The relationship between gender‐role measures: A review

The relationship between self‐report measures of gender traits (PAQ and BSRI), behaviour (SRBS and MFRQ) and attitudes (AWS) is reviewed by considering the comparison of two or more groups differing on trait scores, correlations between the scales and relevant experimental studies. Trait measures show extremely small relationships to attitudes: for men, lower instrumental and higher expressive trait scores were weakly associated with a more non‐traditional attitude. For women, higher instrumental scores, lower expressive scores and higher (i.e. less feminine) M‐F PAQ scores were weakly associated with a more non‐traditional attitude. A very low relationship was found between the AWS and the Masculine and Feminine scales of the SRBS, but higher correlations were found for the M‐F scale (negative for men and positive for women). Very high correlations were found between the MFRQ (a role preference scale) and the AWS. There were conistent positive associations between the respective M and F scales of the PAQ and SRBS for both men and women, accounting for between 2.6 and 14.4 percent of the variance. Correlations between the PAQ scales and the MFRQ were generally low. These results support the multidimensional rather than the unidimensional view of masculinity and femininity.