research paper of gender roles

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• v.7(4); 2021 Apr

Gendered stereotypes and norms: A systematic review of interventions designed to shift attitudes and behaviour

Rebecca stewart.

a BehaviourWorks Australia, Monash Sustainable Development Institute, Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Breanna Wright

Steven roberts.

b School of Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts, Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Natalie Russell

c Victorian Health Promotion Foundation (VicHealth), Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Associated Data

Data included in article.

In the face of ongoing attempts to achieve gender equality, there is increasing focus on the need to address outdated and detrimental gendered stereotypes and norms, to support societal and cultural change through individual attitudinal and behaviour change. This article systematically reviews interventions aiming to address gendered stereotypes and norms across several outcomes of gender inequality such as violence against women and sexual and reproductive health, to draw out common theory and practice and identify success factors. Three databases were searched; ProQuest Central, PsycINFO and Web of Science. Articles were included if they used established public health interventions types (direct participation programs, community mobilisation or strengthening, organisational or workforce development, communications, social marketing and social media, advocacy, legislative or policy reform) to shift attitudes and/or behaviour in relation to rigid gender stereotypes and norms. A total of 71 studies were included addressing norms and/or stereotypes across a range of intervention types and gender inequality outcomes, 55 of which reported statistically significant or mixed outcomes. The implicit theory of change in most studies was to change participants' attitudes by increasing their knowledge/awareness of gendered stereotypes or norms. Five additional strategies were identified that appear to strengthen intervention impact; peer engagement, addressing multiple levels of the ecological framework, developing agents of change, modelling/role models and co-design of interventions with participants or target populations. Consideration of cohort sex, length of intervention (multi-session vs single-session) and need for follow up data collection were all identified as factors influencing success. When it comes to engaging men and boys in particular, interventions with greater success include interactive learning, co-design and peer leadership. Several recommendations are made for program design, including that practitioners need to be cognisant of breaking down stereotypes amongst men (not just between genders) and the avoidance of reinforcing outdated stereotypes and norms inadvertently.

Gender; Stereotypes; Social norms; Attitude change; Behaviour change; Men and masculinities

1. Introduction

Gender is a widely accepted social determinant of health [ 1 , 2 ], as evidenced by the inclusion of Gender Equality as a standalone goal in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals [ 3 ]. In light of this, momentum is building around the need to invest in gender-transformative programs and initiatives designed to challenge harmful power and gender imbalances, in line with increasing acknowledgement that ‘restrictive gender norms harm health and limit life choices for all’ ([ 2 ] pe225, see also [ 1 , 4 ]).

Gender-transformative programs and interventions seek to critically examine gender related norms and expectations and increase gender equitable attitudes and behaviours, often with a focus on masculinity [ 5 , 6 ]. They are one of five approaches identified by Gupta [ 6 ] as part of a continuum that targets social change via efforts to address gender (in particular gender-based power imbalances), violence prevention and sexual and reproductive health rights. The approaches in ascending progressive order are; reinforcing damaging gender (and sexuality) stereotypes, gender neutral, gender sensitive, gender-transformative , and gender empowering. The emerging evidence pertaining to the effectiveness of gender-transformative interventions points to the importance of programs challenging the gender binary and related norms, as opposed to focusing only on specific behaviours or attitudes [ 1 , 7 , 8 ]. This understanding is in part derived from a growing appreciation of the need to address outdated and detrimental gendered stereotypes and norms in order to support societal and cultural change in relation to this issue [ 9 , 10 , 11 ]. In addition to this focus on gender-transformative interventions is an increasing call for the engagement of men and boys not only as allies but as participants, partners and agents of change in gender equality efforts [ 12 , 13 ].

When examining the issue of gender inequality, it is necessary to consider the underlying drivers that allow for the maintenance and ongoing repetition of sex-based disparities in access to resources, power and opportunities [ 14 ]. The drivers can largely be categorised as either, ‘structural and systemic’, or ‘social norms and gendered stereotypes’ [ 15 ]. Extensive research and work has, and continues to be, undertaken in relation to structural and systemic drivers. From this perspective, efforts to address inequalities have focused on areas societal institutions exert influence over women's rights and access. One example (of many) is the paid workforce and attempts to address unequal gender representation through policies and practices around recruitment [ 16 , 17 ], retention via tactics such as flexible working arrangements [ 18 , 19 , 20 ] and promotion [ 16 ].

The focus of this review, however, is stereotypes and norms, incorporating the attitudes, behavioural intentions and enacted behaviours that are produced and reinforced as a result of structures and systems that support inequalities. Both categories of drivers (structural and systemic and social norms and gendered stereotypes) are influenced by and exert influence upon each other. Heise and colleagues [ 12 ] suggest that gendered norms uphold the gender system and are embedded in institutions (i.e. structurally), thus determining who occupies positions of leadership, whose voices are heard and listened to, and whose needs are prioritised [ 10 ]. As noted by Kågesten and Chandra-Mouli [ 1 ], addressing both categories of drivers is crucial to the broader strategy needed to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Stereotypes are widely held, generalised assumptions regarding common traits (including strengths and weaknesses), based on group categorisation [ 21 , 22 ]. Traditional gendered stereotypes see the attribution of agentic traits such as ambition, power and competitiveness as inherent in men, and communal traits such as nurturing, empathy and concern for others as characteristics of women [ 21 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 ]. In addition to these descriptive stereotypes (i.e. beliefs about specific characteristics a person possesses based on their gender) are prescriptive stereotypes, which are beliefs about specific characteristics that a person should possess based on their gender [ 21 , 25 ]. Gender-based stereotypes are informed by social norms relating to ideals and practices of masculinity and femininity (e.g. physical attributes, temperament, occupation/role suitability, etc.), which are subject to the influence of culture and time [ 15 , 21 , 26 ].

Social norms are informal (often unspoken) rules governing the behaviour of a group, emerging out of interactions with others and sanctioned by social networks [ 27 ]. Whilst stereotypes inform our assumptions about someone based on their gender [ 21 ], social norms govern the expected and accepted behaviour of women and men, often perpetuating gendered stereotypes (i.e. men as agentic, women as communal) [ 12 ]. Cialdini and Trost [ 27 ] delineate norms by suggesting that, in addition to these general societal behavioural expectations (see also [ 28 , 29 ]), there are personal norms (what we expect of ourselves) [ 30 ], and subjective norms (what we think others expect of us) [ 31 ]. Within subjective norms, there are injunctive norms (behaviours perceived as being approved by others) and descriptive norms (our observations and expectations of what most others are doing). Despite being malleable and subjective to cultural and socio-historical influences, portrayals and perpetuation of these stereotypes and social norms restrict aspirations, expectations and participation of both women and men, with demonstrations of counter-stereotypical behaviours often met with resistance and backlash ([ 12 , 24 , 32 ], see also [ 27 , 33 ]). These limitations are evident both between and among women and men, demonstrative of the power hierarchies that gender inequality and its drivers produce and sustain [ 12 ].

There is an extensive literature that explores interventions targeting gendered stereotypes and norms, each focusing on specific outcomes of gender inequality, such as violence against women [ 13 ], gender-based violence and sexual and reproductive health (including HIV prevention, treatment, care and support) [ 5 , 8 ], parental involvement [ 34 ], sexual and reproductive health rights [ 23 , 35 ], and health and wellbeing [ 2 ]. Comparisons of learnings across these focus areas remains difficult however due to the current lack of a synthesis of interventions across outcomes.

Despite this gap, one of the key findings to arise out of the literature relates to the common, and often implicit, theory of change around shifting participants' attitudes by increasing their knowledge/awareness of gendered stereotypes or norms, and the assumption that this will then lead to behaviour change. This was identified by Jewkes and colleagues [ 13 ] in their review of 67 intervention evaluations in relation to the prevention of violence against women, a finding they noted was in contradiction of research across disciplines which has consistently found this relationship to be complex and bidirectional [ 36 , 37 ]. Similarly, The International Centre for Research on Women indicate the ‘problematic assumption[s] regarding pathways to change’ ([ 7 ] p26) as one of the challenges to engaging men and boys in gender equality work, noting also the focus of evaluation, when undertaken, being on changes in attitude rather than behaviour. Ruane-McAteer and colleagues [ 35 ] made the same observation when looking at interventions aimed at gender equality in sexual and reproductive health, highlighting the need for greater interrogation into the intended outcomes of interventions including what the underlying theory of change is. These findings lend further support to the utilisation of the gender-transformative approach identified by Gupta [ 6 ] if fundamental and sustained shifts in understanding, attitudes and behaviour relating to gender inequality is the desired outcome.

In sum, much is known about gender stereotypes and norms and the contribution they make to perpetuating and sustaining gender inequality through the various outcomes discussed above. Less is known however about how to support and sustain more equitable attitudes and behaviours when it comes to addressing gender equality more broadly. This systematic review aims to address the question which intervention characteristics support change in attitudes and behaviour in relation to rigid gender stereotypes and norms. It will do this by consolidating the literature to determine what has been done and what works. This includes querying which intervention types work for whom in terms of participant age and sex, as well as delivery style and duration. Additionally, it will consider the theories of change being used to address attitudes and behaviours and how these shifts are being measured, including for impact longevity. Finally, it will allow for insight into interventions specifically targeting men and boys in relation to rigid gender stereotypes and norms, seeking out particular characteristics that are supportive of work engaging this particular cohort. These questions are intentionally broad and based on the framing of the above question it is expected that the review will capture primarily interventions that address underlying societal factors that support a culture in which harmful power and gender imbalances exist by addressing gender inequitable attitudes and behaviours. In asking these questions, this review consolidates the knowledge generated to date, to strengthen the design, development and implementation of future interventions, a synthesis that appears to be both absent and needed.

2.1. Data sources and search strategy

This review was undertaken in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines [ 38 ]. A protocol was registered on the Open Science Framework (Title: Gendered norms: A systematic review of how to achieve change in rigid gender stereotypes, accessible at https://osf.io/gyk25/ ). Qualitative, quantitative and mixed method studies were identified through three electronic databases searched in February 2019 (ProQuest Central, PsycINFO and Web of Science). Four search strategies were developed in consultation with a subject librarian and tested across all three databases. The final strategy was confirmed by the lead author and a second reviewer (see Table 1 ).

Table 1

Search terms used.

There were no date or language exclusions, Title, Abstract & Keyword filters were applied where possible, and truncation was used in line with database specifications. The following intervention categories were included due to their standing in public health literature as being effective to create population level impact and having proven effective in addressing other significant health and social issues [ 39 ]; direct participation programs (referred to also as education based interventions throughout this review), community mobilisation or strengthening, organisational or workforce development, communications, social marketing and social media, advocacy, legislative or policy reform. Table 2 provides descriptions of each of these intervention categories that have been obtained from the actions outlined in the World Health Organisation's Ottawa Charter [ 40 ] and Jakarta Declaration [ 41 ] and are a comprehensive set of strategies grounded in prevention theory [ 42 ]. For the purposes of this review, legislative and policy reform within community, educational, organisational and workforce settings were included. Government legislation and policy reform were excluded.

Table 2

Public health intervention categories.

2.2. Screening

Initial search results were merged and duplicates removed using EndNote before transferring data management to Covidence for screening. Two researchers independently screened titles and abstracts excluding studies based on the criteria stipulated in Table 3 .

Table 3

Inclusion and exclusion criteria.

The University Library document request service was used to obtain articles otherwise inaccessible or in languages other than English. In cases where full-text or English versions were unable to be obtained, the study was excluded. Full-text screening was undertaken by the same two researchers independently and the final selection resulted in 71 included studies (see Figure 1 ).

PRISMA diagram of screening and study selection.

2.3. Data extraction

Data extraction was undertaken by the first author and checked for accuracy by the second author. Discrepancies were resolved by consensus with the remaining three authors. The extracted data included: citation, year and location of study, participant demographics (gender, age), study design, setting, theoretical underpinnings, motivation for study, measurement tools/instruments, primary outcomes and results. A formal meta-analysis was not conducted given heterogeneity of outcome variables and measures, due in part to the broad nature of the review question.

2.4. Quality appraisal

Three established quality appraisal tools were used to account for the different study designs included, the McMasters Critical Review Form – Qualitative Studies 2.0 [ 43 ], the McMasters Critical Review Form – Quantitative Studies [ 44 ], Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool (MMAT), version 2018 [ 45 ]. The first author completed quality appraisal for all studies, with the second author undertaking an accuracy check on ten percent of studies. The appraisal score represents the proportion of ‘yes’ responses out of the total number of criteria. ‘Not reported’ was treated as a ‘no’ response. A discussion of the outcomes is located under Results.

2.5. Data synthesis

Included studies were explored using a modified narrative synthesis approach comprising three elements; developing a theory of how interventions worked, why and with whom, developing a preliminary synthesis of findings of included studies, and exploring relationships in studies reporting statistically significant outcomes [ 46 ]. Preliminary analysis was conducted using groupings of studies based on intervention type and thematic analysis based on gender inequality outcomes driving the study and features of the studies including participant sex and age and intervention delivery style and duration [ 46 ]. A conceptual model was developed (see Theory of Change section under Results) as the method of relationship exploration amongst studies reporting significant results, using qualitative case descriptions [ 47 ]. The narrative synthesis was undertaken under the premise that the ‘evidence being synthesised in a systematic review does not necessarily offer a series of discrete answers to a specific question’, so much as ‘each piece of evidence offers are partial picture of the phenomenon of interest’ ([ 46 ] p21).

3.1. Literature search

The literature search returned 4,050 references after the removal of duplicates (see Figure 1 ), from which 210 potentially relevant abstracts were identified. Full-text review resulted in a final list of 71 articles evaluating 69 distinct interventions aligned with the public health methodologies outlined in Table 2 . Table 4 provides a list of the included studies, categorised by intervention type. Studies fell into eight categories of interventions in total, with several combining two methodology types described in Table 2 .

Table 4

Included articles categorised by intervention type.

3.2. Quality assessment

Overall, the results of the quality appraisal indicated a moderate level of confidence in the results. The appraisal scores for the 71 studies ranged from poor (.24) to excellent (.96). The median appraisal score was .71 for all included studies (n = 71) and .76 for studies reporting statistically significant positive results (n = 32). The majority of studies were rated moderate quality (n = 57, 80%), with moderate quality regarded as .50 - .79 [ 119 ]. Ten studies were regarded as high quality (14%, >.80), and four were rated as poor (6%, <.50) [ 119 ]. Of the studies with significant outcomes, one rated high quality (.82) and the remaining 31 were moderate quality, with 18 of these (58% of 31) rating >.70. For the 15 randomised control trials (including n = 13 x cluster), all articles provided clear study purposes and design, intervention details, reported statistical significance of results, reported appropriate analysis methods and drew appropriate conclusions. However, only four studies appropriately justified sampling process and selection. For the qualitative studies (n = 5), the lowest scoring criteria were in relation to describing the process of purposeful selection (n = 1, 20%) and sampling done until redundancy in data was reached (n = 2, 40%). For the quantitative studies (n = 47) the lowest scoring criteria were in relation to sample size justification (n = 8, 17%) and avoiding contamination (n = 1, 2%) and co-intervention (n = 0, none of the studies provided information on this) in regards to intervention participants. For the Mixed Method studies (n = 19) the lowest scoring criteria in relation to the qualitative component of the research was in relation to the findings being adequately derived from the data (n = 9, 47%), and for the mixed methods criteria it was in relation to adequately addressing the divergences and inconsistencies between quantitative and qualitative results (n = 6, 32%).

3.3. Measures

Measures of stereotypes and norms varied across quantitative and mixed method studies with 31 (47%) of the 66 articles reporting the use of 25 different psychometric evaluation tools. The remaining 35 (53%) of quantitative and mixed methods studies reported developing measurement tools specific to the study with inconsistencies in description and provision of psychometric properties. Of the studies that used psychometric evaluation tools, the most frequently used were the Gender Equitable Men Scale (GEMS, n = 6, plus n = 2 used questions from the GEMS), followed by the Gender Role Conflict Scale I (GRCS-I, n = 5, plus n = 1 used a Short Form version) and the Gender-Stereotyped Attitude Scale for Children (GASC, n = 5). Whilst most studies used explicit measures as listed here, implicit measures were also used across several studies, including the Gender-Career Implicit Attitudes Test (n = 1). The twenty-four studies that undertook qualitative data collection used interviews (participant n = 15, key informant n = 3) as well as focus groups (n = 8), ethnographic observations (n = 5) and document analysis (n = 2). Twenty (28%) of the 71 studies measured behaviour and/or behavioural intentions, of which 9 (45%) used self-report measures only, four (20%) used self-report and observational data, and two (10%) used observation only. Follow-up data was collected for four of the studies using self-report measures, and two using observation measures, and one using both methods.

3.4. Study and intervention characteristics

Table 5 provides a summary of study and intervention characteristics. All included studies were published between 1990 and 2019; n = 8 (11%) between 1990 and 1999, n = 15 (21%) between 2000 and 2009, and the majority n = 48 (68%) from 2010 to 2019. Interventions were delivered in 23 countries (one study did not specify a location), with the majority conducted in the U.S. (n = 33, 46%), followed by India (n = 10, 14%). A further 15 studies (21%) were undertaken in Africa across East Africa (n = 7, Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique, Uganda), South Africa (n = 6), and West Africa (n = 2, Nigeria, Senegal). The remaining fifteen studies were conducted in Central and South America (n = 4, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Argentina), Europe (n = 3, Ireland, Spain and Turkey), Nepal (n = 2), and one study each in Australia, China, Oman, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the United Kingdom. Forty-seven (66%) studies employed quantitative methods, 19 (27%) reported both quantitative and qualitative (mixed) methods, and the remaining five studies (7%) reported qualitative methods. Forty-two of the quantitative and mixed-method approaches were non-randomised control trials, 13 were cluster randomised control trials, two were randomised control trials, and eight were quantitative descriptive studies.

Table 5

Summarised study and intervention characteristics (n = 71).

Based on total study sample sizes, data was reported on 46,673 participants. Sample sizes ranged from 15 to 122 for qualitative, 7 to 2887 for mixed methods, and 21 to 6073 for quantitative studies. Of the 71 studies, 23 (32%) reported on children (<18 years old), 13 (18%) on adolescents/young adults (<30 years old), 29 (41%) on adults (>18 years old), and six (8%) studies did not provided details on participant age. Thirty-seven (52%) studies recruited participants from educational settings (i.e. kindergarten, primary, middle and secondary/high school, tertiary including college residential settings, and summer camps/schools), 32 (45%) from general community settings (including home and sports), three from therapy-based programs for offenders (i.e. substance abuse and partner abuse prevention), and one sourced participants from both educational (vocational) and a workplace (factory).

As per Table 5 , the greatest proportion of all studies engaged mixed sex cohorts (n = 39, 55%), looked at norms (n = 34, 48%), were undertaken in community settings (n = 32, 45%), were education/direct participant interventions (n = 47, 66%) and undertook pre and post intervention evaluation (n = 49, 69%). Twenty-four studies reported on follow up data collection, with 10 reporting maintenance of outcomes.

Intervention lengths were varied, from individual sessions (90 min) to ongoing programs (up to 6 years) and were dependent on intervention type. Table 6 provides the duration range by intervention type.

Table 6

Intervention type and duration.

Of the 71 studies examined in this review, 10 (14%) stated a gender approach in relation to the continuum outlined at the start of this paper, utilising two of the five categories; gender-transformative and gender-sensitive [ 6 ]. Eight studies stated that they were gender-transformative, the definition of this strategy being to critically examine gender related norms and expectations and increase gender equitable attitudes and behaviours, often with a focus on masculinity [ 9 , 10 ]. An additional two stated they were gender-sensitive, the definition of which is to take into account and seek to address existing gender inequalities [ 10 ]. The remaining 61 (86%) studies did not specifically state engagement with a specific gender approach. Interpretation of the gender approach was not undertaken in relation to these 61 studies due to insufficient available data and to avoid potential risk of error, mislabelling or misidentification.

3.5. Characteristics supporting success

Due to the broad inclusion criteria for this review, there is considerable variation in study designs and the measurement of attitudes and behaviours. With the exception of the five studies using qualitative methods, all included studies reported on p-values, and 13 reported on effect sizes [ 51 , 60 , 66 , 69 , 70 , 71 , 77 , 78 , 79 , 83 , 92 , 99 , 110 ]. In addition to this, the centrality of gender norms and/or stereotypes within studies meeting inclusion criteria varied from a primary outcome to a secondary one, and in some studies was a peripheral consideration only, with minimal data reported. This heterogeneity prevents comparisons based purely on whether the outcomes of the studies were statistically significant, and as such consideration was also given to the inclusion of effect sizes, author interpretation, qualitative insights and whether outcomes reported as statistically non-significant reported encouraging results, which allowed for the inclusion of those using qualitative methods only [ 53 , 73 , 81 , 82 , 98 ].

As outlined in Table 5 , the studies were grouped into three categories based on reporting of statistical significance using p-values. Two categories include studies reporting statistically significant outcomes (n = 25) and those reporting mixed outcomes including some statistically significant results (n = 30), specifically in relation to the measurement of gender norms and/or stereotypes. Disparate outcomes included negligible behavioural changes, a shift in some but not all norms (i.e. shifts in descriptive but not personal norms, or masculine but not feminine stereotypes), and effects seen in some but not all participants (i.e. shifts in female participant scores but not male). It is worth noting that out of the 71 studies reviewed, all but one reported positive or negligible intervention impacts on attitudes and/or behaviours relating to gender norms and/or stereotypes. The other category include those reporting non-significant results (n = 2) as well as those that reported non-significant but positive results in relation to attitude and/or behaviour change towards gender norms and/or stereotypes (n = 14). These studies include those which had qualitative designs, several who reported on descriptive statistics only, and several which did not meet statistical significance but who demonstrated improvement in participant scores between base and end line and/or between intervention and control groups. The insights from the qualitative studies (n = 5) have been taken into consideration in the narrative synthesis of this review.

Studies reporting statistically significant outcomes were represented across seven of the eight intervention types. The only intervention category not represented was advocacy and education [ 48 ] which reported non-significant but positive results. The remainder of this section will consider the study characteristics of the statistically significant and mixed results categories, as well as identifying similar trends observed in the qualitative studies which reported positive but non-significant intervention outcomes. When considering intervention type, direct participant education was the most common, with 49 of the 55 studies reporting statistically significant or mixed outcomes containing a direct participant education component, and all but one of the five qualitative studies.

The majority of interventions reporting achievement of intended outcomes involved delivery of multiple sessions ranging from five x 20 min sessions across one week to multiple sessions across six years. This included 48 of the 55 studies reporting statistically significant or mixed outcomes, and all five qualitative studies. Only one of the seven that utilised single/one-off sessions reported significant outcomes. The remaining six studies had varying results, including finding shifts in descriptive but not personal norms amongst a male-only cohort, shifts in acceptance of both genders performing masculine behaviours but no shift in acceptance of males performing feminine behaviours, and significant outcomes for participants already demonstrating more egalitarian attitudes at baseline but not those holding more traditional ones – arguably the target audience.

