The Separate Spheres Model of Gendered Inequality

Research on role congruity theory and descriptive and prescriptive stereotypes has established that when men and women violate gender stereotypes by crossing spheres, with women pursuing career success and men contributing to domestic labor, they face backlash and economic penalties. Less is known, however, about the types of individuals who are most likely to engage in these forms of discrimination and the types of situations in which this is most likely to occur. We propose that psychological research will benefit from supplementing existing research approaches with an individual differences model of support for separate spheres for men and women. This model allows psychologists to examine individual differences in support for separate spheres as they interact with situational and contextual forces. The separate spheres ideology (SSI) has existed as a cultural idea for many years but has not been operationalized or modeled in social psychology. The Separate Spheres Model presents the SSI as a new psychological construct characterized by individual differences and a motivated system-justifying function, operationalizes the ideology with a new scale measure, and models the ideology as a predictor of some important gendered outcomes in society. As a first step toward developing the Separate Spheres Model, we develop a new measure of individuals’ endorsement of the SSI and demonstrate its reliability, convergent validity, and incremental predictive validity. We provide support for the novel hypotheses that the SSI predicts attitudes regarding workplace flexibility accommodations, income distribution within families between male and female partners, distribution of labor between work and family spheres, and discriminatory workplace behaviors. Finally, we provide experimental support for the hypothesis that the SSI is a motivated, system-justifying ideology.

有关角色契合理论（role congruity theory）以及描述性刻板印象与规定性刻板印象（descriptive and prescriptive stereotypes）的研究业已证实，当男性与女性打破性别刻板印象、跨越两性分工领域边界时——譬如女性追求职业成就、男性承担家务劳动——他们会遭遇社会反弹与经济处罚。然而，目前学界对两类对象尚缺乏充分研究：其一为最易实施此类歧视行为的个体特征类型，其二为此类歧视最易发生的情境类型。我们提出，若在现有研究范式中补充支持两性分工领域的个体差异模型，将对心理学研究大有裨益。该模型可帮助研究者考察个体对两性分工领域的支持程度，及其与情境、语境因素的交互作用。两性分工意识形态（Separate Spheres Ideology, SSI）作为一种文化理念已存续多年，但尚未在社会心理学领域完成操作化定义与建模。本研究提出的分离领域模型（Separate Spheres Model）将SSI界定为一种兼具个体差异特征与动机性系统辩护功能的全新心理构念，通过全新量表对该意识形态进行操作化定义，并将其建模为社会中若干关键性别化结果的预测变量。作为构建分离领域模型的第一步，我们开发了一套用于测量个体对SSI认同程度的全新量表，并验证了该量表的信度、会聚效度与增量预测效度。我们的创新性假设得到了实证支撑：SSI能够显著预测个体对职场弹性工作安排的态度、家庭内男女伴侣间的收入分配观念、工作与家庭领域间的劳动分配观念，以及职场歧视行为。最后，我们通过实验验证了核心假设：SSI是一种动机性的系统辩护意识形态。