Transcript Slide 1

Women & Relationships
Friendship
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Friendship
 Women have often been portrayed as incapable of
true friendship
 However, many female friendships are deep,
intimate, and enduring
 Females emphasize self-disclosure, emotional
closeness, and empathy
 Central theme in female relationships is talking
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Friendship con’t ...
Girls
Boys
 even in early childhood,
girls talk and share
stories
 more likely to spend
time together in active
play
 tend to develop fewer,
more intimate,
friendships
 more likely to have large
groups of friends with
whom they DO, rather
than talk
 spend more time talking
rather than playing
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Childhood
 Parents & caregivers
 Siblings
 Other children
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Childhood con’t ...
 Friendships formed in
childhood can be
fleeting
 Competition
 Relocation
 Adult interference
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Friendship con’t ...
 Women’s friendships change over the course of their
lives
 Dating
 Marriage
 Children
 Career
 Divorce
 Widowhood
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Adolescence
 Relationships can be
more enduring
 Shared interests,
activities
 Competition can
intensify
 Dating
 Parental interference
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Adulthood
 Less competitive
 e.g., if in a romantic relationship spend more time
with couples
 More enduring
 e.g., friendships that survived adolescence, more
experience with relationships
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 Sex & the City
 Enduring
 Non-competitive
 30s
 Friends
 Enduring
 Slightly
competitive
 20s
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Friendship? Or something else?
 Proximity
 Convenience
 Familiarity
 What makes it a “real” friendship?
The Opposite Sex
 Friendships
 ARTICLE: Can Men and Women Be Friends?
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Family Structure
 What happened to “married with children”?
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This family pattern is on the decline
Birth rates (worldwide) have dropped
Fewer people are getting married
In developed countries, average age of marriage is 26-27
Divorce is more likely than in previous decades (40 - 50%)
 What are the implications of these trends?
Implications
 Families are smaller
 Relationships are more complex (e.g., unmarried or
divorced parents)
 More pressure for each family member to be a “generalist”
rather than a “specialist” (e.g., mother might not stay
home, cook, clean)
The Couple Bond: Love
 Beginning in adolescence, much energy is invested in
forming couple bonds
 Important for meeting our needs for intimacy and
companionship; also provide the basis for the formation of
families
 Researchers suggest that people of any age, ethnic
group, culture, or gender are capable of passionate
romantic love: the intense feeling of longing for union
with another person that can dominate one’s emotions
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The Trend toward Love
 “If someone had all of the qualities you would want in a
mate but you were not in love with that person, would you
marry him/her?”
 Several decades ago, more men than women would say
“no”. This gender difference has now disappeared. Why?
Costs & Benefits
Benefits: companionship, happiness, feeling loved, loving
another
 Women
 Men
 Benefits: intimacy, selfgrowth, self-understanding,
self-esteem
 Benefits: sexual satisfaction
 Costs: loss of identity, loss of
innocence
 Costs: monetary expense of
dating
Styles of Love
 Women: more pragmatic (practical, compatibility-centred)
and friendship oriented
 Men: more likely to experience love as playfulness,
without too much intensity or serious commitment
 These gender differences seem to transcend sexual
orientation
Attachment & Autonomy
 The stereotype: Women want more closeness; Men want
more independence
 The reality: men and women place equal value on these
two needs
 When differences are found, they tend to be
counterstereotypic: women being more concerned than
men about maintaining their independence
Relationship Quality
 Cohabiting heterosexual couples have the lowest scores
for ‘love for partner’ and ‘relationship satisfaction’ (when
compared to married heterosexual, gay, and lesbian
couples)
 Married couples report the most barriers to leaving a
relationship; Cohabiting couples report the fewest
 For all types of couples, relationship satisfaction is linked
to seeing few good alternatives to the relationship, high
shared decision making, and few beliefs that disagreement
is bad for the relationship
Power, Influence, & Equality
 Maintaining an intimate relationship involves making
decisions, compromises, and taking into consideration the