When considering participant sex, the majority of studies reporting statistically significant or mixed results engaged mixed sex cohorts (n = 33 out of 55), with the remaining studies engaging male only (n = 13) and female only (n = 9) cohorts. Of the qualitative studies, three engaged mixed sex participant cohorts. Interestingly however, several studies reported disparate results, including significant outcomes for male but non-significant outcomes for female participants primarily in studies incorporating a community mobilisation element, and the reverse pattern in some studies that were education based. Additional discrepancies were found between several studies looking at individual and community level outcomes.

Finally, a quarter of studies worked with male only cohorts (n = 18). Of these, four reported significant results, nine reported mixed results, and the remaining five studies reported non-significant but positive outcomes, one of which was a qualitative study. Within these studies, two demonstrated shifts in more generalised descriptive norms and/or stereotypes relating to men, but not in relation to personal norms. Additionally, several studies demonstrated that shifts in male participant attitudes were not generalised, with discrepancies found in relation to attitudes shifting towards women but not men and in relation to some norms or stereotypes (for example men acting in ‘feminine’ ways) but not others that appeared to be more culturally entrenched. These studies are explored further in the Discussion.

In summary, interventions that used direct participant education, across multiple sessions, with mixed sex participant cohorts were associated with greater success in changing attitudes and in a small number of studies behaviour. Further to these characteristics, several strategies were identified that appear to enhance intervention impact which are discussed further in the next section.

3.6. Theory of change

One aim of this review was to draw out common theory and practice in order to strengthen future intervention development and delivery. Across all included studies, the implicit theory of change was raising knowledge/awareness for the purposes of shifting attitudes relating to gender norms and/or stereotypes. Direct participant education-based interventions was the predominant method of delivery. In addition to this, 23 (32%) studies attempted to take this a step further to address behaviour and/or behavioural intentions, of which 10 looked at gender equality outcomes (including bystander action and behavioural intentions), whilst the remaining studies focused on gender-based violence (n = 9), sexual and reproductive health (n = 2) and two studies which did not focus on behaviours related to the focus of this review.

As highlighted in Figure 2 , this common theory of change was the same across all identified intervention categories, irrespective of the overarching focus of the study (gender equality, prevention of violence, sexual and reproductive health, mental health and wellbeing). Those examining gender equality more broadly did so in relation to female empowerment in relationships, communities and political participation, identifying and addressing stereotypes and normative attitudes with kindergarten and school aged children. Those considering prevention of violence did so specifically in relation to violence against women, including intimate partner violence, rape awareness and myths, and a number of studies looking at teen dating violence. Sexual and reproductive health studies primarily assessed prevention of HIV, but also men and women's involvement in family planning, with several exploring the interconnected issues of violence and sexual and reproductive health. Finally, those studies looking at mental health and wellbeing did so in relation to mental and physical health outcomes and associated help-seeking behaviours, including reducing stigma around mental health (particularly amongst men in terms of acceptance and help seeking) and emotional expression (in relationships).

Breakdown of study characteristics and strategies associated with achieving intended outcomes.

In addition to the implicit theory of change, the review process identified five additional strategies that appear to have strengthened interventions (regardless of intervention type). In addition to implicit theory of change across all studies, one or more of these strategies were utilised by 31 of the 55 studies that reported statistically significant results:

• • Addressing more than one level of the ecological framework (n = 17): which refers to different levels of personal and environmental factors, all of which influence and are influenced by each other to differing degrees [ 120 ]. The levels are categorised as individual, relational, community/organisational and societal, with the individual level being the most commonly addressed across studies in this review;
• • Peer engagement (n = 14): Using participant peers (for example people from the same geographical location, gender, life experience, etc.) to support or lead an intervention, including the use of older students to mentor younger students, or using peer interactions as part of the intervention to enhance learning. This included students putting on performances for the broader school community, facilitation of peer discussions via online platforms or face-to-face via direct participant education and group activities or assignments;
• • Use of role models and modelling of desired attitudes and/or behaviours by facilitators or persons of influence in participants' lives (n = 11);
• • Developing agents of change (n = 7): developing knowledge and skills for the specific purpose of participants using these to engage with their spheres of influence and further promote, educate and support the people and environments in which they interact; and
• • Co-design (n = 6): Use of formative research or participant feedback to develop the intervention or to allow flexibility in its evolution as it progresses.

Additionally, four of the five studies using qualitative methods utilised one or more of these strategies; ecological framework (n = 3), peer engagement (n = 1), role models (n = 2), agents of change (n = 2) and co-design (n = 1). Whilst only a small number of studies reported engaging the last two strategies, developing agents of change and co-design, they have been highlighted due to their prominence in working with the sub-set of men and boys, as well as the use of role models/modelling.

The remaining 24 studies that reported significant outcomes did not utilise any of these five strategies. Eight used a research/experimental design, the remaining 16 were all direct participant education interventions, and either did not provide enough detail about the intervention structure or delivery to determine if they engaged in any of these strategies (n = 13), were focused on testing a specific theory (n = 2) or in the case of one study used financial incentives.

Figure 2 provides a conceptual model exploring the relationship amongst studies reporting statistically significant outcomes. Utilising the common theory of change as well as the additional identified strategies, interventions were able to address factors that act as gender inequality enforcers including knowledge, attitudes, environmental factors and behaviour and behavioural intentions (see Table 7 ), to achieve statistically significant shifts in attitudes, and in a small number of cases behaviour (see Table 8 ).

Table 7

Factors supportive of gender inequality in studies reporting significant positive outcomes (n = 55).

Table 8

Changes observed in attitudes and behaviours in studies reporting significant positive outcomes (n = 55).

4. Discussion

This systematic review synthesises evidence on ‘which intervention characteristics support change in attitudes and behaviours in relation to rigid gender stereotypes and norms’, based on the seventy-one studies that met the review inclusion criteria. Eight intervention types were identified, seven of which achieved statistically significant outcomes. Patterns of effectiveness were found based on delivery style and duration, as well as participant sex, and several strategies (peer engagement, addressing multiple levels of the ecological framework, skilling participants as agents of change, use of role models and modelling of desired attitudes and behaviours, and intervention co-design with participants) were identified that enhanced shifts in attitudes and in a small number of studies, behaviour. Additionally, a common theory of change was identified (increasing knowledge and raising awareness to achieve shifts in attitudes) across all studies reporting statistically significant results.

The articles included in this review covered a range of intervention types, duration and focus, demonstrating relative heterogeneity across these elements. This is not an unexpected outcome given the aim of this review was to allow for comparisons to be drawn across interventions, regardless of the overarching focus of the study (gender equality, prevention of violence, sexual and reproductive health, mental health and wellbeing). As a result, one of the key findings of this review is that design, delivery and engagement strategies that feature in studies reporting successful outcomes, are successful regardless of the intervention focus thus widening the evidence base from which those researching and implementing interventions can draw. That said, the heterogeneity of studies limits the ability for definitive conclusions to be drawn based on the studies considered in this review. Instead this section provides a discussion of the characteristics and strategies observed based on the narrative synthesis undertaken.

4.1. Intervention characteristics that support success

4.1.1. intervention type and participant demographics.

The 71 included studies were categorised into eight intervention types (see Table 4 ); advocacy and education, advocacy and community mobilisation, community mobilisation, community mobilisation and education, education (direct participant), research and education, research, and two studies that utilised four or more intervention types (advocacy via campaigns and social media, community mobilisation, education and legislation, and, advocacy, education, community mobilisation, policy and social marketing). With the exception of the individual study that utilised advocacy and education, all intervention types were captured in studies reporting statistically significant or mixed results.

Direct participant education was the most common intervention type across all studies (n = 47 out of 71, 66%). When considering those studies that included a component of direct participant education in their intervention (e.g. those studies which engaged education and community mobilisation) this figure rose to 63 of the 69 individual interventions looked at in this review, 54 of which reported outcomes that were either statistically significant (n = 23), mixed (n = 26) or were non-significant due to the qualitative research design, but reported positive outcomes (n = 5). These findings indicate that direct participant education is both a popular and an effective strategy for engaging participants in attitudinal (and in a small number of cases behaviour) change.

Similarly, mixed sex participant cohorts were involved in over half of all studies (n = 39 out of 71, 55%), of which 33 reported statistically significant or mixed results, and a further three did not meet statistical significance due to the qualitative research design but reported positive outcomes. Across several studies however, conflicting results were observed between male and female participants, with female's showing greater improvement in interventions using education [ 85 , 89 , 114 ] and males showing greater improvement when community mobilisation was incorporated [ 51 , 60 ]. That is not to say that male participants do not respond well to education-based interventions with 13 of the 18 studies engaging male only cohorts reporting intended outcomes using direct participant education. However, of these studies, nine also utilised one or more of the additional strategies identified such as co-design or peer engagement which whilst different to community engagement, employ similar principles around participant engagement [ 77 , 79 , 87 , 91 , 92 , 96 , 97 , 99 , 105 , 107 , 111 , 115 ]. These findings suggest that participant sex may impact on how well participants engage with an intervention type and thus how successful it is.

There was a relatively even spread of studies reporting significant outcomes across all age groups, in line with the notion that the impact of rigid gender norms and stereotypes are not age discriminant [ 10 ]. Whilst the broad nature of this review curtailed the possibility of determining the impact of aged based on the studies synthesised, the profile of studies reporting statistically significant outcomes indicates that no patterns were found in relation to impact and participants age.

The relatively small number of studies that observed the above differences in intervention design and delivery means definitive conclusions cannot be drawn based on the studies examined in this review. That said, all of these characteristics support an increase in personal buy-in. Interventions that incorporate community mobilisation engage with more than just the individual, often addressing community norms and creating environments supportive of change [ 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 , 58 , 59 , 60 , 117 , 118 ]. Similarly, education based programs that incorporate co-design and peer support do more than just knowledge and awareness raising with an individual participant, providing space for them to develop their competence and social networks [ 70 , 75 , 77 , 79 , 81 , 86 , 90 , 91 , 92 , 93 , 97 , 103 , 107 , 109 , 110 , 111 , 113 , 115 , 116 ]. When it comes to designing these interventions, it would appear that success may be influenced by which method is most engaging to the participants and that this is in turn influenced by the participants' sex. This finding is reinforced further when taking into consideration the quality of studies with those reporting on a mixed-sex cohort, which were generally lower in quality than those working with single sex groups. Whilst it appears mixed sex cohorts are both common and effective at obtaining significant results, these findings suggest that when addressing gendered stereotypes and norms, there is a need to consider and accommodate differences in how participants learn and respond when designing interventions to ensure the greatest chance of success in terms of impacting on all participants, regardless of sex, and ensuring quality of study design.

4.1.2. Intervention delivery

The findings from this review suggests that multi-session interventions are both more common and more likely to deliver significant outcomes than single-session or one-off interventions. This is evidenced by the fact that only one [ 67 ] out seven studies engaging the use of one-off sessions reported significant outcomes with the remaining six reporting mixed results [ 63 , 66 , 68 , 69 , 78 , 90 ]. Additionally, all but two of the studies [ 78 , 90 ] used a research/experimental study design, indicating a current gap in the literature in terms of real-world application and effectiveness of single session interventions. This review highlights the lack of reported evidence of single session effectiveness, particularly in terms of maintaining attitudinal changes in the few instances in which follow-up data was collected. Additionally this review only captured single-sessions that ran to a maximum of 2.5 h, further investigation is needed into the impact of one-off intensive sessions, such as those run over the course of a weekend. While more evidence is needed to reach definitive conclusions, the review indicates that single-session or one-off interventions are sub-optimal, aligning with the same finding by Barker and colleagues [ 5 ] in their review of interventions engaging men and boys in changing gender-based inequity in health. This is further reflected in the health promotion literature that points to the lack of demonstrated effectiveness of single-session direct participant interventions when it comes to addressing social determinants of health [ 121 , 122 , 123 ]. Studies that delivered multiple sessions demonstrate the ability to build rapport with and amongst the cohort (peer engagement, modelling, co-design) as well as the allowance of greater depth of learning and retention achievable through repeated touch points and revision. These are elements that can only happen through recurring and consistent exposure. Given these findings, practitioners should consider avoiding one-off or single-session delivery, in favour of multi-session or multi-touch point interventions allowing for greater engagement and impact.

4.1.3. Evaluation

Very few included studies collected follow-up data, with only one third of studies evaluating beyond immediate post-intervention data collection (n = 24). Of those that did, ten reported maintenance of their findings [ 55 , 56 , 64 , 70 , 79 , 93 , 95 , 103 , 113 , 116 ], eleven did not provide sufficient detail to determine [ 50 , 52 , 57 , 65 , 66 , 82 , 91 , 92 , 94 , 102 , 105 ] and two reported findings were not maintained [ 61 , 90 ]. The last study, a 90 min single session experiment with an education component, reported significant positive outcomes between base and end line scores, but saw a significant negative rebound in scores to worse than base line when they collected follow up data six weeks later [ 63 ]. This study supports the above argument for needing more than a single session in order to support change long term and highlights the importance of capturing follow up data not only to ensure longevity of significant outcomes, but also to capture reversion effects. The lack of standardised measures to capture shifts in norms is acknowledged empirically [ 11 , 13 ]. However, the outcomes of this review, including the lack of follow up data collection reported, are supportive of the need for increased investment in longitudinal follow-up, particularly in relation to measuring behaviour change and ensuring maintenance of observed changes to attitudes and behaviour over time (see also [ 124 ]).

4.1.4. Behaviour change

When it comes to behaviour change, definitive conclusions cannot be drawn due to the paucity of studies. The studies that did look at behaviour focused on the reduction of relational violence including the perpetration and experience of physical, psychological and sexual violence [ 50 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 59 , 60 , 105 , 115 ], as well as more equitable division of domestic labour [ 82 , 86 , 98 ] and responsibility for sexual and reproductive health [ 58 , 116 ], intention to take bystander action [ 65 , 102 , 117 ] and female political participation [ 81 ]. Lack of follow up data and use of measurement tools other than self-report, however, make it difficult to determine the permanency of the behaviour change and whether behavioural intentions transition to action. Models would suggest that interventions aimed at changing attitudes/norms would flow on to behaviour change but need to address multiple levels of the ecological framework not just the individual to support this change, and engage peer leadership and involvement in order to do so. This supports findings from the literature discussed at the start of this paper, alerting practitioners to the danger of making incorrect assumptions about ‘pathways to change’ [ 7 ] and the need to be mindful of the intention-behaviour gap which has been shown to disrupt this flow from attitude and intention to actual behaviour change [ 6 , 13 , 35 , 36 , 37 ].

If studies are to evaluate the impact of an intervention on behaviour, this objective must be made clear in the intervention design and evaluation strategy, and there must be an avoidance of relying on self-report data only, which is subject to numerous types of bias such as social desirability. Use of participant observation as well as key informant feedback would strengthen evaluation. The quality of studies that measured behaviour change was varied, ranging from poor (n = 1 at <.5 looking at behavioural intentions) to high (n = 3 at >.85 looking at bystander action and gender equality). The majority of studies however, were moderate in quality measuring either lower (n = 4 at .57, looking at gender-based violence, domestic labour division and bystander intention, and n = 2 at .64 looking at gender-based violence) to higher (n = 11 at .71-.79, looking at gender-based violence, gender equality, sexual and reproductive health and behavioural intentions), further supporting the finding that consideration in study design and evaluation is crucial. It is worth noting that measuring behaviour change is difficult, it requires greater resources should more than just self-report measurements be used, as well as longitudinal follow up to account for sustained change and to capture deterioration of behaviour post intervention should it occur.

4.2. Theory of change

Across all included studies, the implicit theory of change was knowledge/awareness raising for the purposes of shifting attitudes towards gender norms and/or stereotypes. This did not vary substantially across intervention type or study focus, whether it was norms, stereotypes or both being addressed, and for all participant cohorts. The conceptual framework developed (see Figure 2 ) shows that by increasing knowledge and raising awareness, the studies that reported statistically significant outcomes were able to address factors enforcing gender inequality in the form of knowledge, attitudes, environmental factors, and in a small number of cases behaviour.

Further to this common theory of change, several strategies were identified which appear to have enhanced the delivery and impact of these interventions. These included the use of participant peers to lead, support and heighten learning [ 49 , 77 , 79 , 81 , 86 , 90 , 92 , 93 , 103 , 109 , 110 , 111 , 113 , 115 , 116 , 117 ], involvement of multiple levels of the ecological framework (not just addressing the individual) [ 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 58 , 59 , 60 , 70 , 72 , 74 , 81 , 86 , 91 , 97 , 98 , 102 , 117 , 118 ], developing participants into agents of change [ 49 , 52 , 58 , 60 , 72 , 81 , 98 , 117 , 118 ], using modelling and role models [ 49 , 51 , 52 , 58 , 60 , 65 , 82 , 98 , 110 , 117 , 118 ], and the involvement of participants in co-designing the intervention [ 51 , 70 , 81 , 90 , 91 , 97 , 111 ]. As mentioned earlier, these strategies all contain principles designed to increase participant buy-in, creating a more personal and/or relatable experience.

One theory that can be used to consider this pattern is Petty and Cacioppo's [ 125 ] Elaboration Likelihood Model. The authors posit that attitudes changed through a central (deliberative processing) route, are more likely to show longevity, are greater predictors of behaviour change and are more resistant to a return to pre-intervention attitudes, than those that are the result of peripheral, or short cut, mental processing. Whether information is processed deliberately is dependent on a person's motivation and ability, both of which need to be present and both of which are influenced by external factors including context, message delivery and individual differences. In other words, the more accessible the message is and the more engaged a person is with the messaging they are exposed to, the stronger the attitude that is formed.

In the context of the studies in this review, the strategies found to enhance intervention impact all focus on creating a relationship and environment for the participant to engage in greater depth with the content of the intervention. This included not only the use of the five strategies discussed here, but also the use of multi-session delivery as well as use of delivery types aligned with participant responsiveness (community mobilisation and co-design elements when engaging men and boys, and education-focused interventions for engaging women and girls). With just under two thirds of studies reporting positive outcomes employing one or more of these strategies, practitioners should consider incorporating these into intervention design and delivery for existing interventions or initiatives as well as new ones.

4.3. Engaging men and boys

Represented by only a quarter of studies overall (n = 18 out of 71) this review further highlights the current dearth of research and formal evaluation of interventions working specifically with men and boys [ 124 ].

Across the 18 studies, four reported significant outcomes [ 59 , 79 , 97 , 111 ], nine reported mixed results with some but not all significant outcomes [ 49 , 63 , 68 , 77 , 91 , 92 , 99 , 105 , 115 ] and the remaining five reported non-significant but positive results [ 75 , 87 , 96 , 107 ], including one qualitative study [ 53 ]. Quality was reasonably high (n = 12 rated .71 - .86), and there were some interesting observations to be made about specific elements for this population.

The majority of the studies reporting positive significant or mixed results utilised one or more of the five additional strategies identified through this review (n = 10 out of 14) including the one qualitative study. Three studies used co-design principles to develop their intervention, which included formative research and evolution through group discussions across the duration of the intervention [ 91 , 97 , 111 ]. Four studies targeted more than just the individual participants including focusing on relational and community aspects [ 53 , 59 , 91 , 97 ]. Another six leveraged peer interaction in terms of group discussions and support, and leadership which included self-nominated peer leaders delivering sessions [ 49 , 77 , 79 , 92 , 111 , 115 ]. Finally, two studies incorporated role models [ 79 ] or role models and agents of change [ 49 ]. Similar to the overall profile of studies in this review, the majority in this group utilised direct participant education (n = 12 out of 14) either solely [ 77 , 79 , 91 , 92 , 97 , 99 , 105 , 111 , 115 ], or in conjunction with community mobilisation [ 53 , 59 ] or a research/experimental focus [ 63 ].

The use of the additional strategies in conjunction with direct participant education aligning with the earlier observation about male participants responding better in studies that incorporated a community or interpersonal element. A sentiment that was similarly observed by Burke and colleagues [ 79 ] in their study of men in relation to mental health and wellbeing, in which they surmised that a ‘peer-based group format’ appears to better support the psychosocial needs of men to allow them the space to ‘develop alternatives to traditional male gender role expectations and norms’ (p195).

When taken together, these findings suggest that feeling part of the process, being equipped with the information and skills, and having peer engagement, support and leadership/modelling, are all components that support the engagement of men and boys not only as allies but as participants, partners and agents of change when it comes to addressing gender inequality and the associated negative outcomes. This is reflective of the theory of change discussion outlining design principles that encourage and increase participant buy-in and the strength in creating a more personal and/or relatable learning experience.

Working with male only cohorts is another strategy used to create an environment that fosters participant buy-in [ 126 ]. Debate exists however around the efficacy of this approach, highlighted by the International Centre for Research on Women as an unsubstantiated assumption that the ‘best people to work with men are other men’ ([ 7 ] p26), which they identify as one of the key challenges to engaging men and boys in gender equality work [ 7 , 13 ]. Although acknowledging the success that has been observed in male-only education and preference across cultures for male educators, they caution of the potential for this assumption to extend to one that men cannot change by working with women [ 7 , 13 ]. The findings from this review support the need for further exploration and evaluation into the efficacy of male only participant interventions given the relatively small number of studies examined in this review and the variance in outcomes observed.

4.3.1. One size does not fit all

In addition to intervention and engagement strategies, the outcomes of several studies indicate a need to consider the specifics of content when it comes to engaging men and boys in discussions of gendered stereotypes and norms. This was evident in Pulerwitz and colleagues [ 59 ] study looking at male participants, which found an increase in egalitarian attitudes towards gendered stereotypes in relation to women, but a lack of corresponding acceptance and change when consideration was turned towards themselves and/or other males. Additionally, Brooks-Harris and colleagues [ 68 ] found significant shifts in male role attitudes broadly, but not in relation to personal gender roles or gender role conflict. Their findings suggest that targeted attention needs to be paid to addressing different types of stereotypes and norms, with attitudes towards one's own gender roles, and in the case of this study one's ‘fear of femininity’ being more resistant to change than attitudes towards more generalised stereotypes and norms. This is an important consideration for those working to engage men and boys, particularly around discussions of masculinity and what it means to be a man. Rigid gendered stereotypes and norms can cause harmful and restrictive outcomes for everyone [ 2 ] and it is crucial that interventions aimed at addressing them dismantle and avoid supporting these stereotypes; not just between sexes, but amongst them also [ 127 ]. Given the scarcity of evidence at present, further insight is required into how supportive spaces for exploration and growth are balanced with the avoidance of inadvertently reinforcing the very stereotypes and norms being addressed in relation to masculinity, particularly in the case of male only participant groups.

There is currently a gap in the research in relation to these findings, particularly outside of the U.S. and countries in Africa. Further research into how programs engaging men and boys in this space utilise these elements of intervention design and engagement strategies, content and the efficacy of single sex compared to mixed sex participant cohorts is needed.

4.4. Limitations and future directions

The broad approach taken in this review resulted in a large number of included studies (n = 71) and a resulting heterogeneity of study characteristics that restricted analysis options and assessment of publication bias. That said, the possibility of publication bias appears less apparent given that less than half of the 71 included studies reported statistically significant effects, with the remainder reporting mixed or non-significant outcomes. This may be in part due to the significant variance in evaluation approaches and selection of measurement tools used.

