Masculine gender role stress

Eisler, R. M., & Blalock, J. A. (1991). Masculine Gender Role Stress: Implications for the assessment of Men. Clinical Psychology Review, 11, 45-60.

Some quoted text of interest

"There has been increased interest in the idea that gender plays a major role in predisposing each sex to certain kinds of mental and physical health problems. Explanations for sex differences in the health of men and women have focused broadly on 2 types of factors: the biogenic and the psychosocial."

"Waldron (1976) has estimated that 75% of the sex difference in life expectancy can be accounted for by the gender role behaviors of men who are involved in more high health risk behaviors than women, including smoking, alcohol abuse, and propensity toward violent or hazardous activities."

"The notion that the differential gender role socialisation of men and women might predispose each sex to different kinds of mental health problems may be viewed as an application of sociocultural and psychosocial models to the etiology of behavior disorders. Central to this construction are the concepts of gender, gender identity, and the acquisition of gender role. Gender refers to social conceptions of what it is to be masculine and what it is to be feminine. For eg., most people in our culture believe that it is not masculine for women to be involved in displays of physical aggression, although it is certainly not ruled out by their biology."

"Masculinity then, like femininity, is entirely an achieved status regulated by normative beliefs and expectations. To become masculine in terms of one's thoughts, expression of one's feelings, and behavioral repertoires requires many years of enculturation.... Because results of masculine indoctrination are so pervasive among men despite individual variations in education, race, ethinicity, and political beliefs, many men therefore find it difficult to believe that their masculine beliefs have primarily cultural as opposed to biological origins."

"The idea that masculine traits such as dominance and competitiveness are imposed on the individual by the culture rather than developed from within by innate biological forces or by developmental needs to develop a masculine identity was first advanced by Joseph Pleck (1981) in his book, The Myth of Masculinity."

these are the 5 factors that are the behavior under masculine gender role stress
1. physical inadequacy -- stress appriasial related to fears of not being competitive physically, in sports or sexual rivalries
2. emotional inexpressiveness -- male difficulties in expressing feelings of affection, fear or pain. Reflects a stress a man may feel when he has to confront emotional responses in others
3. subordination to women -- reflect male apprisal of stress due to a perceived competitive threat from women
4. intellectual inferiority -- male appraisal of stress in situations that question his rational coping abilities, to be decisive, smart enough
5. performance failure -- stress of potential failure to perform up to masculine standards in work and sexual adequacy.

this stuff is so interesting!!