In her research, Janet Shibley Hyde argues that women and men have significantly more similarities than differences, despite the common belief in the opposite. This issue has been gaining more interest lately because of the growing attention to gender inequality issues and the increasing popularity of the women’s empowerment movement. Indeed, men and women has been divided by stereotypes strengthened by numerous pseudoscientific books for a very long time, and the main concern the scientific community has is about the effects of such stereotypes on women’s and men’s well-being and success in life that can be put at risk because of wrong beliefs. For this reason, the ongoing research conducted using scientific method is especially important for debunking age-long myths and offering new insights that can build a bridge between the two genders and improve life of so many people all over the world.
Hyde starts her study with reminding the readers about many non-scientific, but very popular books that, unfortunately, have instilled within generations of people beliefs in irreconcilable differences between men and women. At the same time, she noticed that the roots of such wrong beliefs lied in scientific research that was primarily focused on differences and largely ignored gender similarities. For this reason, Hyde (2005) decided to conduct a meta-analysis that would expose this gap in research and hypothesized that the analysis would show that men and women were similar in most aspects, except for few psychological ones (p. 581). However, her research could be improved if the author also looked into the reasons for such gap and why the society was more interested in believing in gender differences rather than finding similarities. The conducted meta-analysis took into account many small and major studies regarding differences and similarities between genders and helped prove that both genders were very similar, most stereotypes were untrue, and gender differences almost always appeared in certain social contexts, when men and women unconsciously confirmed their gender roles. Hyde’s study would also benefit from her conducting own experiment with large sample and covering all existing stereotypes. Possibly, a longitudinal study would also help expose the effect of gender stereotyping on people’s lives. The researcher arrives at a conclusion that women and men are similar almost on all variables, except for certain sexuality aspects. She also concludes that groundless gender stereotyping on women and men prevents each gender from genuine self-expression, self-actualization and success. While this conclusion is logical, given the analysis of the studies, it would gain even more support if a respective longitudinal study was conducted involving preschool children, especially if it would follow up them into adult life. At the same time, since many people from the analyzed studies showed different results depending on whether they were observed or not, Hyde could also conduct a study regarding the impact of personal belief in gender stereotypes on such person’s performance and expectations.
The results of this research are reflected in real life, since my personal experience also contains situations when I underperformed or expected another person to underperform because of his or her gender. For example, I have unconsciously applied to my friend a stereotype that men should behave in a masculine way and emotions should be controlled. When he was once upset because of troubles in his family, I noticed that I wanted him to “man-up”, instead of trying to support by showing sympathy and empathy. Meanwhile, I expected him to cheer me up when I was feeling down because I felt that I was allowed to show emotional distress more than he was. At the same time, I was a victim of stereotypes held inside my family. I was always interested in technology and mechanisms, and my curiosity was encouraged and supported by my parents when I was 5 years old, but they already showed doubt in my understanding of how mechanisms and technology worked when I was 18, although I was the same person as I was in childhood.
The aforesaid scientific and personal evidence shows that society, for some reasons, prefers to maintain status quo, supporting the idea of gender differences more than trying to find if this idea is actually true. The implications of this tendency can be drastic because people can feel social denial because of not meeting general expectations towards their gender. Moreover, people can deny their own personalities because of believing in the great difference between men and women, and this can prevent them from pursuing own dreams, which can lead to frustration and even depression. For this reason, author’s argument about gender similarity is very important to be heard in the broader society through popular media in order to overshadow the many books that support the myths.
However, since so many scientific studies have been conducted to evaluate differences between men and women, their conclusions should not be annulled because they are still valid. Indeed, men and women are different in certain aspects, such as sexuality and aggression; however, the reasons for such differences are unclear, although they may be caused by certain biochemical differences, such as hormone levels. For this reason, future studies could focus on finding out why these differences take place and what other significant differences may exist. Another question is why exactly people try to conform to gender stereotypes and what benefits they see in such behavior. The light should be shed on this question because the study shows that most of the time the exposure of great differences is unconsciously initiated by the participants of the study. The answers to this question can help find ways to change people’s behavior and promote genuine self-expression rather than the stereotype-based one.
References
Hyde, J. S. (2005). The Gender Similarities Hypothesis. American Psychologist, 60(6), 581-592.