Heterogeneity of studies and intervention types limited the ability to draw statistical comparisons for specific outcomes, settings, and designs. Equally, minimal exclusion criteria in the study selection strategy also meant there was noteworthy variance in quality of studies observed across the entire sample of 71 papers. The authors acknowledge the limitations of using p-values as the primary measurement of significance and success. The lack of studies reporting on effect sizes (n = 13) in addition to the variance in study quality is a limitation of the review. However, the approach taken in this review, to include those studies with mixed outcomes and those reporting intended outcomes regardless of the p-value obtained, has allowed for an all-encompassing snapshot of the work happening and the extrapolation of strategies that have previously not been identified across such a broad spectrum of studies targeting gender norms and stereotypes.

An additional constraint was the inclusion of studies reported in English only. Despite being outside the scope of this review it is acknowledged that inclusion of non-English articles is necessary to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the literature.

The broad aim of the review and search strategy will have also inevitably resulted in some studies being missed. It was noted at the beginning of the paper that the framing of the research question was expected to impact the types of interventions captured. This was the case when considering the final list of included studies, in particular the relative absence of tertiary prevention interventions featured, such as those looking at men's behaviour change programs. This could in part account for the scarcity of interventions focused on behaviour change as opposed to the pre-cursors of attitudes and norms.

This review found that interventions using direct participant education interventions were the most common approach to raising awareness, dismantling harmful gender stereotypes and norms and shifting attitudes and beliefs towards more equitable gender norms. However due to the lack of follow-up data collected and reported, these changes can only be attributable to the short-term, with a need for further research into the longevity of these outcomes. Future research in this area needs to ensure the use of sound and consistent measurement tools, including avoiding a reliance solely on self-report measures for behaviour change (e.g. use of observations, key informant interviews, etc.), and more longitudinal data collection and follow-up.

When it comes to content design, as noted at the start of the paper, there is growing focus on the use and evaluation of gender-transformative interventions when engaging in gender equality efforts [ 1 , 2 , 6 , 128 ]. This review however found a distinct lack of engagement with this targeted approach, providing an opportunity for practitioners to explore this to strengthen engagement and impact of interventions (see 1 for a review of gender-transformative interventions working with young people). The scope of this review did not allow for further investigation to be undertaken to explore the gender approaches taken in the 61 studies which did not state their gender approach. There is scope for future investigation of this nature however in consultation with study authors.

An all-encompassing review, such as this one, allows for comparisons across intervention types and focus, such as those targeted at reducing violence or improving sexual and reproductive health behaviours. This broad approach allowed for the key finding that design, delivery and engagement strategies that feature in studies reporting successful outcomes, are successful regardless of the intervention focus thus widening the evidence based from which those researching and implementing interventions can draw. However, the establishment of this broad overview of interventions aimed at gendered stereotypes and norms highlights the current gap and opportunity for more targeted reviews in relation to these concepts.

5. Conclusion

Several characteristics supporting intervention success have been found based on the evidence examined in this review. The findings suggest that when planning, designing and developing interventions aimed at addressing rigid gender stereotypes and norms participant sex should help inform the intervention type chosen. Multi-session interventions are more effective than single or one-off sessions, and the use of additional strengthening strategies such as peer engagement and leadership, addressing multiple levels of the ecological framework, skilling up agents of change, modelling/role models, co-design with participants can support the achievement of intended outcomes. Longitudinal data collection is currently lacking but needed, and when seeking to extend the impact of an intervention to include behaviour change there is currently too much reliance on self-report data, which is subject to bias (e.g. social desirability).

When it comes to engaging men and boys, this review indicates that interventions have a greater chance of success when using peer-based learning in education programs, involving participants in the design and development, and the use of peer delivery and leadership. Ensuring clear learning objectives and outcomes in relation to specific types of norms, stereotypes and behaviours being addressed is crucial in making sure evaluation accurately captures these things. Practitioners need to be cognisant of breaking down stereotypes amongst men (not just between genders), as well as the need for extra attention to be paid in shifting some of the more deeply and culturally entrenched stereotypes and norms. More research is needed into the efficacy of working with male only cohorts, and care taken that rigid stereotypes and norms are not inadvertently reinforced when doing so.

Declarations

Author contribution statement.

Rebecca Stewart: Conceived and designed the experiments; Performed the experiments; Analyzed and interpreted the data; Wrote the paper.

Breanna Wright: Conceived and designed the experiments; Performed the experiments; Analyzed and interpreted the data.

Liam Smith, Steven Roberts, Natalie Russell: Conceived and designed the experiments.

Funding statement

This work was supported by Australian Government Research Training Program and the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation (VicHealth).

Data availability statement

Declaration of interests statement.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Additional information

No additional information is available for this paper.

Acknowledgements

This research was completed as part of a PhD undertaken at Monash University.

Gender stereotypes change outcomes: a systematic literature review

Journal of Humanities and Applied Social Sciences

ISSN : 2632-279X

Article publication date: 15 December 2021

Issue publication date: 19 October 2023

Even though researchers have discussed gender stereotype change, only a few studies have specifically projected outcomes or consequences. Hence, the main purpose of this study is to examine the impact of gender stereotype change concerning the different outcomes.

Design/methodology/approach

In achieving the purpose, the authors searched and reviewed current empirical knowledge on the outcomes of gender stereotype change in the Scopus and EBSCOhost databases from 1970 to 2020. The entire process was conducted through a systematic literature review methodology. The article selection criteria were executed using the PRISMA article selection flowchart steps, and 15 articles were included for the review.

The findings reveal that the outcomes from gender stereotype change research can be categorized mainly under the themes of “family and children,” “marriage” and “equality and women's employment.”

Research limitations/implications

The co-occurrence network visualization map reveals gaps in the existing literature. There may be more possible outcomes relating to the current realities, and more cross-cultural research is needed.

Practical implications

These outcomes provide some implications for policymakers.

Originality/value

Even though researchers have discussed gender stereotype change on its various outcomes or consequences, research is less. Hence, this study provides a synthesis of consequences and addresses the gaps in the area.

• Gender stereotypes change
• Systematic literature review

Priyashantha, K.G. , De Alwis, A.C. and Welmilla, I. (2023), "Gender stereotypes change outcomes: a systematic literature review", Journal of Humanities and Applied Social Sciences , Vol. 5 No. 5, pp. 450-466. https://doi.org/10.1108/JHASS-07-2021-0131

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2021, K.G. Priyashantha, A. Chamaru De Alwis and Indumathi Welmilla

Published in Journal of Humanities and Applied Social Sciences . Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

Introduction

A society's beliefs about the appropriate roles for men and women are gender role attitudes, gender ideology ( Davis and Greenstein, 2009 ) or gender stereotypes ( Attanapola, 2004 ; Berridge et al. , 2009 ; Bosak et al. , 2018 ; Charlesworth and Banaji, 2021 ; De Silva and Priyashantha, 2014 ; Eagly et al. , 2020 ; Lopez-Zafra and Garcia-Retamero, 2021 ). Such beliefs are formed from the peoples' observations of the behavior of men and women in different social roles ( Priyashantha et al. , 2021b ). Particularly, when women or men demonstrate certain behavior more typical to different social roles more often than the opposite sex, such behaviors are believed to be the common traits relevant to men or women ( Eagly et al. , 2020 ; Eagly and Karau, 2002 ). Hence, men are believed to be assertive, independent, rational and decisive, while women are believed to be showing concern for others, warmth, helpfulness and nurturance ( Hoyt et al. , 2009 ). These attributes concerning men and women are referred to as agentic (masculine) and communal (feminine), respectively ( Abele, 2003 ). This agency and communion are then perceived as the fundamental motivators in men's and women's behaviors ( Bakan, 1966 ). However, researchers argue that these perceptions have changed in the contemporary world of work, which has been promoted by females' income-generating activities ( Eagly et al. , 2020 ). Social and economic developments took place, and United Nations initiatives (e.g. human rights, gender equality, nondiscrimination against women, women in development programs) ( Benería et al. , 2015 ) have backed this females' income generation in the mid-20th century in most countries ( Attanapola, 2004 ; Boehnke, 2011 ; Zosuls et al. , 2011 ). These female income generation activities have, in turn, resulted in changes in social role distribution where both men and women are now in multiple roles as parents, employees, employers, volunteers, friends, spouses, siblings, etc. ( Najeema, 2010 ; Perrigino et al. , 2021 ). Thus, peoples' various roles include women's work in men's roles and vice versa ( Blau and Kahn, 2006 ; Mergaert, 2012 ) while playing their traditional roles ( Eagly et al. , 2020 ). This trend has evolved the traditional gender role stereotypes into changing gender stereotypes during the last 50 years ( Blau and Kahn, 2006 ; Mergaert, 2012 ; Priyashantha et al. , 2021b ).

Even though it has been almost 50 years for research into changing gender stereotypes, there are scholarly arguments for the prevalence of traditional gender stereotypes ( Haines et al. , 2016 ; Rudman et al. , 2012 ; Rudman and Glick, 2001 ). Some theoretical bases and the prevalence of some cultures that value gender stereotyping further support these scholarly arguments. Meanwhile, there is an opinion that gender stereotyping violates human rights ( Tabassum and Nayak, 2021 ). Such an opinion is justified by the fact that gender stereotyping limits the capacity of women and men to develop their attributes or professional skills and make decisions about their lives and plans ( Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2014 ). Therefore, researchers have been highly interested in finding whether gender stereotypes have changed or not in societies ( Bosak et al. , 2018 ; Eagly et al. , 2020 ; Haines et al. , 2016 ; Lopez-Zafra and Garcia-Retamero, 2012 , 2021 ; Twenge, 1997a , b ; Ugwu, 2021 ). Instead, it is reported that there are more gender gaps in employment participation in some countries. If the gender stereotypes have changed, theoretically, there should be no such gender gap. Researching this question, the researchers have also been interested in how gender stereotypes change cross-culturally ( Boehnke, 2011 ; Constantin and Voicu, 2015 ; Diekman et al. , 2005 ; Diekman and Eagly, 2000 ; Lopez-Zafra and Garcia-Retamero, 2011 ). Accordingly, they have found that gender stereotypes have changed in Europe ( Berkery et al. , 2013 ; Boehnke, 2011 ; Garcia-Retamero et al. , 2011 ; Lopez-Zafra and Garcia-Retamero, 2012 ) and America ( Alfieri et al. , 1996 ; Beere et al. , 1984 ; Bem, 1974 ; Broverman et al. , 1970 ; Deaux and Lewis, 1984 ; Gill et al. , 1987 ; Lueptow et al. , 1995 ; Parelius, 1975 ; Spence and Hahn, 2016 ; Twenge, 1997a ; Twenge et al. , 2012 ; Zosuls et al. , 2011 ). In addition to that, researchers have found that the gender stereotype change has taken place in East Asia ( Boehnke, 2011 ), Africa ( Bosak et al. , 2018 ) and the Arab World ( Sikdar and Mitra, 2012 ) as well. Some global level studies also confirm that gender stereotype change has occurred in most countries with minor exceptions ( Brown, 1991 ; Charlesworth and Banaji, 2021 ; Constantin and Voicu, 2015 ; Williams and Best, 1990 ). We know that if something happened, this could have various outcomes related to the incident. Accordingly, as the gender stereotype change has also taken place, there could be multiple outcomes associated with it. However, to the best of our knowledge, there is minimal research on this subject matter ( Priyashantha et al. , 2021c ).

Therefore, with the expectation of finding the outcomes of gender stereotype change, we positioned the central question of the current study as, what is the impact of gender stereotype change? Thus, the present study systematically and quantitatively analyzes selected literature in the last 50 years to identify the outcomes of gender stereotypes and gaps in the prevailing knowledge.

Methodology

This article is positioned as Systematic Literature Review (SLR). The SLRs require a prior protocol to be developed to document the inclusion and exclusion of studies and analysis methods ( Pahlevan-Sharif et al. , 2019 ). We did a comprehensive literature search for this study, and a protocol was designed before the article search. There is a standard way of reporting the SLR known as Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA- Liberati et al. , 2009 ), which is highly recommended in Medicine. However, as there is no such framework in social sciences, authors who intend to conduct the SLR tend to use the narrative and arbitrary guidelines ( Pahlevan-Sharif et al. , 2019 ; Petticrew and Roberts, 2006 ). Instead, in this study, for the article selection process to be objective and systematic, we followed the PRISMA article selection flow chart steps to select the articles.

The PRISMA article selection flow diagram has four steps: identification, screening, eligibility and included, and we followed them in the article selection. The identifications stage includes database, search terms and search criteria. The databases were Scopus and Ebscohost for searching the articles. The search terms were “gender stereotype change” and “outcomes.” The search criteria or algorithm was developed by combining the terms with AND operative, and each search term was given similar words combined with OR operative. Accordingly, we retrieved 56 articles from Scopus and 68 Articles from EBSCOhost databases. Subsequently, the retrieved list containing the title, abstract, keywords, authors' names and affiliations, journal name, cited numbers and year, etc., was exported to a Microsoft Excel sheet. The duplicates were then searched and removed.

The screening stage includes eliminating the articles when their titles and abstracts do not meet the inclusion criteria ( Meline, 2006 ). The inclusion criteria for the current study were the “empirical studies” published in “academic journals” in “English” on “gender stereotype change” during the “1970–2020” period. Thus, the reason for selecting 1970 as the entry point was that gender stereotype change started in 1970, and it was extended to 2020 to include more studies for the review. Each author of the current research independently went through each title and abstract and eliminated the studies that did not meet the inclusion criteria. Notably, if there was any disagreement about elimination was resolved through discussion and consensus. Hence, we excluded 73 articles that were based on “review,” “qualitative,” “books,” “book chapters,” “magazines,” “conference papers,” “non-English” and “non-relevance to the current study's scope.” Then, the remaining 50 articles' full-text versions were retrieved for assessing their eligibility, which is the next step of the PRISMA flow diagram.

Since the articles have already been screened out up to this stage, evaluating their methodological reporting for eligibility checking is much better ( Meline, 2006 ). It is justifiable as we had taken an inclusion criterion as “empirical studies.” Thus, the evaluation areas may be the population, methodology, methods, design, context, etc., and can find the reasons for excluding the articles as “ambiguous methods” and “required original information from the author,” etc. ( Meline, 2006 ). Accordingly, we independently evaluated each article on such grounds. We identified some studies based on qualitative reviews, perspectives, ambiguous methods and some sought original information about the methodology from the authors. They all were excluded through our discussion and consensus. In total, we identified 35 papers as irrelevant at this stage, and finally, we selected 15 articles for the review. They are shown in Table 1 , and the process we followed for article selection is shown in Figure 1 .

The Microsoft Excel sheet was then modified, and the data in it were fed into the VOSviewer Software to run the keyword co-occurrence and term co-occurrence network visualization maps. That was to identify the core themes in the selected studies scientifically. Notably, the keyword co-occurrence is to identify the main areas touched from the keywords of the studies as the keywords of a research article denote its primary content on a particular field of investigation. Moreover, the term co-occurrence analysis is to identify more about studies than the keywords co-occurrence as it searches key terms reflected in the titles and abstracts of each article.

Results and analysis

This section is mainly organized to present the results of the SLR and analyze them. It primarily consists of two sections: descriptive analysis and literature classification.

Descriptive analysis

The year-wise article distribution is shown in Figure 2 . Even the 50 years considered for the review, the empirical studies reported on outcomes of gender stereotype change since 1998. Figure 2 shows that at least one empirical study has been conducted for each year during the 1998–2020 period. Moreover, there is a high frequency of studies in 2005, 2017 and 2018 years. Table 2 shows the methodological reporting of the studies. It reveals that studies have been conducted based on large samples drawn on panel surveys. The information ensures the validity of the selected studies for the review, as we had an inclusion criterion for selecting papers as “empirical studies.” Concerning the context under which studies were conducted ( Figure 3 ), the USA takes the led by having seven empirical studies published (1970–2020). Canada is in the second position having two studies during the period. Australia, China, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain and United Kingdom have conducted one study each.

Literature classification

The classification of results is critical in finding out actual work done on the objective set for the research ( Jabeen et al. , 2020 ; Priyashantha et al. , 2021a ). Since the main research objective of the current study was to identify the outcomes of the gender stereotype change, this section mainly classifies the results relating to that. As the keyword co-occurrence network analysis is suitable for identifying the critical areas on a particular investigation, we used it for our study to answer the study's central question. Figure 4 shows the output of it.

The size of the node denotes the number of occurrences in a keyword co-occurrences visualization map. Hence, the higher the number of occurrences, the larger the node's size. Thus, our analysis of the keyword co-occurrences found that “gender,” “employment” and “longitudinal research” denoted in larger nodes in the map ( Figure 4 ). It reveals that they are the keywords that have frequently occurred in studies. We know that “gender” is highly associated with gender stereotypes. It may be a justifiable reason why it happens so often in studies. “Employment” opportunities are also justifiable since it has been proven that employment opportunities have been a significant cause for gender stereotypes changes ( Eagly et al. , 2020 ). Moreover, as almost all the studies in the sample have adopted the “longitudinal research” design, the keyword “longitudinal research” has also fallen to the frequently occurring category. It demonstrates the methods used by the selected articles and their suitability to the current study.

Additionally, Figure 4 shows four main clusters denoted in different colors containing different keywords in each cluster. More specifically, Table 3 shows the number of terms in each cluster, indicating that changing gender stereotype outcomes varied by different areas of investigations. Grouping the keywords into one cluster is regarded as the keywords' likelihood to reflect similar topics. Hence, clusters one and two (as stated in Table 3 ) have the highest number of keywords and suggest that the topics highlighted in those are the centralized fields in gender stereotype change and outcome research. Thus, the central areas highlighted are “attitudes,” “cohabitation,” “fertility,” “life course,” “living arrangements,” “marriage,” “couples,” “employment,” “family economics,” “gender roles,” “longitudinal research” and “marital quality.”

Moreover, the term co-occurrence network visualization map created by the VOSviewer software ( Figure 5 ) is treated as more detailed than the keyword co-occurrence analysis. It provides an analysis that goes beyond the keywords as it further investigates the areas focused on in the title and abstracts of the studies. Hence, creating this type of map further identified the areas frequently investigated on gender stereotypes change outcomes. Accordingly, Figure 5 categorized the terms into three clusters in Blue, Red and Green. In the Blue cluster, there are two terms as “family” and “child.” A common theme can be formed for them as family and child-related outcomes. As we did a detailed search for the outcomes in each article, we could summarize them in Table 4 . Hence, we could extract different family and children-related outcomes from Table 4 . They are; “Family Role Overload and Stress” ( Duxbury et al. , 2018 ), “Subsequent School Enrollment” ( Cunningham et al. , 2005 ), “Fewer Children” ( Barber and Axinn, 1998 ), “Delay in Marital Parenthood” ( Cunningham et al. , 2005 ) and “Children's Convergence of Egalitarian Attitudes” ( Dawson et al. , 2016 ).

Concerning the family and children-related outcomes, Duxbury et al. (2018) have found that the “family role overload” of both husbands and wives was consequent in changing gender stereotype contexts. The sense of family role overload then becomes a strong predictor of couples' “perceived stress” ( Duxbury et al. , 2018 ). The perceived stress can undermine the health and well-being of people. The literature confirms that “psychological strains” and “disorders” ( Hébert et al. , 2017 ), “adverse impacts on the immune system” ( Barry et al. , 2020 ; Cohen et al. , 1999 ), “low quality of life,” “insomnia,” “burnout” ( Ribeiro et al. , 2018 ) and “family distress” ( Aryee et al. , 1999 ) resultant from the stress. When the stress becomes to distress level, there is a high possibility of causing chronic diseases and mortality ( Barry et al. , 2020 ). Therefore, these findings provide more implications for the policymakers to emphasize reducing those negative outcomes.

Apart from this, young adults' biases toward changing gender role attitudes can cause “subsequent school enrolments” ( Ciabattari, 2001 ; Cunningham et al. , 2005 ). It is severe, particularly among women, as they need to acquire knowledge to upgrade their employment status ( Cunningham et al. , 2005 ) and be independent ( Goldscheider and Goldscheider, 1993 ). However, later school enrollment may hinder performing family roles of adults as intensive time is devoted to education ( Marini, 1978 ). Moreover, women with changing attitudes toward gender roles are “less likely to have children” ( Barber and Axinn, 1998 ) and “delay in marital parenthood” ( Cunningham et al. , 2005 ). As a result, the future society could go into a severe crisis regarding population growth ( Barber and Axinn, 1998 ). It could be challenging to find people for growth prospects in economies. Therefore, the policymakers need to consider this seriously and try to overcome that. In the meantime, scholars need to focus on further research on this outcome to confirm this viewpoint further.

The last outcome of the family and children-related category is the “children's convergence of egalitarian attitudes” ( Dawson et al. , 2016 ). It indicates that gender stereotype changes could evolve over the generations and possibly consequent the different outcomes of gender stereotype change. It implies that more research on this area is required to find more associated outcomes.

The cluster in Red ( Figure 5 ) has categorized the terms as; “Role Attitude,” “Attitudes,” “Cohabitation,” “Marriage” and “Consequences.” Out of them, the “role attitudes,” “attitudes” and “consequences” are the general search terms related to the concept of gender stereotype change outcomes, and hence, we ignored them for review. However, the remaining two terms, “marriage” and “cohabitation,” were considered for the review. Since these terms are related to marriage, we themed them as “marriage-related.” Hence, marriage-related outcomes we found were “Increased Cohabitation, Low Marriage Rate” ( Barber and Axinn, 1998 ), “Delay in Marriage” ( Cunningham et al. , 2005 ), “Low Satisfaction,” “Low Relationship Quality,” “Low Stability in Marital Relationships” ( Blom and Hewitt, 2020 ) and “Attitude Convergence in Marriage” ( Kalmijn, 2005 ).

The “increased cohabitation,” “low marriage rate” ( Barber and Axinn, 1998 ) and “delay in marriage” ( Cunningham et al. , 2005 ) can subsequently impact the population growth negatively ( Barber and Axinn, 1998 ). If such outcomes exist over time, it could be a barrier to the progression of societies. However, another finding reveals that gender stereotype change increases childbirth to single parents in recent decades ( Cunningham et al. , 2005 ). Therefore, it is difficult to directly conclude that such outcomes negatively affect population growth or societal progression. More research is needed to find the associated outcomes of these consequences so that reasonable judgments can be made whether such outcomes generate more negative or positive effects on the population, society or any other.

Moreover, in marital relationships, Australian-related research has found that “low satisfaction,” “low relationship quality” and “low stability” ( Blom and Hewitt, 2020 ) were consequent from the gender stereotype changes. All of which resemble negative outcomes by their surface nature. However, another finding reveals that “attitude convergence in marriage” ( Kalmijn, 2005 ) occurred due to gender stereotype changes. It is contrary to the previous finding, which is a positive outcome by its surface nature.

