Investigation of adolescents' attitudes toward gender role violations

Although sex is the most prominent variable when encountered other people, it does not only characterize a demographic feature, but also constitute a concept that shapes society's perception of people and the characteristics, skills and expectations attributed to them. The social meanings attributed to sex, reveal different sex roles in various contexts of social life, in other words, gender is socially constructed. This study was conducted to investigate early adolescents' perception of gender role violations. In this framework, early adolescents' evaluations about a husband's behavior either helping (Study 1) or yelling (Study 2) to his wife (either behave in accordance with domestic role or violating it) was examined in terms of normative evaluations, fairness, annoyingness, and level of satisfaction. The relationship between these evaluations and other factors like moral disengagement and gender identification was tested within the study. 148 middle school students (age M = 13.04, SD = 1.03; %43.2 male) participated in the first study. A scenario manipulated about woman's violation of gender role (fulfilling gender role, violating it, and control group) was presented and the participants were asked to evaluate the husband's act of helping his wife about childcare in terms of how right, fair, deserved, annoying, and satisfying. Afterwards, The Moral Disengagement Scale, The Gender Identification Scale, and The Attitudes of Gender Equality Scale were applied. While woman's violation of gender role does not affect normative evaluation of helping ("Should he help?" and "How right is the act of helping?"), it causes the help to be evaluated as less fair, deserved, satisfying and more annoying. Moral disengagement was in a negative relationship with normative evaluations of helping; however, gender identification is not correlated with any one of the evaluations. At the second study, a total of 149 middle school students (age M = 13.08, SD = 1.09; %43.6 male) were participated. The same experimental procedures in the first study were applied and the same measurements were taken, however at this study, the participants were asked to evaluate the man's act of yelling to his wife. In the gender role violating condition, the participants considered the man's yelling to his wife as more right, fair, and deserved. The evaluations about how much satisfying and annoying is the act of yelling is not affected from gender role violation. Consequently, the study revealed that early adolescents' evaluations of man's help in domestic works or yelling to his wife was affected by the woman's gender role violation. Keywords: Gender Role Violation, Gender Equality, Gender Identity, Moral Disengagement, Early Adolescence