needs and preferences of both partners
 It is inevitable, therefore, that issues of power, influence,
and equality play a part in how the relationship functions
and in the couple’s satisfaction with the relationship
 For most Western couples, an equal balance of power is
ideal
 Such equality is frequently lacking
Power, Influence, & Equality
 An imbalance of power tends to be associated with one
partner being more emotionally invested in the relationship
and differences in access to resources (education,
employment, desirable alternatives to the relationship)
 Psychological theories of interpersonal power focus on
equity, the principle of least interest, and resources as
bases of power
Equity & The Principle of Least
Interest
 When couples evaluate their relationships, they often focus
on fairness
 Equity: the balance between contributions to and benefits
from the relationship (almost like a ratio)
 Those who feel a relationship is equitable tend to feel
satisfied (not surprisingly)
Self Interest
 Attitudes about how the contributions and benefits should
be weighted are influenced by self-interest, culture, and
peer attitudes and expectations
 e.g., in a social environment that favours traditional gender
roles, the preceding examples seem fair; as our society
becomes “less traditional”, these arrangements are often
challenged
 In relatively equal income couples, women who assume far
more domestic duties still report equity and satisfaction in
the relationships
Investment
 When we invest time, money, energy in a relationship, we don’t want to
give it up without a fight
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Social network may seem irreplaceable
Economic security/stability
Comfort
Feeling loved/needed
 The person who has the lowest emotional investment, who values the
benefits of the relationship least, is more likely to be the dominant one
and is more likely to leave the relationship. The other partner often
senses this and makes accommodations and compromises in hopes of
keeping the relationship.
Resources
 When one person tries to influence another to engage in a
particular behaviour/make a particular decision, the other
person has to be given a reason to comply
 Reasons for compliance:
 Love
 The other person complied with your wishes last time
 Fear of anger or tension in the relationship
 Promise of reward
 Irrefutable argument
Resources
 One of the fundamental ideas in the social psychology of
interpersonal power is that power is based on control of
resources
 Therefore, on one person’s ability to affect what happens
to the other person
 e.g., the person who makes more money might spend
more money than the other person (without justification or
discussion) or withhold income at will (to control the
person/assert dominance)
BUT …
 When the woman makes more money, she does not
necessarily have more power in the relationship
 In most societies, where men are seen to have a
legitimate claim to authority in the family, they will still hold
more power in a relationship than women—regardless of
who has the financial resources
The Power Shift
 Power may shift back and forth between partners
at different times and in different situations
 Examples?
Family & Parenthood
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Families: All Shapes & Sizes
 The notion of a family as something that is
contained in a household is too narrow; yet,
most statistics about families are based on this
particular group
Mothers & Children
 A Brazilian village: women respond to each pregnancy as
the possibility of a new life but also the possibility of a new
death
 Many women bear more than a dozen children and it is
not uncommon for many of the infants to die before
their first birthdays
 Mothers often will not bond with, or even name, the
child until s/he is over a year old
 If an infant is sickly, they may withhold food to hasten
death
Mothers & Children
 Pre-Communist China: common for mothers to abandon infants that
they did not think could survive
 Viewed as a sacrifice that would allow the survival of other family
members
 Those who believe in a “natural” attachment between mother and child
are disturbed by such stories
 North American stereotypes about motherhood (e.g., instant powerful
bond between mother and child)
 When an infant is ill and unlikely to survive, vast medical resources
are still devoted to caring for the child
 Mothers who abandon or kill their children face serious criminal
charges
Mothers & Children
 Evolutionary theorists argue that there is nothing
“unnatural” about mothers “cutting their losses” when it
appears that an infant will not survive
 Rather, this response is part of our evolutionary heritage
(e.g., survival of the fittest)
Motherhood
 Is not an automatic set of feelings and behaviours that are
switched on by a pregnancy and birth of a baby. It is an
experience that is profoundly shaped by social context and
culture.
