1. Sex-Role Concepts and Gender Identity in Children's Drawings.
- Author
-
Johnson, Hope
- Abstract
The expression of children's concepts of sex-roles was explored by examining changes in the masculinity and femininity of human figure drawings of males and females. A total of 106 sixth-grade students participated in two Draw-a-Person sessions. In the drawing task, persons to be drawn were either specified in terms of gender or unspecified as to gender but described as being either masculine or feminine. Thus, six descriptions were used: male/masculine, male/feminine, female/feminine, female/masculine, feminine sex-role/no gender specified, and masculine sex-role/no gender specified. It was hypothesized that (1) boys would respond to incongruity between traditional sex-role and gender with exaggeration of masculinity or femininity in their drawings; (2) girls would be more likely to assimilate the mixed configuration; and (3) when the sex of the stimulus person was not specified, subjects would assume congruity between sex-role and gender. Results of mixed factorial analysis of varience and a chi-square test show that, regardless of described sex-role of stimulus persons, gender of child and specified gender of stimulus persons had the most significant effect on the masculinity/femininity of the children's drawings. In the absence of gender specification, sex-role determined gender of figure drawn. Girls drew figures of both genders; boys drew male figures. (Author/RH)
- Published
- 1983