
ISBN : 9782296095045
MASCULINITY AND FEMININITY IN GENDER-SPECIFIC PROFESSIONS: A SOCIAL REPRESENTATION PERSPECTIVE STUDYL
Pro Eusabetta Camussf, Lorenzo MontaU, Chiara Colo
Theoretical framework
Men and women are, at one and the same time, equal and different.
Differences among genders that emerge in tasks that measure cognitive
performances - such as spatial tasks or task that measure mathematical and
linguistic skills (Maccoby & Jacklin, 1977; Archer & Lloyd, 2002) - lie
alongside the more obvious differences - namely, biological differences.
The fact that there are results which show that women are capable of
achieving better results in verbal tasks, whereas men tend to do better in
spatial or mathematical tasks has often been used to explain the various
forms of occupational'horizontal segregation' along gender lines, which
means that in specific fields of activity there are either almost no men or no
women at all (Burr, 1998; Cattane