment, which leaves men to accrue power from the economic
and political sectors; being more highly valued than the re-
wards of the household sector, these gains from public en-
gagement reinforce patriarchal authority in the home. The
power from their structural positions allows men to define
cultural gender ideologies that legitimate inequality and main-
tain gender differentiation. Behavior is influenced by gender
ideologies internalized via socialization beginning early in life

(Weitzman 1979). This feminist approach points toward ana-
lyzing micro-level behavior, such as housework, not only in
terms of micro-level characteristics of individuals, but also in
terms of structural constraints and cultural ideologies at the
societal level.
Factors Associated with Gendered Housework Practices
Micro-level empirical studies quickly consolidated around a
few dominant theories. Reviews of the research literature on
Europe, the U.S., and other European heritage countries (e.g.,
Australia) have identified a proven set of individual-level var-
iables predicting the division of housework between husbands
and wives (Coltrane 2000; Lachance-Grzela and Bouchard
2010). Micro-level social interaction was the foundation for
the imaginative feminist argument that gender was created in
the doing. Gender identities were acted out in intimate, face-
to-face interactions with women doing and men eschewing
housework (West and Zimmerman 1987). Four other
theoretical approaches motivated micro-level research on cou-
ples’ housework with representative sample surveys in U.S.
and Europe. 1) Consistent with a gender-neutral time
availability proposition, the partner who works fewer hours
for pay spends more time in housework on account of having
more free time to do chores (Bianchi et al. 2000). 2) Following
power and exchange theories (Emerson 1976), the greater the
relative resources (e.g., income) a partner brings to bargaining
over household labor, the less housework that partner per-
forms (Knudsen and Waerness 2008; Mannino and Deutsch
2007). 3) The demand-capability model (Coverman 1985)
points to household demands–gauged by the presence of chil-
dren in Australia (Baxter et al. 2008) or the larger size of the
Dutch home (van der Lippe et al. 2004)–as being associated
with greater work done around the home. The greater the
household’s need for housework, the more housework will

be carried out. 4) Mixing gender socialization theories with
social psychology (Eccles et al. 2000), another framework
stresses that men’s and women’s gender attitudes influence
their housework, as Cunningham (2001) has shown for the
U.S.
Micro-level research often focused on a single country and
analyzed husbands’ and wives’ relative shares of housework.
As reported for countries as different as the U.S. (Cunningham
2005) and Sweden (Evertsson 2014), men with less traditional
views of gender did a larger share of the household chores
than other men, but women with less traditional attitudes did a
smaller share of housework than other women. Less is known
about how gender attitudes relate to the absolute hours men
and women spend in housework, if only because analyses of
housework time often relied on time use studies that did not
include attitude variables (Sayer 2010).
Macro-level empirical studies have addressed many differ-
ent concerns. One tradition emphasizing culture traces country
differences in the gendered organization of family life to pub-
lic opinion regarding the norms for men’s and women’s ap-
propriate roles (Diefenbach 2002; Fuwa 2004;) or to the cul-
tural template offered by a legacy of gender conservative
Catholicism versus Protestantism (Morgan 2006). The social
policies of various countries have been shown to both reflect
and reinforce the cultural assumptions about gender that un-
derpin men’s and women’s paid and unpaid work (Cooke
2011). Some types of state welfare regimes influence house-
work by privileging certain domestic arrangements, such as
the male breadwinner/female homemaker family advantaged
by conservative welfare states such as Austria (Geist 2005).
Particular policies, such as parental leave and protections
against employment discrimination, have been shown to be
associated with greater gender parity in household labor over
34, largely European countries (Fuwa and Cohen 2007).

