Sex Role Orientation as a Predictor of Women's Identity Statuses, Identity Styles, Priorities, and Time Use

Abstract

In the current study, we were interested in how the balance between expressive and instrumental qualities may be associated with women’s identity statuses, identity styles, priorities, and time use. Our sample consisted of 189 female college undergraduates at a university in the South East. In terms of identity statuses, we found that androgynous women had significantly higher achievement scores in the ideological domain than feminine-oriented and undifferentiated women. Androgynous women also had significantly higher achievement scores in the interpersonal domain than undifferentiated women. Consistent with our predictions about identity styles, feminine-oriented women had significantly higher normative-oriented scores than androgynous women. Androgynous and masculine-oriented women had significantly higher information-oriented scores than feminine-oriented and undifferentiated women, and undifferentiated women had significantly higher diffusion-oriented scores than masculine-oriented and androgynous women. In terms of priorities, our prediction that masculine-oriented and androgynous women would score higher than feminine-oriented women on measures of occupational priorities was not supported. However, our predictions about women’s marital and parental priorities were partially supported. Feminine-oriented and androgynous women had higher marital priorities than undifferentiated women; and androgynous women had higher marital priorities than masculine-oriented women. Feminine-oriented women had significantly higher parental priorities than masculine-oriented and undifferentiated women; and androgynous women had significantly higher parental priorities than undifferentiated women. The priority that women place on romantic relationships was also investigated, and we found that feminine-oriented women scored significantly higher on measures of romantic relationship priorities than undifferentiated women. However, there were no significant differences in women’s future-orientation priorities based on sex role orientation. In terms of time use, we found that women with higher levels of expressivity spent more time in leisure activities with their partners that reflected interpersonal-oriented priorities, and women with higher levels of instrumentality spent more time in leisure activities with their partners that reflected ideological-oriented priorities.