Most importantly, for these types of outcomes, positivity or negativity is dependent on cultural values. The negative outcomes as “low satisfaction,” “low relationship quality” and “low stability” may be very accurate for the cultures which value male breadwinner family structures ( Blom and Hewitt, 2020 ). However, more opposing consequences, like “attitude convergence in marriage” ( Kalmijn, 2005 ), can be found in cultures with more egalitarian values like Nordic countries ( Vitali and Arpino, 2016 ). Hence, in total, the positivity or negativity of outcomes is a matter of societal and cultural values. Therefore, generalizing interpretations about the positivity or negativity of each outcome is suitable with more cross-cultural research. Similarly, further research is needed regarding the associated outcomes of each of these outcomes.

Finally, the Green cluster has the terms as; “Outcomes,” “Gender Differences,” “Gender Egalitarianism,” “Work” and “Women.” As in other clusters, we had a common search term, “outcome,” in this cluster, and we ignored it. Except that, the terms “gender difference” and “gender egalitarianism” seem to represent a common theme of “equality.” The remaining terms “work” and “women” are merged, and a theme can be given as “women's employment.” Thus, this cluster is then characterized by the theme of “equality and women employments.” Specifically, under this cluster, we found the outcomes of “Reduction of Gender Role Stereotyping” ( Dawson et al. , 2016 ), “Egalitarian Essentialism” ( Cotter et al. , 2011 ), “Non-Difference in Men or Women for Work-Life” ( Lyness and Judiesch, 2014 ) and “Gender Differences in Personality Cross-Culturally” ( Schmitt et al. , 2017 ), and they can be related to the equality. Similarly, the “Women's Full-Time Employment,” “Women's Independent Living” ( Cunningham et al. , 2005 ), “More Working Hours” and “More Income for Women” ( Corrigall and Konrad, 2007 ) and “Increased Entrepreneurial Intention of Women” ( Perez-Quintana et al. , 2017 ) were found, and they can be categorized under the theme of women's employment. Moreover, the outcomes of the “Reduction of the Women's Disadvantage in Entering Male-Dominated Occupations” ( He and Zhou, 2018 ) and “Economic Rationality of Females” ( Onozaka and Hafzi, 2019 ) are also categorized to the theme of “women's employment.”

Thus, the “equality” related outcomes in the “equality and women's employment,” the “reduction of traditional gender role stereotyping” ( Dawson et al. , 2016 ), “egalitarian essentialism” ( Cotter et al. , 2011 ) and “non-difference in men or women for work-life” ( Lyness and Judiesch, 2014 ) may change in different cultural contexts. As we have various cultural contexts that value either traditional gender norms or gender stereotype change, more cross-cultural research is needed to interpret such outcomes. Moreover, one cross-cultural study found that a “gender difference in personality” is consequenced even though people's gender stereotype attitudes have already changed ( Schmitt et al. , 2017 ). Therefore, this finding confirms the overall behavioral diversity of people, including diversity in gender role behaviors, although the equality of gender roles is emphasized.

Concerning women's employment-related outcomes, such as increases in “women's full-time employment opportunities” ( Cunningham et al. , 2005 ), “reduction of women's disadvantage in entering male-dominated occupations” ( He and Zhou, 2018 ), “more working hours and more income for women” ( Corrigall and Konrad, 2007 ) and “their increased entrepreneurial intention” ( Perez-Quintana et al. , 2017 ), women's “economic rationality” ( Onozaka and Hafzi, 2019 ) reveals the women's improved economic status. Moreover, the findings like increased “women's independent living” ( Cunningham et al. , 2005 ) represent their independent decision-making. The positive side of these is that they reduce the gender gap in employment participation and the ultimate contribution to economic growth. However, since we have different cultures worldwide, more cross-cultural research is needed to generalize this. As discussed under “family and children” related outcomes, the negative side of women's employment-related outcomes is the missing family responsibilities or adverse health effects and low reproductivity. Therefore, this provides an implication for policymakers to avoid those harmful effects. In the meantime, as the socialization forces are diverse over time ( Brown and Stone, 2016 ), researchers can further test whether these types of outcomes exist over time.

In the network visualization map in Figure 5 , the circles' size denotes the number of occurrences. It suggests that the higher the number of occurrences, the larger the circle's size. Accordingly, the term “women” is then considered to be the frequently used term. It implies that the women-related outcomes should have been investigated repeatedly. However, even the term “women” has been found to be co-occurred many times in this study, our detailed analysis of each article found that the different women-related outcomes have been investigated only once. Instead, the other outcomes related to terms represented by the nodes in Figure 5 have not been co-occurred or tested frequently in the studies. Hence, overall, more research is needed to be a well-established knowledge on each outcome of stereotype change found in this study.

Gender stereotype change has been given scholarly attention since the 1970s. Traditional gender stereotypes have evolved into gender stereotype change or egalitarian gender stereotypes with females' participation in employment ( Brandth et al. , 2017 ; Mergaert et al. , 2013 ). This gender stereotype change has created various outcomes in various areas. This SLR studied the outcomes of gender stereotype change in the literature during the 1970–2020 period. The literature search was conducted using the Scopus and EBSCOhost databases. Empirical studies were mainly focused on selecting the articles. Initially, we extracted 124 articles for screening. After assessing their eligibility, we finally selected 15 articles for the review. They were subjected to the keyword and term co-occurrence analysis for finding the themes of gender stereotypes change outcomes.

The findings reveal that outcomes of gender stereotypes change are under the main themes of “family and children,” “marriage” and “equality and women's employment.” There are very few studies found relating to the “family and children” related outcomes. They are “Family Role Overload and Stress” ( Duxbury et al. , 2018 ), “Fewer Children” ( Barber and Axinn, 1998 ), “Later School Enrollment” ( Cunningham et al. , 2005 ) and “Children's Convergence of Egalitarian Attitudes” ( Dawson et al. , 2016 ). Of these results, it was found that all other results, except for the convergence of children's egalitarian attitudes ( Dawson et al. , 2016 ), had some adverse effects, such as neglect of family responsibilities and negative effects on health and female fertility. They provide implications to policymakers to ovoid those harmful effects. Moreover, more research is needed to test whether these outcomes exist over time since the socialization forces are diverse ( Brown and Stone, 2016 ).

Compared to the “family and children” related outcomes, more outcomes have found “marriage” associated outcomes. They are “Increase Cohabitation,” “Low Marriage Rate” ( Barber and Axinn, 1998 ), “Delay in Marriage” ( Cunningham et al. , 2005 ), “Attitude Convergence in Marriage” ( Kalmijn, 2005 ), “Low Satisfaction,” “Lower Relationship Quality” and “Low Stability in Marital Relationships” ( Blom and Hewitt, 2020 ). “The Increase in Cohabitation,” “Low Marriage Rate” ( Barber and Axinn, 1998 ) and “Delay in Marriage” ( Cunningham et al. , 2005 ) can further negatively impact the population growth ( Barber and Axinn, 1998 ). However, more research is needed regarding these outcomes and their associated outcomes to generalize whether they generate more positive or negative consequences. Moreover, concerning all the marriage-related outcomes, their positivity or negativity cannot be determined from their surface interpretation. More research is needed to be done on the associated outcomes of each of these outcomes. Moreover, as the marriage-related outcomes are subjected to cultural perspectives on gender roles, we cannot determine the positivity or negativity of such outcomes without doing more cross-cultural studies. Therefore, more cross-cultural research is needed.

Compared to the family and children and marriage-related outcomes, more outcomes were found relating to equality and women's employment-related category. For the analysis purposes, we further categorized them into two sub-themes as equality and women's employment-related. The “equality”-related outcomes found were; “Reduction of Traditional Gender Role Stereotyping” ( Dawson et al. , 2016 ), “Egalitarian Essentialism” ( Cotter et al. , 2011 ), “Non-Difference in Men or Women for Work-Life” ( Lyness and Judiesch, 2014 ), “Gender Difference in Personality” ( Schmitt et al. , 2017 ). We believe that these outcomes may change in different cultural contexts. Hence, more cross-cultural research is needed to make generalizations. Similarly, the women's employment-related outcomes found were: increases in “Women's Full-Time Employment Opportunities” ( Cunningham et al. , 2005 ), “Reduction of Women's Disadvantage in Entering Male-Dominated Occupations” ( He and Zhou, 2018 ), “More Working Hours and More Income for Women” ( Corrigall and Konrad, 2007 ), “Women's Increased Entrepreneurial Intention” ( Perez-Quintana et al. , 2017 ), “Women's Independent Living” ( Cunningham et al. , 2005 ) and their “Economic Rationality” ( Onozaka and Hafzi, 2019 ). These outcomes reveal the improved economic status and independent living of females. These can help reduce the employment gender gap that ultimately contributes to economic growth. For this also, more cross-cultural research is needed to make more generalizations. It is proven in this study that family responsibilities are missed and have adverse effects on health and reproductivity when females are involved in employment opportunities. Therefore, the outcomes provide an implication for the policymakers to ovoid those harmful effects. Moreover, more research is needed to test whether these outcomes exist over time since the socialization forces are diverse ( Brown and Stone, 2016 ).

Practicality and research implications

There are implications for future researchers from the findings of the current research. Although the 50 years considered for reviewing the literature on gender stereotype outcomes, we were able to find very few outcomes from only 15 studies conducted on an empirical basis. Therefore, more research is needed on this area. More specifically, gender stereotyping is coupled with cultural values on gender norms. Mainly, we have cultures on gender role stereotyping and gender role egalitarianism. Therefore, future researches need to focus more research on a cross-cultural basis. Moreover, since the socialization forces are diverse, complex and continuously evolving, more research is essential to have a well-established knowledge of gender stereotype change outcomes.

Additionally, the outcome of “Family Role Overload and Stress” ( Duxbury et al. , 2018 ) has a high possibility to create more health risks to the employees whose gender role attitude changed. Moreover, “Fewer Children” ( Barber and Axinn, 1998 ), “Later School Enrollment” ( Cunningham et al. , 2005 ), “Increase in Cohabitation,” “Low Marriage Rate” ( Barber and Axinn, 1998 ) and “Delay in Marriage” ( Cunningham et al. , 2005 ), and all the outcomes of women employment-related category can negatively impact on population growth. Therefore, they provide implications to policymakers to ovoid those harmful effects.

PRISMA article selection flow diagram

Year-wise research article distribution

Country-wise article publication

Keywords co-occurrence network visualization map

Term co-occurrence network visualization map

Included articles for the review

Source(s): Authors created (2021)

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Acknowledgements

Funding : No funding was available for this research

Authors Contributions : All authors contributed to the study conception, design, material preparation, data collection and analysis. All versions of drafts of the manuscript were written by Author 1, and other authors commented and revised. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Availability: Data collected during the current study are not publicly available. However, they can be available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Conflicts of Interest : On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.

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The Development of Gender Role Attitudes During Adolescence: Effects of Sex, Socioeconomic Background, and Cognitive Abilities

• Empirical Research
• Open access
• Published: 15 July 2022
• Volume 51 , pages 2114–2129, ( 2022 )

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• Ricarda Ullrich   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2505-9258 1 ,
• Michael Becker 1 , 2 &
• Jan Scharf 1  

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How gender role attitudes develop during adolescence, and how biological, social, and cognitive factors predict this development, remains a matter of debate. This study examines the development of gender role attitudes from early adolescence to emerging adulthood and investigates how the developmental trajectory is affected by sex, socioeconomic status, and cognitive abilities (intelligence). Four waves of the large-scale longitudinal German dataset BIJU between 1991 (grade 7; N = 3828, M age = 13, SD = 0.61, 53.1% female, 96.4% German nationality), 1995 (grade 10, M age = 17), 1997 (grade 12, M age = 19) and 2001/2002 (university/career entry, M age = 24) were used. Measurement invariance was examined across waves and gender. Latent growth curve models showed that adolescents developed more egalitarian gender role attitudes. Differences between the sexes decreased over time but remained significant. Socioeconomic status seemed less relevant, while adolescents, especially those with lower intelligence scores, developed more egalitarian gender role attitudes during adolescence. The results showed that teenagers developed more open and egalitarian attitudes during adolescence, and that the development trajectories of female and male adolescents converge.

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Introduction

Gender role attitudes, and the ways in which gender roles are lived out, change not only over time, but also throughout the life course with different ages and contexts (e.g., Dotti Sani & Quaranta, 2017 ). In particular, adolescence is a period when gender-related constructs, such as gender role attitudes, are especially salient. Teenagers experience biological, cognitive, and social changes during adolescence that can affect their gender role attitudes (Eagly & Wood, 2012 ). Nevertheless, few studies have addressed how gender role attitudes develop during adolescence. Theoretically as well as empirically, the approaches and results are quite contradictory. Some studies have demonstrated a trend towards more traditional gender role attitudes (e.g., Halimi et al., 2021 ), while other studies have shown a development towards a more egalitarian direction (e.g., Updegraff et al., 2014 ). There is also limited research on key predictors of the development of gender role attitudes during adolescence. Using four waves of the BIJU dataset, this study aims to answer the research question of how gender role attitudes develop during adolescence and how this development varies by sex, socioeconomic status, and cognitive abilities.

The Development of Gender Roles During Adolescence

Gender roles, as a psychological and social construct, comprise both societal expectations and cognitive structures. From a societal perspective, gender roles describe the division of labor and power within a specific cultural and historical context between men and women, with respect to topics such as romantic partnerships, the familial division of labor, and workforce careers. Gender roles are assigned on the basis of sex, traditionally categorized as either male or female. The male role is associated with serving as the family breadwinner, while the female role is associated with social and domestic activities (e.g., Eagly & Wood, 2012 ). The traditional division of gender roles began to break down in the 20th century, and this process has continued in recent decades. In particular, the female role has undergone substantial change and expanded into areas outside the domestic sphere. As a result, Western-influenced societies have come to exhibit egalitarian gender role attitudes, where both partners share income-earning and domestic and care work on an equal basis (Lomazzi & Seddig, 2020 ). However, while attitudes are changing, the majority of care work continues to be carried out by women (Zucco & Lott, 2021 ). Children and adolescents learn through observation that there are societal gender roles, and by internalizing these observations, adolescents develop attitudes towards these gender roles (Eagly & Wood, 2012 ), which can change over the course of adolescence. However, it remains unclear how gender role attitudes develop during adolescence.

In general, adolescence is an important phase for gender-related changes. Young people discover their individual sexual identity, undergo hormonal and physical changes, and experience their first romantic relationships. Accordingly, the gender intensification hypothesis posits that gender role behavior intensifies during adolescence as young people learn to inhabit their later adult roles (including their gender roles) through early experiences with romantic relationships (Hill & Lynch, 1983 ). This means that traditional gender role attitudes intensify during adolescence. This hypothesis has been confirmed for early adolescent boys, who exhibit an increase in traditional gender role attitudes from grade 7 to grade 8 (Halimi et al., 2021 ).

In contrast, from a cognitive developmental perspective, it would be argued that the process of discovering one’s own sexuality during adolescence leads young people to question morally built constructs and reconfigure their gender role assumptions (Eccles, 1987 ). As a result of cognitive maturation, adolescents are able to distinguish between descriptive and prescriptive gender norms and create cognitive representations of newer, more complex social arrangements. Competing concepts can be cognitively integrated to avoid cognitive dissonance, e.g., women can be both loving mothers and have successful careers (Harter, 2003 ). By investigating gender-based categorization schemes during childhood, research has found that at the end of childhood and the transition to adolescence, previously established categories begin to soften and children no longer rigidly distinguish between male and female characteristics (Trautner et al., 2005 ). With respect to later development, research has shown that traditional gender role attitudes among Mexican-American boys and girls continuously decline during adolescence (Updegraff et al., 2014 ). These findings have been confirmed for African-American adolescents (Lam et al., 2017 ). For Mexican immigrant students, egalitarian gender role attitudes continuously increase across adolescence (Schroeder et al., 2019 ); this was likewise found for egalitarian attitudes at the end of adolescence, during the transition to adulthood (Fan and Marini 2000 ). Nevertheless, although traditional gender role attitudes decline initially during adolescence, they can increase towards its end depending on individual and contextual factors (Crouter et al., 2007 ).

The findings concerning how and to what extent gender role attitudes develop during adolescence are mixed and therefore more research is required. Likewise, it remains unclear which predictors moderate the developmental trajectory. Studies that have examined this question from a developmental perspective have delivered relatively heterogeneous results, partly due to the challenges in the measurement of gender role attitudes. Problematic aspects include modelling one-dimensional scales with egalitarianism at one pole and traditionalism at the other, and capturing temporal dynamics in gender role attitudes, as gender role attitudes change over the individual life course (the focus of this study) while societal gender roles are also changing (Lomazzi, 2017 ). Consequently, recent studies have sought to test the measurement invariance of the gender role attitudes construct. Internationally comparative studies have shown that complete measurement invariance across countries cannot be assumed. Therefore the use of measurement invariance testing to ensure construct validity before conducting substantive investigations of gender role attitudes is recommend (e.g., Seddig & Lomazzi, 2019 ). This makes it possible for individual items (e.g., specific questions that might be more or less age-appropriate) to be replaced, or flexible measurement invariance constructs (e.g., partial measurement invariance) to be applied. However, previous studies have not tested the measurement invariance of gender role attitudes in individuals over a longer period of time. Research should investigate whether measurement with a uniform metric is possible over such a long period of individual development, and which restrictions must be placed on measurement invariance assumptions with respect to specific instruments.

Influences on Gender Role Attitudes

Gender roles are assigned on the basis of supposed biological differences between men and women. These gender roles are taken on by individuals in a society and represent shared normative expectations within a given cultural and historical context (Eagly & Wood, 2012 ). These gender-based attributions, in turn, are taken up by children as cognitive categories that help structure the social environment (Martin et al., 2002 ). This study focuses on three key predictive factors for the development of gender role attitudes over time: (1) sex, (2) parents’ socioeconomic status as a key social frame of reference conveying normative attitudes about men and women, and (3) individual cognitive abilities, which influence the categories of cognitive representation that are manifested and expressed in gender role attitudes.

Sex differences

Since gender roles are based on the (supposed) biological difference between the sexes, it is important to examine the differences in attitudes towards these roles that emerge between the sexes. Prior research has shown that men and women exhibit different degrees of traditional and egalitarian gender role attitudes (e.g., Bryant, 2003 ). Traditionally, men and women took on different roles attributed to their biological predispositions. In recent years, as this stereotypical division of roles has broken down, the significance of sex has decreased and the significance of gender as a social construct has increased (Athenstaedt & Alfermann, 2011 ). This has resulted in a general trend towards more egalitarian attitudes. However, prior research has found evidence for sex differences in such attitudes. Overall, women exhibit more egalitarian attitudes than men (e.g., Bryant, 2003 ). Internationally comparative research confirms this finding when the social context is considered (Dotti Sani & Quaranta, 2017 ). Thus, because women are particularly aware of the implications and limitations of the traditional female role, it is especially relevant for them to implement egalitarian structures and endorse egalitarian attitudes, for example, for equal participation in the labor market (Thijs et al., 2019 ).

Both young women and men develop more egalitarian attitudes during adolescence (e.g., Bryant, 2003 ). However, there are inconsistent findings with respect to the trajectory of sex differences in gender role attitudes. Some studies have shown that sex differences in gender role attitudes increase during adolescence as female adolescents develop stronger egalitarian attitudes, leading to an increase in sex differences (e.g., Schroeder et al., 2019 ). However, other studies have shown that male adolescents exhibit a stronger shift towards more egalitarian attitudes during the transition from adolescence to adulthood, leading to a reduction in sex differences (Fan & Marini, 2000 ). Some studies have found no differences in the two sexes’ trajectories (Updegraff et al., 2014 ), except regarding the influence of family (Crouter et al., 2007 ). Overall, the current state of empirical research on the development of sex differences in gender role attitudes can be described as heterogeneous or even contradictory.

Social factors

Gender roles represent socially shared assumptions about a certain gendered division of labor and power. Children and adolescents’ first point of reference for the formation and socialization of gender role attitudes is the family. The family is a learning context for gender role behavior, and the family socioeconomic context and parental level of education are predictive of gender role attitudes. Maternal employment and parental occupational prestige influence children’s gender role attitudes, particularly those of girls (McHale et al., 2003 ). Moreover, a family’s socioeconomic situation is closely linked to children’s aspirations for their future school and career trajectories (Stocké et al., 2011 ). Girls from socioeconomically privileged households should be particularly likely to develop egalitarian attitudes, as they develop higher aspirations that can only be achieved through egalitarian participation in the labor force (e.g., Mays, 2012 ).

Families with a high socioeconomic status exhibit more egalitarian gender role attitudes than less socially privileged families. This link can be partially explained by their level of education (e.g., Schroeder et al., 2019 ), although occupational prestige (particularly of the mother) is also considered relevant (e.g., Lühe et al., 2018 ). A high level of parental education and maternal employment have a positive effect on teenagers’ egalitarian gender role attitudes. There are differences in effects between male and female adolescents (Fan & Marini 2000 ). In contrast, research has found that the attitudes of female and male adolescents develop differently over time depending on whether their parents endorse more egalitarian or traditional attitudes. Male adolescents with traditionally oriented parents exhibit almost no changes in attitudes over time. In contrast, a curvilinear trajectory is found for male adolescents with egalitarian-oriented parents. These male adolescents initially develop more egalitarian attitudes, which become more traditional again at the end of adolescence. Female adolescents exhibit a decline in traditional attitudes during adolescence, regardless of their parents’ attitudes. Parents only influence the level of attitudes: female adolescents with more traditional parents also tend to have more traditional attitudes than female adolescents from egalitarian households (Crouter et al., 2007 ). In summary, the research has shown that higher socioeceonomic status is supportive for egalitarian gender role attitudes among female adolescents, whereas the results for male adolescents are mixed and inconsistent.

Cognitive factors

Cognitive factors are the third component that influence gender role attitudes. It can be assumed that higher cognitive abilities are associated with more egalitarian attitudes, as teenagers with higher cognitive abilities are more able to process, reflect, and integrate competing concepts, such as the idea that a woman can be both a good mother and pursue her career ambitions (avoidance of cognitive dissonance: Harter, 2003 ). This leads to a better understanding of societal structures and potentially critically questioning traditional gender roles (Mays, 2012 ). Research on cognitive flexibility has demonstrated that children develop more flexible attitudes towards gender stereotypes during the transition to adolescence (Trautner et al., 2005 ). This is attributed to the fact that children become more cognitively flexible during this period. However, researchers have not been able to empirically investigate any of the cognitive abilities identified as important predictors of change in attitudes during the transition from childhood to adolescence (Trautner et al. 2005 ).

If one takes cognitive abilities as an increase in education and knowledge, it has been shown that increased education is associated with a stronger preference for egalitarian attitudes, and particularly with a critical view of traditional gender roles (e.g., Bolzendahl & Myers, 2004 ). Attending college, education in general, and a continuation of education in particular exhibit a significant positive effect on egalitarian gender role attitudes (e.g., Fan & Marini, 2000 ). However, the association between cognitive abilities and the development of gender role attitudes over time, and the question of whether the effects of cognitive abilities differ between men and women, remains unclear. It might be assumed that women with high cognitive abilities should have a particular interest in the implementation of egalitarian attitudes, which are associated with higher educational aspirations and the pursuit of a career (e.g., Bolzendahl & Myers, 2004 ). It could also be hypothesized that female adolescents with higher cognitive abilities realize that following egalitarian attitudes towards career orientation and being family orientated may be conflicting goals and conclude that pursuing more traditional attitudes is more advantageous. Moreover, it could be argued that men do not benefit from gender equality or even see it as a threat to their economic position; higher cognitive abilities might not be associated with egalitarian attitudes among men. However, a higher level of education has been shown to be associated with less traditional attitudes among both men and women (Mays, 2012 ).