 Other North American stereotypes:
 Ultimate fulfillment of feminine roles
 Mothers should be warm, nurturing, selfless, and
sacrifice their own needs (repeatedly) to ensure the
welfare of their children
 When women fail to meet these unrealistic and idealized
demands, they are often blamed for not only the failings
of their children, but for the failings in society
Motherhood
 One of the biggest criticisms of mothers in North America is
the stifling/suffocating of her children emotionally by trying
to live through them
 “Stage mothers” and “sports mothers”
 Mothers who hold onto other aspects of their identities
(e.g., working outside of the home) have reported being
more satisfied with their lives and have higher self-esteem
than their at-home counterparts
Conditions
 The benefits are greatest when certain conditions are met:
 Availability and affordability of high quality child care
 Family support
 Women’s perception that their work is important and a
legitimate priority
 Can also be beneficial for children (socially and
intellectually) to be in a childcare setting outside of the
home
A Matrix of Tensions
1. Loss of self versus expansion of self
2. Feeling omnipotent versus feeling liable
3. Life destruction versus life promotion
4. Maternal isolation versus maternal community
5. Cognitive strategies versus intuitive responses
6. Maternal desexualization versus maternal sexualization
Single Mothers
 In North America, 80% of single parent households are led
by women
 More likely than other family configurations to live in
poverty
 Single mother families make up half of all families living
in poverty
Mother-Daughter Relationships
 Mothers are important role models for their daughters
 Worldwide, daughters of employed mothers hold less traditional
gender role attitudes than daughters of stay-at-home mothers
 The mother-daughter relationship also has important
implications for the development of feminist attitudes
 Daughters who identify strongly with feminist mothers held
similarly feminist awareness
 Strong, respectful, mutually interdependent motherdaughter relationships are linked with high levels of feminist
consciousness
 On the other hand, some daughters develop high levels of
feminist consciousness when reacting to possessive, jealous,
or anxious mothers
Mother-Daughter Relationships
 Culture clash can lead to clashes between generations,
especially among families who have immigrated from
another country
 Insistence on their daughters’ conformity to traditional
cultural values often produces conflict that lasts into
adulthood
 Many daughters will rebel against their mothers in an
effort to become enculturated but, as adults, often find
a new appreciation for their traditional culture
Mother-Daughter Relationships
 Daughters often become caregivers for the their mothers,
and this situation presents many potential sources of
conflict about mothers’ and daughters’ expectations
 Often comes at a time when daughters have many other
responsibilities (caregiver burden)
 The relationship between mother and daughter is
redefined in many ways (role reversal, increased
awareness of mortality, effects of aging, increased
tolerance and acceptance, and putting priority on
relationships)
Fathers & Children
 Ten years ago, a 10-country study (e.g., U.S., Nigeria,
China) revealed that fathers, on average, spent less than
one hour per day on childcare
 Mothers in these countries spend 5.2 – 10.7 hours per day
in solo childcare (the highest average belongs to women
in the U.S.)
 Although the research has not been updated, other
studies suggest that fathers still spend considerable less
time than mothers do with their children
Fathers & Children
 Fathers are more likely than mothers to spend time in play
activities; mothers spend more time in maintenance
activities
 Marital satisfaction is positively linked with fathers’
childcare involvement
 Higher income = less time spent with children during
the week
 Self esteem and age at which a man becomes a father
have been shown to predict satisfaction with
parenthood (being older when the baby is born is linked
to higher satisfaction)
Fathers & Children
 In studies of preschool children, those whose fathers were
responsible for 40 – 45% of childcare showed higher
cognitive competence and greater empathy toward their
peers
 Girls are thought to be more sensitive to approval and
disapproval from their fathers
 Having a supportive father or boyfriend can be an
important factor in women’s willingness to choose
nontraditional careers
Women without Children
 In Canada, approximately 15% of heterosexual couples
never have children
 A common and persistent theme is the notion that women
who do not have children have missed out on the core
aspect of being women
 In colonial America, childless women were not targets of
disapproval or pity, but by the end of the 18th century,
marriage and motherhood had been highly romanticized
and childlessness began to be viewed as a personal
tragedy
Women without Children
 In many cultures, childlessness is personally, socially, and
economically devastating
 In some cultures (e.g., many African countries), status,
and even financial support, comes from having children
 Women can be divorced, abandoned, physically
abused by their partners, stigmatized, and ostracized
by their communities
Women without Children
 In North America, less emphasis is being placed on having children
 In a cross-national comparison of industrialized countries, 70% of
Americans disagreed with the statement: “the main purpose of
marriage is to have children”
 51% of Norwegians and 45% of Italians disagreed with the
statement
 Women who choose to be childfree tend to be well-educated, white,
and hold non-traditional beliefs about gender roles
 Often criticized, isolated, stigmatized, and offered unsolicited
advice (e.g., “you will regret your choice” or “you will be lonely in
your old age”)
Conclusion
 Worldwide, the intimate relationships associated with
family are shaped by social expectations and structures
that relate to gender
 In some countries, women are expected to marry young
and have many children; in others, there is more
tolerance for delay of marriage/childbearing in order to
achieve educational and career goals
 The general expectation, however, is that women WILL
marry and produce children—and then be the primary
caregivers for those children. This notion transcends
cultural differences.
