Gender Stereotypes and Coping with Adversities

Abstract

Women’s subjective experience of life hardships may be connected with gender self-concept and misogynistic attitudes. This empirical study of external and internal misogyny as a gender stereotype consisted of two stages. The first stage relied on such quantitative methods as scale questionnaires to identify the coping strategies, self-attitudes, and misogynistic ideas. The second stage used two qualitative methods: the free associations method helped to define the concept of adversity in men and women while the thematic analysis identified the default coping strategies in the focus group. The study involved 312 women aged 18–45 y.o. from Tashkent, Uzbekistan. The research revealed a relationship between some parameters of self-attitude and the severity of misogynistic attitudes. For example, prominent self-confidence, self-acceptance, self-guidance, and openness in communication accompanied low scores for social vulnerability, personal inferiority, and a sense of danger. Internal conflicts and self-blame corresponded with strong misogynous attitudes. In general, the gender role remained a prevailing characteristic of adversity. The adversity concept demonstrated an inner contradiction: the core concentrated on sexual and physical family violence while the periphery was more about interpersonal family relations. The thematic analysis showed that the choice of coping strategy depended on the limitations caused by misogynistic attitudes. However, the relationship between the misogynistic gender stereotyping and the choice of coping strategy proved to be ambiguous.

Keywords

• gender stereotypes
• difficult life situation
• coping strategies
• misogyny
• self-attitude
• structure of representations