Current Study

Research on developmental trajectories of gender role attitudes and their key influencing factors during adolescence produced ambiguous findings. This study aims to answer the question how gender role attitudes are developing for male and female adolescents and how this trajectory is differing by parents socioeconomic status and cognitive abilities. The first research question is whether gender role attitudes can be measured with a uniform metric over time and sex. The second research question addresses the development of gender role attitudes over time and its associations with the following predictors: sex, socioeconomic status, and cognitive abilities. Based on the aforementioned theoretical considerations and prior empirical findings, it is hypothesized that, in absolute terms, female adolescents should exhibit more egalitarian attitudes than male adolescents at the first measurement point in grade 7 ( M age = 13). Building upon these assumptions, an exploratory investigation was conducted of whether male and female adolescents exhibit different trajectories and how the difference between the sexes develops over time. Moreover, as the state of research concerning the socioeconomic status and the gender role attitudes is quite heterogeneous (especially for male adolescents), this study examines this correlation exploratively. It is hypothesized that higher individual cognitive abilities are associated with more egalitarian attitudes, as adolescents with higher cognitive abilities should be able to integrate competing concepts more easily. No presumptions are made on how cognitive abilities might predict the developmental trajectory of adolescents’ attitudes over time.

The study on Educational Careers and Psychosocial Development in Adolescence and Young Adulthood (BIJU; Baumert et al., 1996 ) was used for the following analyses. BIJU is a multi-cohort longitudinal study with data collection led by the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin in cooperation with the Leibniz Institute for Science and Mathematics Education in Kiel. Data collection took place in the German federal states of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, North Rhine-Westphalia, and Saxony-Anhalt, and was extended to include schools from Berlin starting in the second wave. Secondary schools from these federal states were sampled, and then two seventh-grade classes were sampled from each of these schools. This resulted in a clustered random sample of N = 212 schools with two classes each for the 1991/1992 school year.

The initial seventh-grade sample comprised N = 5944 secondary school students. Students from the federal state of Berlin were included in the second wave, increasing the sample size to N = 8043. However, the sample size dropped to N = 5386 by the fourth wave in grade 10 (1995), as some students left school after obtaining a lower secondary school leaving certificate in grade 9 ( Hauptschulabschluss ) and other students changed schools or were held back a year. Due to the dissolution of existing lower secondary school classes as students entered (university-preparatory) upper secondary school, there was an intentional oversampling of all students in upper secondary schools during the fifth wave (1997, grade 12). This increased the sample size to N = 8061. During the sixth wave (2001/2002, university/career entry), data collection took place exclusively by post, reducing the sample size to N = 3261 (for more details see Becker et al., 2020 ).

This study includes the four measurement points at which gender role attitudes were assessed (waves 1, 4, 5 and 6). Students who answered the gender role scale at the first measurement point were used as the sampling basis ( N = 3837) and were tracked in the following waves (therefore, students from Berlin and the oversampling within the upper secondary schools were excluded through missing by design). Students were excluded if they had either a missing value on the gender and/or weighting variable, resulting in a final sample of N = 3828 (Table 1 ). The sample size dropped to N = 1257 by the fourth, N = 1167 by the fifth wave and N = 732 by the sixth wave (a more detailed attrition analysis is included in the sensitivity analyses). For the selected sample, this led to an overall distribution of participants by gender of 53.8% female and 46.2% male, and the overall weighted distribution of schools was 35.5% academic schools and 64.5% comprehensive schools. From the second wave onwards, 96.4% of the participants were of German nationality, and the students stated at the last wave that 94.9% of their mothers and 94.5% of their fathers were born in Germany.

Data collection up to students’ graduation (wave 4: grade 10 for vocational education students, wave 5: grade 12 for students enrolled in upper secondary school) took place in the classroom context by trained test administrators. Surveys after students graduated from school (after wave 5 for students out of general upper secondary education, and after wave 6 for all students) were conducted via post; students were asked to provide their addresses for follow-up during the fourth and fifth measurement waves. Written informed consent was obtained from all study participants and their parents, conducted in accordance with the American Psychological Association’s principles for research with human participants. The study was evaluated and approved by the relevant state school boards and the ethics commissions of the participating research institutions (Baumert et al., 1996 ).

• Gender role attitudes

Gender role attitudes were assessed with attitude-based items measuring gender role orientations (Krampen 1979 ). The items concerned topics such as romantic partnerships, the family, the workplace, and the rights of men and women (Appendix Table 8 ). Items addressed an egalitarian division of labor within the family, career ambitions, and normative gender-related attitudes. Responses to all items were recorded on Likert scales ranging from “1 = does not apply at all” to “4 = applies completely”; higher values corresponded to egalitarian attitudes and lower values to non-egalitarian attitudes. The scales exhibited satisfactory to very good reliability scores (wave 1: Cronbach’s α = 0.65; wave 4: Cronbach’s α = 0.84; wave 5: Cronbach’s α = 0.82; wave 6: Cronbach’s α = 0.71). The differences in reliability coefficients are (at least partially) due to the different numbers of items assessed in each wave (range: N = 3 to N = 7 items) (Hancock & Buehl, 2008 ).

The data on sex were cleaned to be consistent across waves; boys were coded as 0 and girls as 1.

Parental socioeconomic status

Socioeconomic status was assessed with both parental occupational prestige and parental level of education. Four indicators of mothers and fathers’ occupational prestige were employed. Two indicators (one each for mother and father) are based on filled-in information from the first three waves, supplemented by information from the fourth wave. Two additional indicators were used from the fifth wave to control for measurement error. Occupational prestige was coded based on the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO-68; International Labour Office, 1968 ) in waves 1–3 and the ISCO-88 in wave 5 (International Labour Organization, 1990 ) and converted into the Treiman Prestige Scale (Treiman, 1977 ). In addition to their parents’ occupations, participants were asked to report the highest level of their parents’ academic and vocational education. Two indicators of parental education were used. First, it was determined whether or not each parent had qualified for higher education ( Abitur ), and second, whether or not each parent had obtained a university degree. Information on both parents was combined: A score of 0 meant that neither parent had an Abitur /university degree, while a score of 2 meant that both parents had an Abitur /university degree (Becker et al., 2019 ). For subsequent analyses, these indicators were modelled latently as a time-invariant construct and tested for measurement invariance by sex (Appendix Table 9 ). Even the model for strict measurement invariance had a very good model fit (RMSEA = 0.04, CFI = 0.98, TLI = 0.98, SRMR = 0.06). Overall, the latent mean value of the socioeconomic status is 5.31 (see also Table 4 ; by gender males = 5.39 (0.29), females = 5.26 (0.30)).

Cognitive abilities

Two different ability tests were employed in the BIJU study to measure the participants’ cognitive abilities. Two subscales on verbal and figural analogies from the Kognitiver Fähigkeitstest (KFT; Heller et al., 1985 ) and two subscales on numeric and spatial reasoning from Amthauer’s ( 1955 ) Intelligence Structure Test (IST) were used. The KFT scales exhibited satisfactory reliability (figural: Cronbach’s α = 0.93; verbal: Cronbach’s α = 0.82). However, the IST scales exhibited only acceptable reliability (spatial: Cronbachs α = 0.71/0.70 (Versions A and B); numerical: Cronbach’s α = 0.90) (Becker et al. 2020 ). These four scales were also modeled as a latent intelligence factor for subsequent analysis (Appendix Table 10 ). A strict level of measurement invariance by sex was confirmed (RMSEA = 0.05, CFI = 1.00, TLI = 1.00, SRMR = 0.04). The cognitive abilities have a latent mean value of 2.44 (see also Table 4 ; by gender males = 2.39 (0.07), females = 2.52 (0.09)).

Statistical Analyses

To answer the first research question—whether the gender role attitudes construct can be assessed with the same scale over the entire period from early adolescence to emerging adulthood and whether its developmental trajectory can be modelled with a uniform metric—a latent factor structure of gender role attitudes for each measurement wave was constructed and tested for both longitudinal invariance and multigroup invariance by sex in Mplus 8.4. To compare means on a common metric, and thus to examine questions related to the development of gender role attitudes over time, at least scalar measurement invariance had to be achieved in which both factor loadings and intercepts were constrained to be equal (Meredith, 1993 ). To achieve longitudinal measurement invariance and measurement invariance by sex, measurement invariance over time and between female and male adolescents was required (Kim & Willson, 2014 ). For model comparison, the most common absolute measures of model fit (RMSEA, CFI, TLI, and SRMR) were applied, enabling the evaluation of model fit independently of sample size. Model fit was regarded as accepted when the following criteria were met: RMSEA < 0.08, CFI ≥ 0.90, TLI ≥ 0.90, SRMR < 0.08 (Hu & Bentler, 1999 ; Rutkowski & Svetina, 2014 ). In addition, changes in the model fit indices across models were evaluated: RMSEA should not increase by a maximum of 0.03 between the configural and metric invariance models, and CFI should not decline by more than 0.02. Between the metric and scalar invariance models, RMSEA should increase by no more than 0.01 and CFI should decrease by no more than 0.01 (Rutkowski & Svetina, 2014 ).

To answer the second research question on how gender role attitudes develop during adolescence and which predictors are associated with this trajectory, (latent) means and estimated second-order multigroup latent growth curve models were compared. The mean differences provide an indication of whether any statistically significant changes in means arise between measurement points (wave-specific gender differences). Building upon such changes, growth curve models tested which specific developmental trajectories occur across measurement points and how the included predictors are associated with the overall level and trajectory (Duncan et al., 2006 ; Hancock & Buehl, 2008 ). Hence, the multigroup second-order model could be used to investigate the development directly in the latent constructs (e.g., Hancock et al., 2001 ), so the factor loadings and intercepts over time and groups could be constrained while conducting the growth curve model (Fig. 1 ). The growth curve models were also used to test how socioeconomic status and cognitive abilities predict changes in gender role attitudes and how these two independent variables are associated with initial attitudes in grade 7 ( M age = 13, Fig. 1 ). In this context, effects are used in the sense of regression coefficients. Thereby, statements about causality remain open.

Model of the second-order latent growth curve model and multigroup testing between males and females

Missing values were treated with the full information maximum likelihood (FIML) procedure integrated within Mplus. FIML enables the inclusion of participants with missing values, making full use of the information available in the sample and minimizing the risk of bias in the parameter estimates (Lüdtke et al., 2007 ). Sampling weights were used to establish a representative proportion of students in academic tracks (Gymnasium) and comprehensive schools. To take the clustered structure of the data into account, the analysis option type = complex in Mplus was used to estimate standard errors, employing maximum likelihood estimation procedures with robust standard error estimates (mlr).

Measurement of Gender Role Attitudes Across Time and Gender

Building upon the first research question examining the presence of a uniform metric for gender role attitudes over time and sex, the factor structure of the egalitarian gender role attitudes scale was tested with a separate confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) for each wave (Table 2 ). The CFA of the first measurement point was saturated; for the CFAs of the other three waves, wave-specific correlations had to be allowed to adequately represent the items and achieve a satisfactory model fit. For the second measurement point, a correlation between items about whether men or women should enter gender non-conforming professions (gr06 and gr10, see Appendix A7) was allowed. The same applied to measurement time points three and four, where a wave-specific correlation was allowed (in both cases between gr03 and gr05).

Regarding the test of longitudinal measurement invariance, the configural model exhibited very good model fit (Table 3 , Model 1). When constraining the factor loadings (Table 3 , Model 2) and intercepts (Table 3 , Model 3) to be equal over time, the absolute model fit remained good. The model with the restricted intercepts was maintained and used to test for measurement invariance by sex. As explained in the statistical analyses section, scalar longitudinal measurement invariance was tested and this model was extended step-by-step for measurement invariance by sex (Kim & Willson, 2014 ).

The model assuming scalar measurement invariance over time and configural invariance between the sexes (Table 3 , Model 4) exhibited unsatisfactory model fit. Based on the modification indices reported in Mplus, one correlation for each sex was allowed at the fourth measurement point (female: gr04 and gr07; males: gr08 and gr09). To further improve the model fit, one constrained intercept for female adolescents from the first measurement point was set free over time (gr01). These model specifications led to a good model fit (scalar measurement invariance over time and partial configural measurement invariance between groups; Table 3 , Model 6; Byrne, 2013 ). In the next step, the factor loadings and intercepts, already fixed over time, were fixed across groups (Table 3 , Models 7 and 8). Overall, these models also showed satisfactory absolute fit up to scalar measurement invariance between groups. Thus, with a few limitations, the scale could be confirmed to represent a largely uniform metric over time and across sexes with at least partial measurement invariance. The measurement invariance test was cross-checked with scales containing only items over at least three measurement points. The same pattern emerged (e.g., measurement specific correlations, release of the intercept) and partial scalar measurement invariance over time and between sexes was confirmed (RMSEA = 0.02, CFI = 0.93, TLI = 0.93, SRMR = 0.10).

Changes in Gender Role Attitudes Across Time

Table 4 shows the bivariate correlations, demonstrating how the constructs of gender role attitudes and the predictor’s sex, socioeconomic status, and cognitive abilities are interrelated. All latent gender role attitudes factors were positively correlated with one another, with particularly strong correlations for the latent factors representing neighboring measurement points. Among the predictors, sex correlated particularly strongly with gender role attitudes; female adolescents displayed more egalitarian attitudes than male adolescents. At the first measurement point only, socioeconomic status correlated positively with egalitarian gender roles, whereas higher cognitive abilities were associated with more egalitarian attitudes at all measurement points. Thus, a more privileged socioeconomic status (only for the first measurement point) and higher cognitive abilities were associated with more egalitarian gender role attitudes. With the exception of the non-significant correlations for socioeconomic status and gender role attitudes at measurement points two, three, and four, all other correlations were in line with the expected pattern.

To address the research question of how gender role attitudes develop over time in greater depth, mean comparisons were employed to ascertain the general trajectory of gender role attitudes across waves and gender-specific differences in the trajectory of mean differences across waves. Both genders developed more egalitarian gender role attitudes on average over the measurement points (see Fig. 2 , Table 5 : male t 1 = 2.944 to t 4 = 3.580; female t 1 = 3.559 to t 4 = 3.795). For both sexes, significant mean changes appeared from the second measurement point onwards, while no significant mean change was evident between the first two measurement points (Table 5 , ∆ t-(t-1), males /∆ t-(t-1), females ). Although no significant change was found between the first two measurement points, the overarching picture indicated that teenagers developed more egalitarian attitudes throughout adolescence.

Trajectory of mean values for male and female adolescents during adolescence with trend line

Comparing the means by gender, female adolescents in grade 7 ( M age = 13) exhibited more egalitarian gender role attitudes than male adolescents (Table 5 , ∆ male-female ). This trend continued throughout adolescence, with female adolescents showing more egalitarian gender role attitudes than male adolescents across all measurement points. With respect to the exploratory research question concerning whether male and female adolescents exhibit different developmental trajectories, the mean differences by gender indicate that significant differences remained across all waves but became smaller in magnitude over time (Table 5 , ∆ male-female = −0.615 to ∆ male-female = −0.215).

SES and Cognitive Abilities as Predictors for Gender Role Attitude Development: Latent Growth Curve Models

To ascertain the extent to which socioeconomic status and cognitive abilities predict the development of gender roles, an overarching developmental curve needs to be aggregated across adolescence. To achieve this, second-order multigroup latent growth curve models were specified with a linear growth curve parameter that considered the different time intervals between measurement waves. Analogously to the mean comparisons, the overarching results across waves (Table 6 , Model 1) indicate that both female and male adolescents had a significant positive change coefficient over time. The intercept for female adolescents is higher than for male adolescents, while the slope coefficient is higher for male adolescents than for female adolescents. This confirms the results of the mean comparisons, with female adolescents tending to exhibit more egalitarian initial attitudes than male adolescents, and male adolescents experiencing stronger (positive) changes during adolescence than female adolescents.

In Model 2, the parental socioeconomic status was added to the model to investigate the extent to which socioeconomic status can predict the development of gender role attitudes. The results show a significant positive effect on gender role attitudes in grade 7 ( M age = 13) among both male and female adolescents. This indicates that higher parental socioeconomic status is associated with more egalitarian attitudes among teenagers. However, no significant effects of socioeconomic status on the trajectory over time were found in Model 2 for either gender.

As expected, higher cognitive abilities (Model 3) were associated with more egalitarian gender role attitudes in grade 7 ( M age = 13) for both genders. Regarding the question of how cognitive abilities predict this development, the results show a significant negative effect on the slope. Teenagers with weaker cognitive abilities are particularly likely to develop egalitarian attitudes. In contrast, children with higher cognitive abilities already exhibited more egalitarian attitudes at the beginning of puberty, which did not increase as strongly during adolescence.

When simultaneously considering cognitive abilities and socioeconomic status (Model 4), parental socioeconomic status no longer has a significant effect among male adolescents. However, among female adolescents, comparisons of Model 4 with Model 3 reveal a weak suppression effect, with socioeconomic status exerting a negative effect on initial attitudes in grade 7 ( M age = 13) and a positive effect on changes during adolescence. Both effects for female adolescents do not reach a sufficient significance level. Controlling for socioeconomic status does not change the pattern of effects of cognitive abilities, but the slope effect for male adolescents becomes insignificant.

Sensitivity Analyses

The first measurement point was used as a reference and the students were tracked in following waves. Due to the study’s longitudinal design, selective dropout is unavoidable. Dropout by individuals is usually rather systematic, with higher achieving and socially positively selected students showing a higher compliance (e.g., Damian et al., 2015 ). Therefore, it was tested whether the dropout was systematically related to the constructs being examined. Table 7 documents the sample selectivity of the BIJU study, comparing individuals who participated in the sixth wave with those who no longer participated. As with the aforementioned studies, panel mortality was stronger among students from less socioeconomically privileged households and students with lower cognitive abilities. The selective reduction in the sample is partly due to participants leaving school after the 9th/10th grade, after which these students were only surveyed by post. Moreover, it is important to test whether the sample attrition is related to gender role attitudes. Selective dropout is also discernible here but to a lesser extent. As this attrition has a systematic component related to the constructs of analyses, it is essential to include all individuals in the analyses and not using missing data strategies such as pairwise or listwise deletion, as these rely on more restrictive assumptions for not returning biased estimates (i.e., missing completely at random, which is not the case here; Graham, 2009 ). FIML was used to retain all students from the first wave in the analyses, which is equivalent to other strategies such as missing data imputation. This minimizes the risk of bias due to selective dropout with respect to the predictors of interest (socioeconomic status and cognitive ability) and maintains maximal test power, as all available information is used.

To check for robustness, the results were further replicated with an even more inclusive data strategy using the complete sample. This included students from the federal state of Berlin who entered the study from the second wave onwards, students who joined the study through restructured class compositions (especially in the fourth wave/10th grade when many students entered the original classes), and students from an intentional oversample assessing all students within upper secondary schools during the fifth wave (grade 12, Mage = 19). This increased the test power of the sample to a sample size of N = 11,713. This sample is less representative, mainly due to grade 12 oversampling. Using this sample, analyses showed a similar pattern (Appendix Fig. 3 ), except that the socioeconomic status correlated significantly with gender role attitudes at all measurement points. This is most likely due to the higher test power in the extended sample.

A second analysis was conducted with participants who rated the gender role attitudes scale at all measurement points (i.e., relying on a casewise deletion strategy; N = 561). The overall developmental pattern of gender role attitudes remained the same for male and female adolescents (Appendix Fig. 4 ). No significant effects were found regarding socioeconomic status and cognitive abilities. However, it is unclear whether this is due to the more restrictively selected sample, the reduced test power, or even biased due to the assumptions this sample selection makes (missing completely at random which does not apply here; see dropout analyses, Table 7 ).

Since gender roles are a changing construct, it is sometimes necessary to exchange indicators in longitudinal studies to ensure that they continue to represent sufficient variance (see also gender role scales of the European Values Study, EVS, 2021 ). To determine whether measurement invariance is just an artefact, analyses were conducted in which the items were linked across at least three measurement points. Scalar invariance over time and groups was achieved without any partial adjustments (RMSEA = 0.02, CFI = 0.91, TLI = 0.91, SRMR = 0.10). The following developmental analyses confirmed the pattern of the analyses with the complete scales.

Gender role attitudes develop during adolescence. However, previous studies have shown inconsistent findings, and no study has yet examined the full period from early adolescence through emerging adulthood. This study investigated the development of gender role attitudes across the entirety of adolescence against the backdrop of existing societal gender differences. Adolescence is particularly relevant, as gender-related constructs are especially salient during this time. The extent to which greater endorsement of egalitarian gender role attitudes is associated with sex, socioeconomic status, and individual cognitive abilities was analyzed with a series of structural equation models to further evaluate the measurement models and build upon and expand prior studies on the appropriate modelling of gender role attitudes (e.g., Lomazzi & Seddig, 2020 ).

Overall, the results indicate that both male and female adolescents develop more egalitarian gender role attitudes during adolescence. This finding can be linked to the assumption that young people increasingly question morally built constructs, leading to the endorsement of more egalitarian gender roles (Eccles, 1987 ). Moreover, it confirms prior research that has shown that egalitarian attitudes increase during adolescence (e.g., Schroeder et al., 2019 ). Consequently, the finding that boys experience an increase in traditional gender role attitudes during early adolescence was not replicated (Halimi et al., 2021 ). Likewise, the opposing gender intensification hypothesis —that gender role behavior increases during adolescence and sex differences increase (Hill & Lynch, 1983 )—was not supported. Although teenagers discover their gender identity during this time, the results show that attitudes towards gender roles nevertheless soften, and explicit role attributions are less supported. Moreover, contrary to the gender intensification hypothesis , male adolescents experience greater change towards egalitarian direction than female adolescents. This reduces gender differences, although they remain at a significant level. Thus, endorsing egalitarian attitudes seems to be particularly important for women. To participate equally in the labor market, it is particularly relevant for women to pursue egalitarian attitudes, as they are traditionally assigned the domestic role. When female adolescents begin to consider their future plans (which first include decisions on careers after school), egalitarian attitudes are particularly relevant. While egalitarian attitudes are especially important for women, male adolescents develop more strongly towards an open and egalitarian direction. Thus, the finding that sex differences in gender role attitudes decline during adolescence (Fan & Marini, 2000 ) was replicated.

Cognitive abilities were found to have significant positive effects on egalitarian gender role attitudes. This could be an indication that young people with higher cognitive abilities are better able to process seemingly competing concepts and critically question social structures, including critically reflecting on traditional gender role attitudes (Harter, 2003 ). No gender differences were found with respect to this relationship; higher cognitive abilities promote egalitarian attitudes among both male and female adolescents. However, a negative slope effect was found, indicating that young people with weaker cognitive abilities are particularly likely to develop more egalitarian attitudes over time.