Media Influences
How we view relationships
Toys & Disney
Toys
 Product descriptions of 90 toys (for girls)
 Online catalogues
 Analyzed the themes that emerged from these
descriptions
 Emphasis on stereotypically feminine activities
such as shopping, dating, primping, and nurturing
activities
 Emphasis on appearance and fashion
Appearance & Fashion
Barbie Fashion Fever
“a girl needs a great
outfit and special makeup to make an impression”
It's 7pm on Saturday night. You're all
dressed up and ready for your blind
date to arrive, when suddenly...the
doorbell rings!
Immediately, your heart begins to
pound. Who will it be? What will he
be like? What does he have planned
for your date?
It's all a secret until you open the
door and find out. For Meygan, it's
only a secret until you bring home
this collectible Secret Date doll and
open the box.
Once you see who her date is, the
two will laugh over smoothies and
slow dance under a full moon.
 Recommended Age: 6 - 12 years
Dating
Career..?
“Wearing a pretty floral printed
dress, Teacher Barbie loves to
teach kids fashion tips as much as
she loves to help them learn math,
history and science!”
“Every animal's best friend, Pet
Doctor Barbie doll wears a cute
printed lab coat and comes with
all the accessories needed to make
pets of every kind smile”
Nurturing
“your child will fall in
love with this 6 in 1care
center that lets her
care for her doll like a
real mommy”
Sports..?
“Bratz are rockin' their alltime favorite sports and
showing the world that it's
not just about how you
play, but about how hot
you look when you win!”
Disney Princess Movies
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Aladdin
Beauty and the Beast
Cinderella
Hercules
Sleeping Beauty
Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs
The Little Mermaid
Stereotypes: Disney Princesses
 The damsel in distress
 Weak, dependent
 Emotionally volatile & fragile
 Focused on appearance
The Road to
Happily Ever After
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7.
I want “more”
Obstacles
Love
Feminine Wiles
More Obstacles
Saved!
Happily Ever After
1. Love
Romantic love
…conquers all
…is the answer
...at first sight
…that grows over time
Non-romantic love
 family
 friends
2. Traditional Roles
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Males as the rescuers
Females as dependent and helpless
Females as passive
Traditionally feminine qualities, behaviours, and activities
Sacrifice
3. Non-Traditional Roles
 Females as the rescuers
 Males as loving and nurturing
 Bonding with others
4. Family Structure
Family Structure
Father Only
Ariel
Belle
No Parents
Meg
Both Parents
Aurora
Stepmother
Snow
White
Lack of Feminine Role Models!!!
Cinderella
Disney Music
Someday My Prince Will Come
Some day my prince will come
Some day we'll meet again
And away to his castle we'll go
To be happy forever I know
Part of Your World
What would I give to live where you are
What would I pay to stay here beside you
What would I do to see you, smiling at me
Implications?
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Unrealistic expectations about love/relationships
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Finding Mr. Right (AKA Prince Charming)
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The Fairytale Wedding
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“I can change him”
Dissatisfaction with love/relationships
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Impossible ideals
Perpetuation of the stereotypical roles of women
Choices are limited due to stereotypes (Gooden & Gooden, 2001)
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Self-objectification
Magazines, Music, Movies
Magazines
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Magazines
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Magazines
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Music
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Beep
Don’t Cha
My Humps
Naughty Girl
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Movies
 e.g., Mean Girls (2004)
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