The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship among sex-role stereotype, sex-role identity and self-esteem for elementary school students in order to be of use for the development of more systemic, professional sex-education program.
The ...
The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship among sex-role stereotype, sex-role identity and self-esteem for elementary school students in order to be of use for the development of more systemic, professional sex-education program.
The subjects in this study were 729 fifth and sixth graders selected by convenience sampling from three elementary school in North Chungcheong province. The data were collected form July 2 through July 20, 2001.
The instrument used to measure sex-role stereotype was Shin Suk-yeong(2001)'s sex-role stereotype for housework, occupation and play inventory. For sex-role identity, Lee Mi-hwa(1986)'s questionnaire that selected 20 items from Spence, Helmreich and Stapp(1975)'s CPAQ and Bem's BSRI was employed. And Kim Kyeong-yeon(1986)'s adopted version of coopersmity(1967)'s SEI and Rosenberg(1965)'s SES was utilized to gauge self-esteem.
The collected data were analyzed with SPSS program. The frequency analysis, t-test, chi-square test, ANOVA and correlation analysis were conducted and Scheffe test was carried out as post test.
The brief findings of this study were as below:
1) The sex-role stereotype about housework, occupation and play was statistically significant difference between the girls and boys(t=-9.52, p<.001). The girl children had a less sex-role stereotype than the boys.
2) Their sex-role identity types varied very significantly with gender(x^2=140.4777, p<.001). The most widely exhibited sex-role identity was androgynous type with 33.61%, followed by undifferentiated type with 30.86%, masculine type with 18.52% and feminine type with 17.01% in the order named. The boys and girls had a different sex-role identity type, since more boys had undifferentiated and masculine types, whereas more girls had androgynous and feminine types.
3) The gender made little significant difference to their self-esteem (t=0.29, p<.05), as the collective self-esteem average of the boys was 115.99 and that of the girls was 115.57, which were similar to each other.
4) As a result of analyzing whether the sex-role stereotype was affected by the sex-role identity type, the sex-role identity types made statistically significant difference to the sex-role stereotype(F=8.94, p<.001). The androgynous type group scored the highest in stereotype, followed by the feminine, undifferentiated and masculine type groups in the order named. Concerning the correlation of the sex-role identity to the sex-role stereotype, both masculine and feminine types had minor correlation with the sex-role stereotype. In particular, those who scored higher in femininity had a less sex-role stereotype.
5) As a result of investigationg if the self-esteem was influenced by the ses-role identity types, it's found that the self-exteem varied very significantly with the sex-role identity type(F=64.04, p<.001). The androgynous group had the best self-esteem, and the undifferentiated group was poorest in self-esteem. Regarding the correlation of the sex-role identity to the self-exteem, the self-esteem was positively correlated with both masculinity and femininity.
6) As a result of looking over the impact of the sex-role stereotype on the self-esteem, there was no significant gap in self-esteem between the group with higher stereotype score and the other with lower stereotype score(t=1.15, p<.05). The sex-role stereotype had slight correlation with the self-esteem, which suggested that those who had a less sex-role stereotype had better self-esteem. When it's taken into account that elementary school period is crucial for sex-role socialization, children need a change of mind-set about changing sex-role to build a good sex-role identity. Moreover, teachers who are primarily responsible for child sex-role socialization is urgently required to look at it in a different way as well. And education programs should be designed to integrate the masculinity and femininity of children to induce them to establish an androgynous identity.