When women’s attainments are considered, countries like
Denmark where women are more empowered in public life
(as measured by income, occupation or political
Sex Roles (2016) 74:495–511 497
representation) also show greater gender equality in couples’
housework (Ruppanner 2010). To generalize from a rich liter-
ature, research on the macro-level factors associated with
household labor supports the feminist proposition that there
are many, highly inter-related influences on gender inequality.
Theorizing Key Country Characteristics
Building on prior empirical research on housework and on
feminist theorizing about the multiple and inter-related origins
of gendered practices, this paper focuses on two country-level
characteristics while controlling for respondent characteristics
reported to influence participation in housework. A country’s
gender ideology is expected to relate to absolute time spent in
housework. The quality of a country’s housing stock, a vari-
able new to the literature, is also expected to relate to house-
work time.
Gender Ideology as Cultural Context
The idea that cultural beliefs about gender influence women’s
and men’s participation in housework is well-established
(Lachance-Grzela and Bouchard 2010). Through gender role
socialization (Eccles et al. 2000; Weitzman 1979), beliefs
about gender specialization are learned and internalized by
individuals who express their gender attitudes in surveys
(Cunningham 2001). Because attitudes shape personal prefer-
ences, they influence how individuals act.

Gender egalitarian beliefs reject essentialism. The essen-
tialist system of ideas holds that the differences between
men and women have biological and psychological bases
and that different activities are, therefore, right and natural
(Budig 2004). This ideology is consistent with a household
Bdivision of paid work and family responsibilities that is based
on the notion of separate spheres^ for men and women (Davis
and Greenstein 2009, p. 96). Summarizing 20 years of re-
search on the household division of labor in heterosexual cou-
ples, Davis and Greenstein (2009, p. 96) observe that Bthe
proportion of housework performed by the woman is related
to the woman’s ideology, the man’s ideology, or both.^ For 24
largely European and North American countries, Diefenbach
(2002) considers a country-specific measure of gender culture
based on the mean of respondents’ responses to the item, A
man’s job is to earn the money; A woman’s job is to look after
the home and family. The more supportive the culture is of
these gender differences, the less equal the household division
of labor is found to be. Fuwa (2004) uses a multi-item survey
measure of gender ideology. She considers 22 European coun-
tries, plus Australia, Canada, Israel, Japan and the U.S. The
nations where respondents, on average, voice stronger support
for gender egalitarian norms also display greater housework
parity between husbands and wives. Importantly, the results
for country-level gender ideology are not just tapping
individual beliefs about gender. In Fuwa’s study, macro-level
public opinion is statistically significant even when
individual-level attitudes are controlled. In fact, there is evi-
dence that individual attitudes have little influence over the
division of household labor in Sweden, where public support
for gender equality is particularly high (Aboim 2010). As this
shows, the climate of public opinion is an influential cultural
context, regardless of individual gender attitudes or personal
preferences for behavior.

Although cultural gender ideology is known to matter for
housework (Davis and Greenstein 2009), research to date has
emphasized its relation to the partners’ relative shares of
housework, not to its absolute volume. Measuring the couple’s
division of housework or shares speaks to the degree of gender
parity in the household. Regardless of whether the chores are
divided equally or not, however, most people would agree that
the sheer volume of housework may constitute an oppressive
force. Even if men and women share domestic responsibilities
equally, doing many hours of housework weekly is a burden
meriting attention.
This paper contributes to the literature by analyzing the
association of country-level gender ideology with the volume
of housework–the weekly hours that women and men spend
doing housework. We hypothesize that men and women will
spend less time in housework in societies where public opinion
favors more egalitarian gender roles (H1). Controlling for
individual attitudes, both genders are expected to do less
housework if they live in a country with lower cultural expec-
tations for traditional female housewifery. These expectations
are apt to be associated with lower housekeeping standards in
the culture. Egalitarian ideas about gender likely make
outsourcing of housework to paid workers more culturally
acceptable. Weaker norms linking women to the home might
also imply a culture where the sorts of domestic activities
traditionally done by homemakers are not valued for either
women or men. By contrast to housekeeping, in Europe,
North America, and Australia, both mothers and fathers are
spending more time doing child care, a time use change relat-
ed to the greater cultural value placed on parent-child interac-
tion today (Gauthier et al. 2004). In our study, both men and
women are hypothesized to spend less time in housework
where a gender egalitarian ideology rejects separate roles for
men and women.

Information Systems for Business and Beyond David .docx

Information Systems for Business and Beyond David .docx

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

Similar to Information Systems for Business and Beyond David .docx

Similar to Information Systems for Business and Beyond David .docx (15)

More from annettsparrow

More from annettsparrow (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Information Systems for Business and Beyond David .docx