More ambiguous results were found for the effects of family background. Socioeconomic status correlated positively with gender role attitudes only at the first measurement point. Moreover, no significant slope effect was found, and when controlling for cognitive abilities, the significant intercept effect of parental socioeconomic status became insignificant. Despite the presence of a link between family socioeconomic background and gender role attitudes, this factor is not predictive for changes during adolescence. This may be because young people become more independent of their family during adolescence, distancing themselves from certain attitudes imparted within the family. A more important contextual factor than the family could be peer groups and school classes, which form a primary point of reference for teenagers (Halimi et al., 2021 ). In particular, gender-related attitudes of peer groups could be relevant in the formation of gender identity and gender role attitudes. Also, by the end of the study period the adolescents had already entered adulthood and their own socioeconomic status may have become more relevant than their parents’ socioeconomic status. The study demonstrates that gender role attitudes experience changes during adolescence, confirming prior results that have observed an increase in egalitarian attitudes over the course of adolescence (Eccles, 1987 ). That these trajectories converge during adolescence seems to be a central and overarching aspect of development.

Limitations

The longitudinal dataset employed in this study provided an overview of the development of gender role attitudes across the entire period of adolescence. It captured long-term developmental trajectories from early adolescence to emerging adulthood while using an extensive sample ( N = 3828). A partially uniform metric was applied over time and across groups to measure the development of gender role attitudes over time. Despite these advantages, the study also exhibited several limitations with relevant implications for future research.

Some challenges arose when attempting to model the gender role attitudes construct in this study. Previous research (e.g., Knight & Brinton, 2017 ) has shown that gender roles cannot necessarily be mapped on a one-dimensional scale with egalitarianism at one end and traditionalism at the other. The item statements used to assess gender role attitudes (Appendix Table 8 ) encompass both descriptive statements on how men and women actually relate to one another and prescriptive statements about how they ought to relate to one another (Krampen, 1979 ). In addition, gender role attitudes can be divided into different facets. They encompass models for dividing domestic and paid labor among couples, while also including normative and legal aspects of gender equality and women’s greater presence in public life (Constantin & Voicu, 2015 ). This multidimensional perspective on gender role attitudes cannot always be converted into a one-dimensional scale with egalitarianism at one end and traditionalism at the other. These various facets of gender role attitudes are also contained within the construct used here. A scale measuring egalitarian gender role attitudes was employed for two key reasons: first, due to the increasing endorsement of egalitarian attitudes in Western societies (Lomazzi & Seddig, 2020 ), and second, because the egalitarian attitudes scale included sufficient linkages between items across measurement waves to examine developmental trajectories. Nevertheless, the use of the scale may have had an effect on the results, as acquiescence led adolescents to agree more with egalitarian statements, leading to the rejection of the gender intensification hypothesis .

Following recent recommendations, the egalitarian gender role attitudes scale was embedded in structural equation models and tested for measurement variance over time and across genders (e.g., Lomazzi & Seddig, 2020 ). This study was able to partially confirm the scale’s measurement invariance in both ways. However, due to the aforementioned complexity, recourse to partial measurement invariance was unavoidable in some cases (Byrne, 2013 ). Moreover, the indicators shifted across measurement points, as the number of items measuring egalitarian attitudes was lower in the beginning and increased over time. This meant that only two anchor items were available for the first measurement point (Hancock & Buehl, 2008 ). However, the exchange of items over time is not necessarily avoidable in a longitudinal perspective with a changing social construct. Agreement with items, such as that women should have the same rights as men, reaches a ceiling by no longer reflecting variance after a certain point in time (see also gender role scales of the European Values Study, EVS, 2021 ). However, the sensitivity analysis concerning the shorter scale showed that measurement invariance and the developmental pattern were confirmed.

It was not possible to model a quadratic slope in the latent growth curve models due to convergence problems. This might have been due to the relatively low variance of the slope parameters. This issue could not be solved with the presented models because the most common solutions (e.g., fixing the residuals of the same indicators over time) did not achieve satisfactory model fit. This may be a further indication that modelling gender role attitudes remains a key issue requiring more extensive and in-depth research.

A typical issue of longitudinal analyses, which also affected this study, is panel attrition. People with lower cognitive abilities and socioeconomic status are more likely to drop out of the study. This is particularly relevant in this context, as these are key predictors of the developmental trajectory. Therefore, it is important to use missing data strategies such as FIML, as this strategy enables the retention of all students. Thereby, all existing information is used, maintaining the test power and minimizing the risk of selective dropout (Graham, 2009 ). Nevertheless, the generalizability should be interpreted with caution and the effects may be underestimated. Further replications with other data sets are needed to test the robustness of the findings presented here.

It was also not possible to control for relevant predictors. No data was available from the parents themselves, so there was no information on the gender role attitudes of the parents. Moreover, it was not possible to look at time-variant confounders like biological changes (e.g., hormonal changes) or the time point when the participants had their first romantic and sexual experiences. Likewise, time-invariant confounders, such as genes or personality traits, could not be considered. Future research should consider whether these could be relevant and specific predictors for the development of gender role attitudes.

Lastly, the results need to be discussed from a historical perspective as the data basis refers to the 1990s and 2000s. In the last decade, societal discourses have increasingly engaged topics such as #metoo, nonbinary gender identities, and new ways to understand masculinity (Walter, 2018 ). This discourse is currently being led by a (publicly very present) section of adolescents and young adults with an intensity that was not as characteristic and polarizing for the same age group in the 1990s. Nevertheless, the adolescents in this study developed more egalitarian attitudes, and this can also be assumed for today’s teenagers based on current debates. The results highlight the changes in attitudes towards gender roles that take place during adolescence, and the importance of this perspective when studying gender inequalities. Although the data refers to the 1990s, there are few research approaches and datasets with a developmental perspective on the whole of adolescence.

Implications

This study has key implications for future research. Methodologically, increased latent modelling of gender role attitudes combined with extensive measurement invariance testing is required to adequately deal with shifting indicators. First, social change needs to be reflected in attitudes towards gender roles so that adequate variance can be modelled. Second, young people’s attitudes to gender roles change as they move through adolescence. While young people in the seventh grade may only be observers of their parents, they will have already made occupational decisions by the end of the study period that may go hand in hand with their gender roles. Moreover, future research should compare the development of traditional and egalitarian gender role attitudes to separate descriptive and prescriptive parts of the items. Intensive content and methodological research on the development of attitudes towards gender roles in adolescence is required, as the results show that adolescents develop in an egalitarian direction, while gender differences continue to emerge in occupational decisions. This may clarify how gender differences manifest early on.

Attitudes towards gender roles change during adolescence, yet the state of research is limited and inconsistent. This study investigated how gender role attitudes develop during adolescence and whether the trajectories differ by gender, socioeconomic status of the parents and cognitive abilities. The results highlight that both male and female adolescents developed egalitarian gender roles during adolescence and that their trajectories were converging by the end of the measurement period, leading to the rejection of the gender intensification hypothesis (Hill & Lynch, 1983 ). The assumption was supported that adolescents increasingly question moral constructs and, accordingly, develop in a more egalitarian direction (Eccles, 1987 ). In particular, cognitive abilities play an important role in egalitarian gender role attitudes. Studying the development of gender role attitudes is important in understanding gender inequalities, as gender-related constructs are particularly salient during adolescence, when teenagers discover their own gender identity and lay important foundations for their occupational and family-related futures. Since the data set refers to the 1990s, it would be useful to compare how attitudes towards gender roles develop during adolescence in the context of current social debates and changes to separate cohort effects from individual development processes. This study can serve as a central point of reference in this endeavor.

Code availability

We used Mplus 8.4 to model the latent structure of our interested factors. Furthermore, we tested for longitudinal measurement invariance and measurement invariance by sex and we modeled our final multigroup second order latent growth curve model with Mplus 8.4. The related code is available by contacting the corresponding author: [email protected].

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the BIJU study team and, in particular, the principal investigators of the BIJU study, Jürgen Baumert, Olaf Köller, and Kai S. Cortina, for allowing us to use their dataset. Furthermore, we thank Gerrit Hasche for support during the preparation of the manuscript and Keri Hartman and Roisin Cronin for language editing.

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RU contributed to the study conception and design, wrote the first manuscript and performed the statistical analyses; MB contributed to the study conception and design, performed the statistical analyes and coordinated and helped to draft the manuscript; JS contributed to the study conception and design, participated in the interpretation of the data, coordinated and helped to draft the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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We re-analyzed the large-scale longitudinal German dataset BIJU (Educational Careers and Psychosocial Development in Adolescence and Young Adulthood). This study was conducted by the principle investigators Jürgen Baumert, Olaf Köller, and Kai S. Cortina who allowed us to use the data for answering the research question. This manuscript’s data will not be deposited.

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Tables 8 – 10

Figs. 3 – 4

Trajectory of mean values for male and female adolescents during adolescence with trend line. N = 11713

Trajectory of mean values for male and female adolescents during adolescence with trend line. N = 561

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Ullrich, R., Becker, M. & Scharf, J. The Development of Gender Role Attitudes During Adolescence: Effects of Sex, Socioeconomic Background, and Cognitive Abilities. J Youth Adolescence 51 , 2114–2129 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-022-01651-z

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EDITORIAL article

Editorial: gender roles in the future theoretical foundations and future research directions.

• 1 Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, United States
• 2 Department of Psychology, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

Editorial on the Research Topic Gender Roles in the Future? Theoretical Foundations and Future Research Directions

The study of gender has become a major focus of research in psychology and in social psychology in particular. Among early contributors to this study, Eagly (1987) formulated social role theory to explain the behavior of women and men as well as the stereotypes, attitudes, and ideologies that are relevant to sex and gender. Enhanced by several extensions over the intervening years, this theory became a pre-eminent theory of gender in social psychology ( Eagly and Wood, 2012 ). Also, over the last decades, social psychologists have developed a variety of related approaches to understanding gender, including, for instance, theories devoted to stereotype threat, status, backlash, lack of fit to occupational roles, social identity, and categorization. The conference that preceded this Research Topic, sponsored by the European Association of Social Psychology and the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, featured work that fit within the broad umbrella of social role theory and related approaches.

The contemporary interest in the psychology of gender reflects its centrality in the understanding of social behavior. Gender continues to be a driving force in world politics and economics, as evident in the struggles of women to attain parity in political and economic institutions, the transformative impact of the #me-too movement, and the falling birthrates in many nations as women opt for careers instead of large families. In addition, binary gender itself is facing challenge as the two primary sex categories of female and male yield to accommodate multiple gender and sexual identities, including non-binary identities and transgender status.

One of the central topics of the social psychology of gender is gender stereotypes, understood as consensual beliefs about the attributes of women and men. Although describing the content of gender stereotypes might seem to be a task already accomplished many decades ago (e.g., Broverman et al., 1972 ), research on this matter has continually expanded. Not only has recent research described change in gender stereotypes over time ( Eagly et al., 2019 ), but also this Research Topic includes the Hentschel et al. article that identifies facets underlying these stereotypes' two primary dimensions of agency and communion. Their analysis of agency thus reveals the facets of independence, instrumental competence, and leadership competence and of communion yields the facets of concern for others, sociability, and emotional sensitivity. Other advances in stereotype research consider intersectionalities between gender and other social attributes as well as the prescriptive aspect of gender stereotypes by which they define what members of each sex should and should not do. Illustrating these advances, Koenig's research explores prescriptive stereotypes for the intersections of gender with age from toddlerhood to old age. Among her findings is a weakening of these gender stereotypes in relation to elderly women and men.

Gender stereotypes exert influence in daily life even when they compete with the influences of other social roles. In particular, occupational roles have demands that may be more or less consistent with gender roles. In extending social role theory to account for such circumstances, Eagly and Karau (2002) argued that the female gender stereotype is generally inconsistent with leader roles because of the expectations that women are communal and that leaders, like men, are agentic. Consequently, women can suffer discrimination in relation to leadership roles because many people believe that they are insufficiently agentic to perform effectively as leaders. Manzi raises the issue of whether parallel discriminatory processes exist for men who occupy or seek to occupy roles with primarily communal demands. The article by Block et al. further addresses men's occupancy of communal roles by analyzing the low representation of men in healthcare, early education, and domestic (HEED) roles. Their research shows that, consistent with gender stereotypes, men tend to have agentic values that focus on status, competition, and wealth and thus are not attracted to careers with a focus on caring for others. However, as Van Grootel et al. demonstrate, men tend to underestimate the extent to which other men approve of men's communal traits and behaviors. Correction of this pluralistic ignorance fosters men's greater endorsement of communal values and support for progressive gender-related social change. In a different demonstration of how to reduce the power of existing gender stereotypes, Olsson and Martiny review research on exposure to counterstereotypical role models. They conclude that such exposures do hold promise for promoting counterstereotpical goals and aspirations, especially in girls and women.

For leadership, gender makes a difference, given the definition of leadership primarily in culturally masculine terms that disfavor women. Vial and Napier offer clever demonstrations that people do view agentic traits as more important than communal traits for successful leaders, thus confirming women's disadvantage for attaining leader roles. Communal traits appear to be a nice, but inessential add-on for leaders. Another disadvantage for women, as shown by Player et al. , is that male candidates for leadership are valued more highly for their perceived potential to be a good leader rather than their past performance. Female candidates, in contrast, are valued more for their past performance and given relatively little credit for their potential. Consistent with the female stereotype of low agency, women thus have the burden of proving their leadership competence rather than merely being trusted to have potential for the future. As shown by Gruber et al. , some women do emerge as leaders, and greater facial attractiveness facilitates their emergence by fostering the ascription of social competence to them. These researchers have yet to investigate the importance of facial attractiveness to male leaders.

Increasing gender diversity in organizations is surely an important social goal for advocates of gender equality. Yet, organizational processes are not so simple that merely adding women catalyzes gains for other women. In fact, women in leadership roles do not necessarily work to change organizational norms to insure equal opportunity for other women, as Sterk et al. argue. Instead, senior women may accept negative stereotypes about women's lesser capacity for leadership. Such “queen bee” senior women may distance themselves from junior women and thus exert negative effects on them. Moreover, as van Dijk and van Engen explain, despite the presence of gender-diverse work groups, organizational behaviors are often constrained by self-reinforcing gender role expectations that perpetuate traditional gender-unfair practices.

Gender stereotypes exert influence in other situations as well. One such setting is high-stakes aptitude tests whose outcomes affect the opportunities of women and men. As shown by the Leiner et al. research on Austrian medical school aptitude tests, there are intriguing sex differences in the ways that female and male test takers perceive the test situation. In particular, the women experienced greater test anxiety than men and perceived the test as less fair. Another realm of social behavior that is fraught with gender issues is sexual coercion and rape. Gravelin et al. provide a thorough review of what is now a large research literature on tendencies to blame the victim of acquaintance rape. Also related to sexual violence is an incident in Germany of mass sexual assault on New Year's Eve of 2015. The discourse that ensued receives careful analysis by Hannover et al. One question that Germans faced is whether the largely Muslim perpetrators of these assaults were motivated by particularly sexist attitudes toward girls and women that emanated from their religion. The findings of this research instead implicated, not a particular religion, but high levels of religiosity and fundamentalism as precursors of the sexist beliefs that fostered violence against women.

In a world in which gender is always in flux, the future of gender relations is uncertain. To help understand this future, Gustafsson Sendén et al. asked Swedes to indicate what they think that the traits of Swedish women and men were in the past, are in the present, and will be in the future. Replicating earlier research by Diekman and Eagly (2000) , respondents perceived women to increase in agentic traits over time but remain more communal than men. Such beliefs, derived from the abstract belief that gender equality is increasing, may not reflect actual changes in stereotype content over time ( Eagly et al., 2019 ).

The contemporary challenges to the binary view of sex, gender, and sexuality receive important exploration in the essay by Morgenroth and Ryan . They review earlier writing by the philosopher Judith Butler, who advocated “gender trouble” that would disrupt the binary view of gender. As these authors suggest, Butler's ideas can guide understanding of some of the ways that performance socially constructs gender in society. Butler's writings on performativity and related themes can provide intriguing hypotheses for systematic empirical exploration by social psychologists. In the meantime, other social psychologists argue that the way forward in gender theory entails exploring how gender is and is not socially constructed by producing research that also considers the biological grounding of some patterns of male and female behavior ( Eagly and Wood, 2013 ). From this interactionist perspective, nature, and nurture are intertwined in producing the phenomena of gender.

The articles included in this Research Topic are broadly positioned across the field of social psychology, which encompasses a wide range of themes pertaining to sex and gender. Some of these themes link social psychology to other areas of psychological specialization, such as personality, developmental, cultural, industrial-organizational, and biological psychology as well as to the other social science disciplines of sociology, political science, and economics. In invoking other disciplines and psychology subfields, many of the authors whose work appears in this Research Topic recognize the importance of social roles as a central integrative concept in theories of gender. These articles thereby complement social role theory by reaching out to build an extended theoretical foundation for gender research of the future.

Author Contributions

Both authors listed have made a substantial, direct and intellectual contribution to the work and approved it for publication.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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Keywords: gender prejudice, social role theory, communion, agency, gender stereotypes, gender roles

Citation: Eagly AH and Sczesny S (2019) Editorial: Gender Roles in the Future? Theoretical Foundations and Future Research Directions. Front. Psychol. 10:1965. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01965

Received: 07 August 2019; Accepted: 09 August 2019; Published: 04 September 2019.

Edited and reviewed by: Eva G. Krumhuber , University College London, United Kingdom

Copyright © 2019 Eagly and Sczesny. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Alice H. Eagly, eagly@northwestern.edu

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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• Published: 28 April 2020

The impact a-gender: gendered orientations towards research Impact and its evaluation

• J. Chubb   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9716-820X 1 &
• G. E. Derrick   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-5386-8653 2  

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A Correction to this article was published on 19 May 2020

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Using an analysis of two independent, qualitative interview data sets: the first containing semi-structured interviews with mid-senior academics from across a range of disciplines at two research-intensive universities in Australia and the UK, collected between 2011 and 2013 ( n  = 51); and the second including pre- ( n  = 62), and post-evaluation ( n  = 57) interviews with UK REF2014 Main Panel A evaluators, this paper provides some of the first empirical work and the grounded uncovering of implicit (and in some cases explicit) gendered associations around impact generation and, by extension, its evaluation. In this paper, we explore the nature of gendered associations towards non-academic impact (Impact) generation and evaluation. The results suggest an underlying yet emergent gendered perception of Impact and its activities that is worthy of further research and exploration as the importance of valuing the ways in which research has an influence ‘beyond academia’ increases globally. In particular, it identifies how researchers perceive that there are some personality traits that are better orientated towards achieving Impact; how these may in fact be gendered. It also identifies how gender may play a role in the prioritisation of ‘hard’ Impacts (and research) that can be counted, in contrast to ‘soft’ Impacts (and research) that are far less quantifiable, reminiscent of deeper entrenched views about the value of different ‘modes’ of research. These orientations also translate to the evaluation of Impact, where panellists exhibit these tendencies prior to its evaluation and describe the organisation of panel work with respect to gender diversity.

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Introduction

The management and measurement of the non-academic impact Footnote 1 (Impact) of research is a consistent theme within the higher education (HE) research environment in the UK, reflective of a drive from government for greater visibility of the benefits of research for the public, policy and commercial sectors (Chubb, 2017 ). This is this mirrored on a global scale, particularly in Australia, where, at the ‘vanguard’ (Upton et al., 2014 , p. 352) of these developments, methods were first devised (but were subsequently abandoned) to measure research impact (Chubb, 2017 ; Hazelkorn and Gibson, 2019 ). What is broadly known in both contexts as an ‘Impact Agenda’—the move to forecast and assess the ways in which investment in academic research delivers measurable socio-economic benefit—initially sparked broad debate and in some instances controversy, among the academic community (and beyond) upon its inception (Chubb, 2017 ). Since then, the debate has continued to evolve and the ways in which impact can be better conceptualised and implemented in the UK, including its role in evaluation (Stern, 2016 ), and more recently in grant applications (UKRI, 2020 ) is robustly debated. Notwithstanding attempts to better the culture of equality and diversity in research, (Stern, 2016 ; Nature, 2019 ) in the broader sense, and despite the implementation of the Impact agenda being studied extensively, there has been very little critical engagement with theories of gender and how this translates specifically to more downstream gendered inequities in HE such as through an impact agenda.

The emergence of Impact brought with it many connotations, many of which were largely negative; freedom was questioned, and autonomy was seen to be at threat because of an audit surveillance culture in HE (Lorenz, 2012 ). Resistance was largely characterised by problematising the agenda as symptomatic of the marketisation of knowledge threatening traditional academic norms and ideals (Merton, 1942 ; Williams, 2002 ) and has led to concern about how the Impact agenda is conceived, implemented and evaluated. This concern extends to perceptions of gendered assumptions about certain kinds of knowledge and related activities of which there is already a corpus of work, i.e., in the case of gender and forms of public engagement (Johnson et al., 2014 ; Crettaz Von Roten, 2011 ). This paper explores what it terms as ‘the Impact a-gender’ (Chubb, 2017 ) where gendered notions of non-academic, societal impact and how it is generated feed into its evaluation. It does not wed itself to any feminist tradition specifically, however, draws on Carey et al. ( 2018 ) to examine, acknowledge and therefore amend how the range of policies within HE and how implicit power dynamics in policymaking produce gender inequalities. Instead, an impact fluidity is encouraged and supported. For this paper, this means examining how the impact a-gender feeds into expectations and the reward of non-academic impact. If left unchecked, the propagation of the impact a-gender, it is argued, has the potential to guard against a greater proportion of women generating and influencing the use of research evidence in public policy decision-making.

Scholars continue to reflect on ‘science as a gendered endeavour’ (Amâncio, 2005 ). The extensive corpus of historical literature on gender in science and its originators (Merton, 1942 ; Keller et al., 1978 ; Kuhn, 1962 ), note the ‘pervasiveness’ of the ‘masculine’ and the ‘objective and the scientific’. Indeed, Amancio affirmed in more recent times that ‘modern science was born as an exclusively masculine activity’ ( 2005 ). The Impact agenda raises yet more obstacles indicative of this pervasiveness, which is documented by the ‘Matthew’/‘Matilda’ effect in Science (Merton, 1942 ; Rossiter, 1993 ). Perceptions of gender bias (which Kretschmer and Kretschmer, 2013 hypothesise as myths in evaluative cultures) persist with respect to how gender effects publishing, pay and reward and other evaluative issues in HE (Ward and Grant, 1996 ). Some have argued that scientists and institutions perpetuate such issues (Amâncio, 2005 ). Irrespective of their origin, perceptions of gendered Impact impede evaluative cultures within HE and, more broadly, the quest for equality in excellence in research impact beyond academia.

