The occupational stereotyping of women : values and reality
Date
1975
Authors
Dier, Susan Sheila
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Abstract
The purpose of this study is to test the hypothesis that the values related to the employment of women are inconsistent with the actual employment of women in the labour force. A comparison of the occupational distribution of women in magazine fiction with the occupational distribution of women according to census data was performed to test this hypothesis.
The magazines were selected to control for differences by reading level in emphasis on particular values as reported by Albrecht (1956). Three magazines were utilized for the years 1940, 1950, 1960 and 1970, and the diversity of women in each magazine and for each time period was compared to the corresponding census distribution.
It was found that the diversity of women is consistently lower in magazine fiction than in census data. The occupational diversity of women was also found to be consistently lower than that of men in both types of data. Difficulties in measuring differences in diversity were encountered and alternatives were utilized. Variations in diversity in both magazine and census data were summarized.
The conclusions are interpreted as supporting the hypothesized divergence of values regarding the employment of women with the reality of the labour force.
This finding is of interest because it supports the notion that, though women may be capable of performing in many occupations, their appearance in these occupations is not socially accepted (Epstein, 1970).