Interrelationships between gender flexibility and adult emotional maturity.

Abstract

Research and theory on emotional development and on gender have shown that the two domains of human experience are related in Western culture. Theory that systematically describes aspects of these relationships, as they apply to the adult years, is scarce. This project organizes the relationships between these areas of literature. Arising from the review of this literature, a proposal is made that across adulthood, increases in emotional maturity should be associated with increases in gender flexibility. Gender flexibility is defined as a relinquishing of adherence to stereotyped norms about masculinity and femininity. Gender flexibility is considered to be multi-dimensional, operating on diverse aspects of gender such as stereotypes of personality traits, stereotypes of emotionality, internalized gender schema, and self-descriptions of femininity and masculinity. A study with 78 research participants ranging in age from 21 to 49 was completed to test this theory. It was found that some aspects of gender were more flexible for adults who were more mature emotionally. For men, stereotypes of feminine personality traits, gender schema, and gender self-descriptions became less gender stereotyped. Women who were more emotionally mature were less gender stereotyping in the way they perceived others to experience emotions. However, more mature women were found to be more gender schematic for feminine personality traits. The results demonstrate that higher levels of emotional maturity in adulthood are related to higher levels of endorsement of characteristics that are stereotyped in this culture as feminine, and less reliance on gender stereotyping of others. These results are discussed in terms of the social construction of gender in American society where 'feminine' and 'masculine' are given unequal value by the culture.