To borrow from Van Den Brink and Benschop ( 2012 ), gender is conceptualised as an integral part of organisational practices, situated within a social construction of feminism (Lorber, 2005 ; Poggio, 2006 ). This article uses the notion of gender differences and inequality to refer to the ‘ hierarchical distinction in which either women and femininity and men and masculinity are valued over the other ’ (p. 73), though this is not precluding of individual preferences. Indeed, there is an emerging body of work focused on gendered associations not only about ‘types’ of research and/or ‘areas and topics’ (Thelwall et al., 2019 ), but also about what is referred to as non-academic impact. This is with particular reference to audit cultures in HE such as the Research Excellence Framework (REF), which is the UK’s system of assessing the quality of research (Morley, 2003 ; Yarrow and Davies, 2018 ; Weinstein et al., 2019 ). While scholars have long attended to researching gender differences in relation to the marketisation of HE (Ahmed, 2006 ; Bank, 2011 ; Clegg, 2008 ; Gromkowska-Melosik, 2014 ; Leathwood et al., 2008 ), and the gendering of Impact activities such as outreach and public engagement (Ward and Grant, 1996 ), there is less understanding of how far academic perceptions of Impact are gendered. Further, how these gendered tensions influence panel culture in the evaluation of impact beyond academia is also not well understood. As a recent discussion in the Lancet read ‘ the causes of gender disparities are complex and include both distal and proximal factors ’. (Lundine et al., 2019 , p. 742).

This paper examines the ways in which researchers and research evaluators implicitly perceive gender as related to excellence in Impact both in its generation and in its evaluation. Using an analysis of two existing data sets; the pre-evaluation interviews of evaluators in the UK’s 2014 Research Excellence Framework and interviews with mid-senior career academics from across the range of disciplines with experience of building impact into funding applications and/ or its evaluation in two research-intensive universities in the UK and Australia between 2011 and 2013, this paper explores the implicitly gendered references expressed by our participants relating to the generation of non-academic, impact which emerged inductively through analysis. Both data sets comprise researcher perceptions of impact prior to being subjected to any formalised assessment of research Impact, thus allowing for the identification of unconscious gendered orientations that emerged from participant’s emotional and more abstract views about Impact. It notes how researchers use loaded terminology around ‘hard’, and ‘soft’ when conceptualising Impact that is reminiscent of long-standing associations between epistemological domains of research and notions of masculinity/femininity. It refers to ‘hard’ impact as those that are associated with meaning economic/ tangible and efficiently/ quantifiably evaluated, and ‘soft’ as denoting social, abstract, potentially qualitative or less easily and inefficiently evaluated. By extending this analysis to the gendered notions expressed by REF2014 panellists (expert reviewers whose responsibility it is to review the quality of the retrospective impact articulated in case studies for the purposes of research evaluation) towards the evaluation of Impact, this paper highlights how instead of challenging these tendencies, shared constructions of Impact and gendered productivity in academia act to amplify and embed these gendered notions within the evaluation outcomes and practice. It explores how vulnerable seemingly independent assessments of Impact are to these widespread gendered- associations between Impact, engagement and success. Specifically, perceptions of the excellence and judgements of feasibility relating to attribution, and causality within the narrative of the Impact case study become gendered.

The article is structured as follows. First, it reviews the gender-orientations towards notions of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ excellence in forms of scholarly distinction and explores how this relates to the REF Impact evaluation criteria, and the under-representation of women in the academic workforce. Specifically, it hypothesises the role of how gendered notions of excellence that construct academic identities contribute to a system that side-lines women in academia. This is despite associating the generation of Impact as a feminised skill. We label this as the ‘Impact a-gender’. The article then outlines the methodology and how the two, independent databases were combined and convergent themes developed. The results are then presented from academics in the UK and Australia and then from REF2014 panellists. This describes how the Impact a-gender currently operates through academic cultural orientations around Impact generation, and in its evaluation through peer-review panels by members of this same academic culture. The article concludes with a recommendation that the Impact a-gender be explored more thoroughly as a necessary step towards guiding against gender- bias in the academic evaluation, and reward system.

Literature review

Notions of impact excellence as ‘hard’ or ‘soft’.

Scholars have long attempted to consider the commonalities and differences across certain kinds of knowledge (Becher, 1989 , 1994 ; Biglan, 1973a ) and attempts to categorise, divide and harmonise the disciplines have been made (Biglan, 1973a , 1973b ; Becher, 1994 ; Caplan, 1979 ; Schommer–Aikins et al., 2003 ). Much of this was advanced with a typology of the disciplines from (Trowler, 2001 ), which categorised the disciplines as ‘hard’ or ‘soft’. Both anecdotally and in the literature, ‘soft’ science is associated with working more with people and less with ‘things’ (Cassell, 2002 ; Thelwall et al., 2019 ). These dichotomies often lead to a hierarchy of types of Impact and oppose valuation of activities based on their gendered connotations.

Biglan’s system of classifying disciplines into groups based on similarities and differences denotes particular behaviours or characteristics, which then form part of clusters or groups—‘pure’, ‘applied’, ‘soft’, ‘hard’ etc. Simpson ( 2017 ) argues that Biglan’s classification persists as one of the most commonly referred to models of the disciplines despite the prominence of some others (Pantin, 1968 ; Kuhn, 1962 ; Smart et al., 2000 ). Biglan ( 1973b ) classified the disciplines across three dimensions; hard and soft, pure and applied, life and non-life (whether the research is concerned with living things/organisms) . This ‘taxonomy of the disciplines’ states that ‘pure-hard’ domains tend toward the life and earth sciences,’pure-soft’ the social sciences and humanities, and ‘applied hard’ focus on engineering and physical science with ‘soft-applied’ tending toward professional practice such as nursing, medicine and education. Biglan’s classification looked at levels of social connectedness and specifically found that applied scholars Footnote 2 were more socially connected, more interested and involved in service activities, and more likely to publish in the form of technical reports than their counterparts in the pure (hard) areas of study. This resonates with how Impact brings renewed currency and academic prominence to applied researchers (Chubb, 2017 ). Historically, scholars inhabiting the ‘hard’ disciplines had a greater preference for research; whereas, scholars representing soft disciplines had a greater preference for teaching (Biglan, 1973b ). Further, Biglan ( 1973b ) also found that hard science scholars sought out greater collaborative efforts among colleagues when teaching as opposed to their soft science counterparts.

There are also long-standing gendered associations and connotations with notions of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ (Storer, 1967 ). Typically used to refer to skills, but also used heavily with respect to the disciplines and knowledge domains, gendered assumptions and the mere use of ‘hard’ or ‘soft’ to describe knowledge production carries with it assumptions, which are often noted in the literature; ‘ we think of physics as hard and of political science as soft ’, Storer explains, adding how ‘hard seems to imply tough, brittle, impenetrable and strong, while soft on the other hand calls to mind the qualities of weakness, gentleness and malleability’ (p. 76). As described, hard science is typically associated with the natural sciences and quantitative paradigms whereas normative perceptions of feminine ‘soft’ skills or ‘soft’ science are often equated with qualitative social science. Scholars continue to debate dichotomised paradigms or ‘types’ of research or knowledge (Gibbons, 1999 ), which is emblematic of an undercurrent of epistemological hierarchy of the value of different kinds of knowledge. Such debates date back to the heated back and forth between scholars Snow (Snow, 2012 ) and literary critic Leavis who argued for their own ‘cultures’ of knowledge. Notwithstanding, these binary distinctions do few favours when gender is then ascribed to either knowledge domain or related activity (Yarrow and Davies, 2018 ). This is particularly pertinent in light of the current drive for more interdisciplinary research in the science system where there is also a focus on fairness, equality and diversity in the science system.

Academic performance and the Impact a-gender

Audit culture in academia impacts unfairly on women (Morley, 2003 ), and is seen as contributory to the wide gender disparities in academia, including the under-representation of women as professors (Ellemers et al., 2004 ), in leadership positions (Carnes et al., 2015 ), in receiving research acknowledgements (Larivière et al., 2013 ; Sugimoto et al., 2015 ), or being disproportionately concentrated in non-research-intensive universities (Santos and Dang Van Phu, 2019 ). Whereas gender discrimination also manifests in other ways such as during peer review (Lee and Noh, 2013 ), promotion (Paulus et al., 2016 ), and teaching evaluations (Kogan et al., 2010 ), the proliferation of an audit culture links gender disparities in HE to processes that emphasise ‘quantitative’ analysis methods, statistics, measurement, the creation of ‘experts’, and the production of ‘hard evidence’. The assumption here is that academic performance and the metrics used to value, and evaluate it, are heavily gendered in a way that benefits men over women, reflecting current disparities within the HE workforce. Indeed, Morely (2003) suggests that the way in which teaching quality is female dominated and research quality is male dominated, leads to a morality of quality resulting in the larger proportion of women being responsible for student-focused services within HE. In addition, the notion of ‘excellence’ within these audit cultures implicitly reflect images of masculinity such as rationality, measurement, objectivity, control and competitiveness (Burkinshaw, 2015 ).

The association of feminine and masculine traits in academia (Holt and Ellis, 1998 ), and ‘gendering its forms of knowledge production’ (Clegg, 2008 ), is not new. In these typologies, women are largely expected to be soft-spoken, nurturing and understanding (Bellas, 1999 ) yet often invisible and supportive in their ‘institutional housekeeping’ roles (Bird et al., 2004 ). Men, on the other hand are often associated with being competitive, ambitious and independent (Baker, 2008 ). When an individual’s behaviour is perceived to transcend these gendered norms, then this has detrimental effects on how others evaluate their competence, although some traits displayed outside of these typologies go somewhat ‘under the radar’. Nonetheless, studies show that women who display leadership qualities (competitiveness, ambition and decisiveness) are characterised more negatively than men (Rausch, 1989 ; Heilman et al., 1995 ; Rossiter, 1993 ). Incongruity between perceptions of ‘likeability’ and ‘competence’ and its relationship to gender bias is present in evaluations in academia, where success is dependent on the perceptions of others and compounded within an audit culture (Yarrow and Davis, 2018). This has been seen in peer review, reports for men and women applicants, where women were disadvantaged by the same characteristics that were seen as a strength on proposals by men (Severin et al., 2019 ); as well as in teaching evaluations where women receive higher evaluations if they are perceived as ‘nurturing’ and ‘supportive’ (Kogan et al., 2010 ). This results in various potential forms of prejudice in academia: Where traits normally associated with masculinity are more highly valued than those associated with femininity (direct) or when behaviour that is generally perceived to be ‘masculine’ is enacted by a woman and then perceived less favourably (indirect/ unconscious). That is not to mention direct sexism, rather than ‘through’ traits; a direct prejudice.

Gendered associations of Impact are not only oversimplified but also incredibly problematic for an inclusive, meaningful Impact agenda and research culture. Currently, in the UK, the main funding body for research in the UK, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) uses a broad Impact definition: ‘ the demonstrable contribution that excellent research makes to society and the economy ’ (UKRI website, 2019 ). The most recent REF, REF2014, Impact was defined as ‘ …an effect on, change or benefit to the economy, society, culture, public policy or services, health, the environment or quality of life, beyond academia ’. In Australia, the Australian Research Council (ARC) proposed that researchers should ‘embed’ Impact into the research process from the outset. Both Australia and the UK have been engaged in policy borrowing around the evaluation of societal impact and share many similarities in approaches to generating and evaluating it. Indeed, Impact has been deliberately conceptualised by decision-makers, funders and governments as broad in order to increase the appearance of being inclusivity, to represent a broad range of disciplines, as well as to reflect the ‘diverse ways’ that potential beneficiaries of academic research can be reached ‘beyond academia’. The adoption of societal impact as a formalised criterion in the evaluation of research excellence was initially perceived to be potentially beneficial for women, due to its emphasis on concepts such as ‘public engagement’; ‘duty’ and non-academic ‘cooperation/collaboration’ (Yarrow and Davies, 2018 ). In addition, the adoption of narrative case studies to demonstrate Impact, rather than adopting a complete metrics-focused exercise, can also be seen as an opportunity for women to demonstrate excellence in the areas where they are over-represented, such as teaching, cultural enrichment, public engagement (Andrews et al., 2005 ), informing public policy and improving public services (Schatteman, 2014 ; Wheatle and BrckaLorenz, 2015). However, despite this, studies highlight how for the REF2014, only 25% of Impact Case Studies for business and management studies were from women (Davies et al., 2020 ).

With respect to Impact evaluation, previous research shows that there is a direct link between notions of academic culture, and how research (as a product of that culture) is valued and evaluated (Leathwood and Reid, 2008 ; p. 120). Geertz ( 1983 ) argues that academic membership is a ‘cultural frame that defines a great part of one’s life’ influences belief systems around how academic work is orientated. This also includes gendered associations implicit in the academic reward system, which in turn influences how academics believe success is to be evaluated, and in what form that success emerges. This has implications in how academic associations of the organisation of research work and the ongoing constructions of professional identity relative to gender, feeds into how these same academics operate as evaluators within a peer review system evaluation. In this case, instead of operating to challenge these tendencies, shared constructions of gendered academic work are amplified to the extent that they unconsciously influence perceptions of excellence and the judgements of feasibility as pertaining to the attribution and causality of the narrative argument. As such, in an evaluation of Impact with its ambiguous definition (Derrick, 2018 ), and the lack of external indicators to signal success independent of cultural constructions inherent in the panel membership, effects are assumed to be more acute. In this way, this paper argues that the Impact a-gender can act to further disadvantage women.

The research combines two existing research data sets in order to explore implicit notions of gender associated with the generation and evaluation of research Impact beyond academia. Below the two data sets and the steps involved in analysing and integrating findings are described along with our theoretical positioning within the feminist literature Where verbatim quotation is used, we have labelled the participants according to each study highlighting their role and gender. Further, the evaluator interviews specify the disciplinary panel and subpanel to which they belonged, as well as their evaluation responsibilities such as: ‘Outputs only’; ‘Outputs and Impact’; and ‘Impacts only’.

Analysis of qualitative data sets

This research involved the analysis and combination of two independently collected, qualitative interview databases. The characteristics and specifics of both databases are outlined below.

Interviews with mid-senior academics in the UK and Australia

Fifty-one semi-structured interviews were conducted between 2011 and 2013 with mid-senior academics at two research-intensive universities in Australia and the UK. The interviews were 30–60 min long and participants were sourced via the research offices at both sites. Participants were contacted via email and invited to participate in a study concerning resistance towards the Impact agenda in the UK and Australia and were specifically asked for their perceptions of its relationship with freedom, value and epistemic responsibility and variations across discipline, career stage and national context. Mostly focused on ex ante impact, some interviewees also described their experiences of Impact in the UK and Australia, in relation to its formal assessment as part of the Excellence Innovation Australia (EIA) for Australia and the Research Excellence Framework (REF) in the UK.

Participants comprised mid to senior career academics with experience of winning funding from across the range of disciplines broadly representative of the arts and humanities, social sciences, physical science, maths and engineering and the life and earth sciences. For the purposes of this paper, although participant demographic information was collected, the relationship between the gender of the participants, their roles, disciplines/career stage was not explicitly explored instead, such conditions were emergent in the subsequent inductive coding during thematic analysis. A reflexive log was collected in order to challenge and draw attention to assumptions and underlying biases, which may affect the author, inclusive of their own gender identity. Further information on this is provided in Chubb ( 2017 ).

Pre- and post-evaluation interviews with REF2014 evaluators

REF2014 in the UK represented the world’s first formalised evaluation of ex-post impact, comprising of 20% of the overall evaluation. This framework served as a unique experimental environment with which to explore baseline tendencies towards impact as a concept and evaluative object (Derrick, 2018 ).

Two sets of semi-structured interviews were conducted with willing participants: sixty-two panellists were interviewed from the UK’s REF2014 Main Panel A prior to the evaluation taking place; and a fifty-seven of these were re-interviewed post-evaluation. Main Panel A covers six Sub-panels: (1) Clinical Medicine; (2) Public Health, Health Services and Primary Care; (3) Allied Health Professions, Dentistry, Nursing and Pharmacy; (4) Psychology, Psychiatry and Neuroscience; (5) Biological Sciences; and (6) Agriculture, Veterinary and Food Sciences. Again, the relationship between the gender of the participants and their discipline is not the focus for the purposes of this paper.

Database combination and identification of common emergent themes

The inclusion of data sets using both Australian and UK researchers was pertinent to this study as both sites were at the cusp of implementing the evaluation of Impact formally. These researcher interviews, as well as the evaluator interviews were conducted prior to any formalised Impact evaluation took place, but when both contexts required ex ante impact in terms of certain funding allocation, meaning an analysis of these baseline perceptions between databases was possible. Further, the inclusion of the post-evaluation interviews with panellists in the UK allowed an exploration of how these gendered perceptions identified in the interviews with researchers and panellists prior to the evaluation, influenced panel behaviour during the evaluation of Impact.

Initially, both data sets were analysed using similar, inductive, grounded-theory-informed approaches inclusive of a discourse and thematic analysis of the language used by participants when describing impact, which allowed for the drawing out of metaphor (Zinken et al., 2008 ). This allowed data combination and analysis of the two databases to be conducted in line with the recommendations for data-synthesis as outlined in Weed ( 2005 ) as a form of interpretation. This approach guarded against the quantification of qualitative findings for the purposes of synthesis, and instead focused on an initial dialogic approach between the two authors (Chubb and Derrick), followed by a re-analysis of qualitative data sets (Heaton, 1998 ) in line with the outcomes of the initial author-dialogue as a method of circumventing many of the drawbacks associated with qualitative data-synthesis. Convergent themes from each, independently analysed data set were discussed between authors, before the construction of new themes that were an iterative analysis of the combined data set. Drawing on the feminist tradition the authors did not apply feminist standpoint theory, instead a fully inductive approach was used to unearth rich empirical data. An interpretative and inductive approach to coding the data using NVIVO software in both instances was used and a reflexive log maintained. The availability of both full, coded, qualitative data sets, as well as the large sample size of each, allowed this data-synthesis to happen.

Researcher’s perceptions of Impact as either ‘hard’ or ‘soft’

Both UK and Australian academic researchers (researchers) perceive a guideline of gendered productivity (Davies et al., 2017 ; Sax et al., 2002 ; Astin, 1978 ; Ward and Grant, 1996 ). This is where men or women are being dissuaded (by their inner narratives, their institutions or by colleagues) from engaging in Impact either in preference to other (more masculine) notions of academic productivity, or towards softer (for women) because they consider themselves and are considered by others to be ‘good at it’. Participants often gendered the language of Impact and introduced notions of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’. On the one hand, this rehearses and resurfaces long-standing views about the ‘Matthew Effect’ because often softer Impacts were seen as being of less value by participants, but also indicates that the word impact itself carries its own connotations, which are then weighed down further by more entrenched gender associations.

Our research shows that when describing Impact, it was not necessarily the masculinity or femininity of the researcher that was emphasised by participants, rather researchers made gendered presumptions around the type of Impact, or the activity used to generate it as either masculine or feminine. Some participants referred to their own research or others’ research as either ‘hard’ or as ‘soft and woolly’. Those who self-professed that their research was ‘soft’ or woolly’ felt that their research was less likely to qualify as having ‘hard’ impact in REF terms Footnote 3 ; instead, they claimed their research would impact socially, as opposed to economically; ‘ stuff that’s on a flaky edge — it’s very much about social engagement ’ (Languages, Australia, Professor, Male) . One researcher described Impact as ‘a nasty Treasury idea,’ comparing it to: a tsunami, crashing over everything which will knock out stuff that is precious ’ . (Theatre, Film and TV, UK, Professor, Male) . This imagery associates the concept of impact with force and weight (or hardness as mentioned earlier) particularly in disciplines where the effect of their research may be far more nuanced and subtle. One Australian research used force to depict the impact of teaching and claimed Impact was like a footprint, and teaching was ‘ a pretty heavy imprint ’ (Environment, UK, Professor, Male) . Participants characterised ‘force and weight’ as masculine, suggesting that some connotations of Impact and the associated activities may be gendered. The word ‘Impact’ was inherently perceived by many researchers as problematic, bound with linguistic connotations and those imposed by the official definitions, which in many cases are perceived as negative or maybe even gendered (Chubb, 2017 ): ‘ The etymology of a word like impact is interesting. I’ve always seen what I do as being a more subtle incremental engagement, relevance, a contribution ’. (Theatre, Film and TV, UK, Professor, Male) .

Researchers associated the word ‘impact’ with hard-ness, weight and force; ‘ anything that sorts of hits you ’ (Languages, UK, Senior Lecturer, Female) . One researcher suggested that Impact ‘ sounds kind of aggressive — the poor consumer! ’ (History, Australia, Professor, Female) . Talking about her own research in the performing arts, one Australian researcher commented: ‘ It’s such a pain in the arse because the Arts don’t fit the model. But in a way they do if you look at the impact as being something quite soft ’ (Music, Australia, Professor, Female) . Likewise, a similar comparison was seen by a female researcher from the mechanical engineering discipline: ‘ My impact case study wasn’t submitted mainly because I’m dealing with that slightly on the woolly side of things ’ (Mechanical Engineering, Australia, Professor, Female) . Largely, gender related comments hailed from the ‘hard’ science and from arts and humanities researchers. Social scientists commented less, and indeed, one levelled that Impact was perhaps less a matter of gender, and more a matter of ability (Chubb, 2017 ): ‘ It’s about being articulate! Both guys and women who are very articulate and communicate well are outward looking on all of these things ’ ( Engineering Education, Australia, Professor, Female).

Gendered notions of performativity were also very pronounced by evaluators who were assessing the outputs only, suggesting how these panel cultures are orientated around notions of gender and scientific outputs as ‘hard’ if represented by numbers. The focus on numbers was perceived by the following panellist as ‘ a real strong tendency particularly amongst the Alpha male types ’ within the panel that relate to findings about the association of certain traits—risk aversion, competitiveness, for example, with a masculinised market logic in HE;

And I like that a lot because I think that there is a real strong tendency particularly amongst the Alpha male types of always looking at the numbers, like the numbers and everything. And I just did feel that steer that we got from the panel chairs, both of them were men by the way, but they were very clear, the impact factors and citations and the rank order of a journal is this is information that can be useful, but it’s not your immediate first stop. (Panel 1, Outputs and Impact, Female)

However, a metric-dominant approach was not the result of a male-dominated panel environment and instead, to the panels credit, evaluators were encouraged not to use one-metric as the only deciding factor between star-rating of quality. However, this is not to suggest that metrics did not play a dominant role. In fact, in order to resolve arguments, evaluators were encouraged to ‘ reflect on these other metrics ’ (Panel 3, Outputs only, Male) in order to rectify arguments where the assessment of quality was in conflict. This use of ‘other metrics’ was preferential to a resolution of differences that are based on more ‘soft’ arguments that are based on understanding where differences in opinion might lie in the interpretation of the manuscript’s quality. Instead, the deciding factor in resolving arguments would be the responsibility, primarily, of a ‘hard’ concept of quality as dictated by a numerical value;

Read the paper, judge the quality, judge the originality, the rigour, the impact — if you have to because you’re in dispute with another assessor, then reflect on these other metrics. So I don’t think metrics are that helpful actually if and until you’ve got a real issue to be able to make a decision. But I worry very much that metrics are just such a simple way of making the process much easier, and I’m worried about that because I think there’s a bit of game playing going on with impact factors and that kind of thing. (Panel 3, Outputs Only, Male)

Table 1 outlines the emergent themes, which, through inductive coding participants broadly categorised domains of research, their qualities and associations, types of activities and the gendered assumption generally made by participants when describing that activity. The table is intended only to provide an indicative overview of the overall tendencies of participants toward certain narratives as is not exhaustive, as well as a guide to interpret the perceptions of Impact illustrated in the below results.

