From the 70's to the 90's

Have men and women changed since the 1970s, or just our misconceptionsabout each other?

By Marcus Wynne, published on November 01, 1998 - last reviewed on August 30, 2004

STEREOTYPES

You've come a long way, baby -- if you're a woman, that is. A recent survey comparing gender stereotypes common in the 1970s to those held in the 1990s finds that while images of women have improved, those of their male counterparts have soured.

Twenty years ago, women were viewed as indecisive, subjective and passive, unfamiliar with the ways of the world and unable to separate feelings from ideas. All those traits were absent from the 1990s survey, conducted by psychologists Matthew Winter, Ph.D., of George Washington University and Diane Clark, Ph.D., and Elisabeth Diamond, Ph.D., of Shippenberg University. At the same time, women were characterized for the first time as intelligent, logical and feminist as well as independent, adventurous, dependable and skilled at relationships.

Men, meanwhile, received mixed reviews. Positive qualities attributed to men for the first time included friendliness, gentleness and caring. But males were no longer seen as particularly objective, savvy or assertive -- all qualities emphasized in the 1970s survey -- and were saddled with some new negative qualities, too. Men are jealous, moody, fussy and temperamental, said respondents; also deceptive, narrow-minded and heedless of consequences. "Traditional male characteristics are seen less positively," reports Clark, who calls the phenomenon "negative masculinity."