Table one describes the dichotomous views that seemed to emerge from the research but it’s important to note that researchers associated Impact as related to gender in subtle, and in some cases overt ways. The data suggests that some male participants felt that female academics might be better at Impact, suggesting that female academics might find it liberating, linked it to a sense of duty or public service, implying that it was second nature. In addition, some male participants associated types of Impact domains as female-orientated activity and the reverse was the case with female and male-orientated ‘types’ of Impact. For example, at one extreme, a few male researchers seemed to perceive public engagement as something, which females would be particularly good at, generalising that they are not competitive ‘ women are better at this! They are less competitive! ’ (Environment, UK, Professor, Male) . Indeed, one male researcher suggested that competitiveness actually helps academics have an impact and does not impede it:

I get a huge buzz from trying to communicate those to a wider audience and winning arguments and seeing them used. It’s not the use that motivates me it’s the process of winning, I’m competitive! (Economics, UK, Professor, Male)

Analysis also revealed evidence that some researchers has gendered perceptions of Impact activities just as evaluators did. Here, women were more likely to promote the importance of engaging in Impact activities, whereas men were focused on producing indicators with hard, quantitative indicators of success. Some researchers implied that public engagement was not something entirely associated with the kinds of Impact needed to advance one’s career and for a few male researchers, this was accordingly associated with female academics. Certain female researchers in the sciences and the arts suggested similarly that there was a strong commitment among women to carry out public engagement, but that this was not necessarily shared by their male counterparts who, they perceived, undervalued this kind of work:

I think the few of us women in the faculty will grapple with that a lot about the relevance of what we’re doing and the usefulness, but for the vast majority of people it’s not there… [She implies that]…I think there is a huge gender thing there that every woman that you talk to on campus would consider that the role of the university is along the latter statement (*to communicate to the public). The vast majority of men would not consider that’s a role of the university. There’s a strong gender thing. (Chemical Engineering, Australia, Professor, Female)

Notwithstanding, it is important to distinguish between engagement and Impact. This research shows that participants perceive Impact activities to be gendered. There was a sense from one arts female researcher that women might be more interested in getting out there and communicating their work but that crucially, it is not the be-all and end- all of doing research: ‘ Women feel that there’s something more liberating, I can empathise with that, but that couldn’t be the whole job ’. Music, Australia, Professor, Female Footnote 4 . When this researcher, who was very much orientated towards Impact, asked if there were enough interviewees, she added ‘ mind you, you’ve probably spoken to enough men in lab coats ’. This could imply that inward-facing roles are associated with male-orientated activity and outward facing roles as perceived as more female orientated. Such sentiments perhaps relate to a binary delineation of women as more caring, subjective, applied and of men as harder, scientific and theoretical/ rational. This links to a broader characterisation of HE as marketised and potentially, more ‘male’ or at least masculinised—where increasing competitiveness, marketisation and performativity can be seen as linked to an increasingly macho way of doing business (Blackmore, 2002 ; Deem, 1998 ; Grummell et al., 2009 ; Reay, n.d. ). The data is also suggestive of the attitude that communication is a ‘soft’ skill and the interpersonal is seen as a less masculine trait. ‘ This is a huge generalisation but I still say that the profession is so dominated by men, undergraduates are so dominated by men and most of those boys will come into engineering because they’re much more comfortable dealing with a computer than with people ’ (Chemical Engineering, Australia, Professor, Female) . Again, this suggests women are more likely to pursue those scientific subjects, which will make a difference or contribute to society (such as nursing or environmental research, certainly those subjects that would be perceived as less ‘hard’ science domains).

There was also a sense that Impact activity, namely in this case public engagement and community work, was associated with women more than men by some participants (Amâncio, 2005 ). However, public engagement and certain social impact domains appeared to have a lower status and intellectual worth in the eyes of some participants. Some inferred that social and ‘soft’ impacts are seen as associated. With discipline. For instance, research concerning STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Medicine) subjects with females. They in turn may be held in low esteem. Some of the accounts suggest that soft impacts are perceived by women as not ‘counting’ as Impact:

‘ At least two out of the four of us who are female are doing community service and that doesn’t count, we get zero credit, actually I would say it gets negative credit because it takes time away from everything else ’. (Education Engineering, Australia, Professor, Female)

This was intimated again by another female UK computer scientist who claimed that since her work was on the ‘woolly side’ of things, and her impacts were predominantly in the social and public domain, she would not be taken seriously enough to qualify as a REF Impact case study, despite having won an award for her work:

‘ I don’t think it helps that if I were a male professor doing the same work I might be taken more seriously. It’s interesting, why recently? Because I’ve never felt that I’ve not been taken seriously because I’m a woman, but something happened recently and I thought, oh, you’re not taking me seriously because I’m a woman. So I think it’s a part ’. (Computer Science, UK, Professor, Female)

Researchers also connect the ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ associations with Impact described earlier to male and female traits. The relationship between Impact and gender is not well understood and it is not clear how much these issues are directly relatable to Impact or more symptomatic of the broader picture in HE. In order to get a broader picture, it is important to examine how these gendered notions of Impact translate into its evaluation. Some participants suggested that gender is a factor in the securing of grant money—certainly this comment reveals a local speculation that ‘the big boys’ get the grants, in Australia, at least: ‘ ARC grants? I’ve had a few but nothing like the big boys that get one after the other ,’ (Chemical Engineering, Australia, Professor, Female) . This is not dissimilar to the ‘alpha male’ comments from the evaluators described below who note a tendency for male evaluators to rely on ‘hard’ numbers whose views are further examined in the following section.

Gendered excellence in Impact evaluation

In the pre-evaluation interviews, panellists were asked about what they perceived to be ‘excellent’ research and ‘excellent’ Impact. Within this context, are mirrored conceptualisations of impacts as either ‘soft’ or ‘hard’ as was seen with the interviews with researchers described above. These conceptualisations were captured prior to the evaluation began. They can therefore be interpreted as the raw, baseline assumptions of Impact that are free from the effects of the panel group, showed that there were differences in how evaluators perceived Impact, and that these perceptions were gendered.

Although all researchers conceptualised Impact as a linear process for the purposes of the REF2014 exercise (Derrick, 2018 ), there was a tendency for female evaluators to be open to considering the complexity of Impact, even in a best-case scenario. This included a consideration that Impact as dictated within the narrative might have different indicators of value to different evaluators; ‘ I just think that that whole framing means that there is a form of normative standard of perfect impact ’ (Main Panel, Outputs and Impacts, Female) . This evaluator, in particular, went further to state how that their impression of Impact would be constructed from the comparators available during the evaluation;

‘ Given that I’m presenting impact as a good story, it would be like you saying to me; ‘Can you describe to me a perfect Shakespearean play?’…. well now of course, I can’t. You can give me lots of plays but they all have different kinds of interesting features. Different people would say that their favourite play was different. To me, if you’re taking interpretivist view, constructivist view, there is no perfect normative standard. It’s just not possible ’. (Panel 1, Outputs and Impacts, Female)

Female evaluators were also more sensitive to other complex factors influencing the evaluation of Impact, including time lag; ‘ …So it takes a long time for things like that to be accepted…it took hundreds of studies before it was generally accepted as real ’ (Panel 1, Outputs and Impacts, Female ); as well as the indirect way that research influences policy as a form of Impact;

‘ I don’t think that anything would get four stars without even blinking. I think that is impossible to answer because you have to look at the whole evidence in this has gone on, and how that does link to the impact that is being claimed, and then you would then have to look at how that impact, exactly how that research has impacted on the ways of the world, in terms of change or in terms of society or whatever. I don’t think you can see this would easily get four stars because of the overall process is being looked at, as well as the actual outcome ’ . (Panel 3, Outputs and Impact, Female)

Although these typologies were not absolute, there was a lack of complexity in the nuances around Impact. There was also heavily gendered language around Impacts as measurable, or not, that mirrored the association of Impact as being either ‘hard’, and therefore measurable, or ‘soft, and therefore more nuanced in value. In this way, male evaluators expressed Impact as a causal, linear event that occurred ‘ in a very short time ’ (P2, Outputs and Impact, Male) and involved a single ‘ star ’ (P3, Impacts only, Male) or ‘ impact champion ’ (Main Panel, Outputs and Impacts, Male) that drove it from start (research), to finish (Impact). These associations about Impact being ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ made by evaluators, mirror the responses from researchers in the above sections. In the example below, the evaluator used words such as ‘ strong ’ and ‘ big way ’ to describe Impact success, as well as emphasises causality in the argument;

‘ …if it has affected a lot of people or affected policy in a strong way or created change in a big way, and it can be clearly linked back to the research, and it’s made a difference ’. (Panel 2, Outputs and Impact, Male)

These perhaps show disciplinary differences as much as gendered differences. Further, there was a stronger tendency for male evaluators to strive towards conceptualisations of excellence in Impact as measurable or ‘ it’s something that is decisive and actionable ’ (Panel 6, Impacts, Male) . One male evaluator explained his conceptualised version of Impact excellence as ‘ straightforward ’ and therefore ‘ obviously four-star ’ due to the presence of metrics with which to measure Impact. This was a perception more commonly associated with male evaluators;

‘ …if somebody has been able to devise a — let’s say pancreatic cancer — which is a molecular cancer, which hasn’t made any progress in the last 40 years, and where the mortality is close to 100% after diagnosis, if someone devised a treatment where now suddenly, after diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, 90 percent of the people are now still alive 5 years later, where the mortality rate is almost 0%, who are alive after 5 years. That, of course, would be a dramatic, transformative impact ’. (Panel 1, Outputs and Impact, Male)

In addition, his tendency to seek various numeric indicators for measuring, and therefore assessing Impact (predominantly economic impact), as well as compressing its realisation to a small period of time ( ‘ suddenly ’ ) in a causal fashion, was more commonly expressed in male evaluators. This tendency automatically indicates the association of impacts as either ‘soft’ or ‘hard’ and divided along gendered norms, but also expresses Impact in monetary terms;

‘ Something that went into a patient or the company has pronounced with…has spun out and been taken up by a commercial entity or a clinical entity ’ (Panel 3, Outputs and Impacts, Male) , as well as impacts that are marketised; ‘ A new antimicrobial drug to market ’. (Panel 6, Outputs and Impact, Male) .

There was also the perception that female academics would be better at engagement (Johnson et al., 2014 ; Crettaz Von Roten, 2011 ) due to its link with notions of ‘ duty ’ (as a mother), ‘ engagement ’ and ‘ public service ’ are reflected in how female evaluators were also more open to the idea that excellent Impact is achieved through productive, ongoing partnerships with non-academic stakeholders. Here, the reflections of ‘duty’ from the evaluators was also mirrored by in interviews with researchers. Indeed, the researchers merged perceptions of parenthood, an academic career and societal impact generation. One female researcher drew on her role as a mother as supportive of her ability to participate in Impact generation, ‘ I have kids that age so… ’ (Biology, UK, Senior Lecturer, Female) . Indeed, parenthood emerged from researchers of both genders in relation to the Impact agenda. Two male participants spoke positively about the need to transfer knowledge of all kinds to society referencing their role as parents: ‘ I’m all for that. I want my kids to have a rich culture when they go to school ’ (Engineering, Australia, Professor, Male, E2) , and ‘ My children are the extension of my biological life and my students are an extension of my thoughts ’ (Engineering, Australia, Professor, Male, E1) . One UK female biologist commented that she indeed enjoys delivering public engagement and outreach and implies a reference to having a family as enabling her ability to do so: ‘ It’s partly being involved with the really well-established outreach work ,’ (Biology, UK, Senior Lecturer, Female) .

For the evaluators, the idea that ‘public service’ as second nature for female academics, was reflected in how female evaluators perceived the long, arduous and serendipitous nature of Impact generation, as well as their commitment to assessing the value of Impact as a ‘pathway’ rather than in line with impact as a ‘product’. Indeed, this was highlighted by one male evaluator who suggested that the measurement and assessment of Impact ‘ …needs to be done by economists ’ and that

‘ you [need] to put in some quantification one everything…[that] puts a negative value on being sick and a positive large value on living longer. So, yeah, the greatest impact would be something that saves us money and generates income for the country but something broad and improves quality of life ’. (Panel 2, Impacts, Male)

Since evaluators tend to exercise cognitive bias in evaluative situations (Langfeldt, 2006 ), these preconceived ideas about Impact, its generation and the types of people responsible for its success are also likely to permeate the evaluative deliberations around Impact during the peer review process. What is uncertain is the extent that these messages are dominant within the panel discourse, and therefore the extent that they influence the formation of a consensus within the group, and the ‘dominant definition’ of Impact (Derrick, 2018 ) that emerges as a result.

Notions of gender from the evaluators post-evaluation

Similar notions of gender-roles in academia pertaining to notions of scientific productivity were echoed by academics who were charged with its evaluation as part of the UK’s 2014 Research Excellence Framework. Interviews with evaluators revealed not only that the panel working-methods and characteristics about what constituted a ‘good’ evaluator were implicitly along gendered norms, but also that the assumed credit assumptions of performativity were also based on gender.

In assessments of the Impact criterion, an assessment that is not as amenable to quantitative representation requiring panels to conceptualise a very complex process, with unstandardised measures of significance and reach, there was still a gendered perception of Impact being ‘women’s work’ in academia. This perception was based on the tendency towards conceptualising Impact as ‘slightly grubby’ and ‘not very pure’, which echoes previously reported pre-REF2014 tensions that Impact is a task that an academic does when they cannot do real research (de Jong et al., 2015 );

But I would say that something like research impact is — it seems something slightly grubby. It’s not seen as not — by the academics, as not very pure. To some of them, it seems women’s work. Talking to the public, do you see what I mean? (Main Panel, Outputs and Impact, Female)

In addition, gendered roles also relate to how the panel worked with the assessment of Impact. Previous research has outlined how the equality and diversity assessment of panels for REF2014 were not conducted until after panellists were appointed (Derrick, 2018 ), leading to a lack of equal-representation of women on most panels. Some of the female panellists reflected that this resulted not only in a hyper-awareness of one’s own identity and value as a woman on the panel, but also implicitly associating the role that a female panellist would play in generating the evaluation. One panellist below, reflected that she was the only female in a male-dominated panel, and that the only other females in the room were the panel secretariat. The panellist goes further to explain how this resulted in a gendered-division of labour surrounding the assessment of Impact;

I mean, there’s a gender thing as well which isn’t directing what you’re talking about what you’re researching, but I was the only woman on the original appointed panel. The only other women were the secretariat. In some ways I do — there was initially a very gendered division of perspective where the women were all the ones aggregate the quantitative research, or typing it all up or talking about impact whereas the men were the ones who represented the big agenda, big trials. (Main Panel, Outputs and Impact, Female)

In addition, evaluators expressed opinions about what constituted a good and a bad panel member. From this, the evaluation showed that traits such as the ability to work as a ‘team’ and to build on definitions and methods of assessment for Impact through deliberation and ‘feedback’ were perceived along gendered lines. In this regard, women perceived themselves as valuable if they were ‘happy to listen to discussions’, and not ‘too dogmatic about their opinion’. Here, women were valued if they played a supportive, supplementary role in line with Bellas ( 1999 ), which was in clear distinction to men who contributed as creative thinkers and forgers of new ideas. As one panellist described;

A good panel member is an Irish female. A good panel member was someone who was happy to — someone who is happy to listen to discussions; to not be too dogmatic about their opinion, but can listen and learn, because impact is something we are all learning from scratch. Somebody who wasn’t too outspoken, was a team player. (Panel 3, Outputs and Impact, Female)

Likewise, another female evaluator reflected on the reasons for her inclusion as a panel member was due to her ‘generalist perspective’ as opposed to a perspective that is over prescribed. This was suggestive of how an overly specialist perspective would run counter to the reasons that she was included as a panellist which was, in her opinion, due to her value as an ethnic and gender ‘token’ to the panel;

‘ I think it’s also being able to provide some perspective, some general perspective. I’m quite a generalist actually, I’m not a specialist……So I’m very generalist. And I think they’re also well aware of the ethnic and gender composition of that and lots of reasons why I’m asked on panels. (Panel 1, Outputs and Impact, Female)

Women perceived their value on the panel as supportive, as someone who is prepared to work on the team, and listen to other views towards as a generalist, and constructionist, rather than as an enforced of dogmatic views and raw, hard notions of Impact that were represented through quantitative indicators only. As such, how the panel operated reflects general studies of how work can be organised along gender lines, as well as specific to workload and power in the academy. The similarity between the gendered associations towards conceptualising Impact from the researchers and evaluators, combined with how the panel organises its work along gendered lines, suggests how panel culture echoes the implicit tendencies within the wider research community. The implications of this tendency in relation to the evaluation of non-academic Impact is discussed below.

Discussion: an Impact a-gender?

This study shows how researchers and evaluators in two, independent data sets echoed a gendered orientation towards Impact, and how this implies an Impact a-gender. That gendered notions of Impact emerged as a significant theme from two independent data sets speaks to the importance of the issue. It also illustrates the need for policymakers and funding organisations to acknowledge its potential effects as part of their efforts towards embedding a more inclusive research culture around the generation and evaluation of research impact beyond academia.

Specifically, this paper has identified gendered language around the generation of, and evaluation of Impact by researchers in Australia and the UK, as well as by evaluators by the UK’s most recent Research Excellence Framework in 2014. For the UK and Australia, the prominence of Impact, as well as the policy borrowing between each country (Chubb, 2017 ) means that a reliable comparison of pre-evaluation perceptions of researchers and evaluators can be made. In both data sets presumptions of Impact as either ‘soft’ or ‘hard’ by both researchers and evaluators were found to be gendered. Whereas it is not surprising that panel culture reflects the dominant trends within the wider academic culture, this paper raises the question of how the implicit operation of gender bias surrounding notions of scientific productivity and its measurement, invade and therefore unduly influence the evaluation of those notions during peer-review processes. This negates the motivation behind a broad Impact definition and evaluation as inclusive since unconscious bias towards women can still operate if left unchecked and unmanaged.

Gendered notions of excellence were also related to the ability to be ‘competitive’, and that once Impact became a formalised, countable and therefore competitive criterion, it also become masculine where previously it existed as a feminised concept related to female academic-ness. As a feminised concept, Impact once referred to notions of excellence requiring communication such as public engagement, or stakeholder coordination—the ‘softer’ impacts. However, this association only remains ‘soft’ insofar as Impact remains unmeasurable, or more nuanced in definition. This is especially pertinent for the evaluation of societal impact where already conceived ideas of engagement and ‘ women’s work ’ influence how evaluators assess the feasibility of impact narratives for the purposes of its assessment. This paper also raises the question that notions of gender in relation to Impact persist irrespective of the identities assumed for the purposes of its evaluation (i.e., as a peer reviewer). This is not to say that academic culture in the UK and Australia, where Impact is increasingly being formalised into rewards systems, is not changing. More that there is a tendency in some evaluations for the burden of evidence to be applied differently to genders due to tensions surrounding what women are ‘good’ at doing: engagement, versus what ‘men’ are good at doing regarding Impact. In this scenario, quantitative indicators of big, high-level impacts are to be attributable to male traits, rather than female. This has already been noted in student evaluations of teaching (Kogan et al., 2010 ) and of academic leadership performance where the focus on the evaluation is on how others interpret performance based on already held gendered views about competence based on behaviours (Williams et al., 2014 ; Holt and Ellis, 1998 ). As such, when researchers transcend these gendered identities that are specific to societal impact, there is a danger of an Impact-a-gender bias arising in the assessment and forecasting of Impact. This paper extends this understanding and outlines how this may also be the case for assessments of societal impact.

By examining perceptions, as well as using an inductive analysis, this study was able to unearth unconsciously employed gendered notions that would not have been prominent or possible to pick up if we asked the interviewees about gender directly. This was particularly the case for the re-analysis of the post-evaluation interviews. However, future studies might consider incorporating a disciplinary-specific perspective as although the evaluators were from the medical/biomedical disciplines, researchers were from a range of disciplines. This would identify any discipline-specific risk towards an Impact a-gender. Nonetheless, further work that characterises the impact a-gender, as well as explores its wider implications for gender inequities within HE is currently underway.

How research evidence is labelled as excellent and therefore trustworthy, is heavily dictated by an evaluation process that is perceived as impartial and fair. However, if evaluations are compounded by gender bias, this confounds assessments of excellence with gendered expectation of non-academic impact. Consequently, gendered expectations of excellence for non-academic impact has the potential to: unconsciously dissuade women from pursuing more masculinised types of impact; act as a barrier to how female researchers mobilise their research evidence; as well as limit the recognition female researchers gain as excellent and therefore trustworthy sources of evidence.

The aim of this paper was not to criticise the panellists and researchers for expressing gendered perspectives, nor to present evidence about how researchers are unduly influenced by gender bias. The results shown do not support either of these views. However, the aim of this paper was to acknowledge how gender bias in research Impact generation can lead to a panel culture dominated by academics that translate the implicit and explicit biases within academia that influence its evaluation. This paper raises an important question regarding what we term the ‘Impact a-gender’, which outlines a mechanism in which gender bias feeds into the generation and evaluation of a research criterion, which is not traditionally associated with a hard, metrics-masculinised output from research. Along with other techniques used to combat unconscious bias in research evaluation, simply by identifying, and naming the issue, this paper intends to combat its ill effects through a community-wide discussions as a mechanism for developing tools to mitigate its wider effect if left unchecked or merely accepted as ‘acceptable’. In addition, it is suggested that government and funding organisations explicitly refer to the impact a-gender as part of their wider EDI (Equity, Diversity and Inclusion) agendas towards minimising the influence of unconscious bias in research impact and evaluation.

Data availability

Data is available upon request subject to ethical considerations such as consent so as not to compromise the individual privacy of our participants.

Change history

19 may 2020.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

For the purposes of this paper, when the text refers to non-academic, societal impact, or the term ‘Impact’ we are referring to the change and effect as defined by REF2014/2021 and the larger conceptualisation of impact that is generated through knowledge exchange and engagement. In this way, the paper refers to a broad conceptualisation of research impact that occurs beyond academia. This allows a distinction between Impact as central to this article’s contribution, as opposed to academic impact, and general word ‘impact’.

Impact scholars or those who are ‘good at impact’ are often equated with applied researchers.

One might interpret this as meaning ‘economic impact’.

This is described in the next section as ‘women’s work’ by one evaluator.

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Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Future Research Leaders Programme (ES/K008897/2). We would also like to acknowledge their peers for offering their views on the paper in advance of publication and in doing so thank Dr. Richard Watermeyer, University of Bath, Professor Paul Wakeling, University of York and Dr. Gabrielle Samuel, Kings College London.

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Chubb, J., Derrick, G.E. The impact a-gender: gendered orientations towards research Impact and its evaluation. Palgrave Commun 6 , 72 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-020-0438-z

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-020-0438-z

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