The purposes of this study are to investigate Korean adults' perceptions of sexual harassment, and more specifically, to examine effects of gender differences and sex-role attitudes of the perception of sexual harassment. A total of 120 undergraduate students(67 male students, 53 female students) and 168 employees(75 male workers, 93 female workers) participated in this study. The results of this study can be summarized as follows. First, most participants perceive producing hostile environment as sexual harassment. Male workers are more likely to underestimate the seriousness of sexual harassment than students and female workers. Second, men tend to ascribe the responsibility of sexual harassment to women. Third, although there are some gender differences, both men and women consider the company's absence of policy on sexual harassment as the main cause. Finally, gender differences on sexual harassment are explained based on sex-role attitude. The implications and limitations of this study are discussed.
Research on "family" was not a main topic in developmental psychology, though there are some efforts to consider the parental influence on child development. For example, psychoanalytic tradition empaphasized the importance of early expericences with caregivers or early mechanistic tradition favored unidirectional causal model considering only a part of the family relationships. These traditional approaches to family issues have underestimated the dynamic aspects of continuous interactions among family members and the functioning of the family as a totality which is related to the other social context. This paper investigated (1), why we have neglected the family issues in psychology while reviewing some major tradition of the developmental psychology, (2) what we can learn from the studies of family issues based on developmental contextualism, suggesting the directions and the analytic strategies of the further research, and (3) what kind of implicaitions and issues we can find on "woman" or "gender differences" in this process. Some empirical studies on divorce were presented to show how we have to deal with the family, as a main developmental context, and gender differences for explaining the current functioning of the individual and the changes over time.
The purposes of the present study were to develop the scale of attitudes toward menstruation which is adequate to assessing the attitudes of women who live in the gender equality oriented modem society and to check any differences in the attitudes according to the increased years after menarche. There were 933 female participants who have passed at least 2 years after menarche but less than 32 years. The major findings were that the more increased years after menarche, the less negative attitudes toward menstruation, but there found no relations between the increased years after menarche and "symbol of femininity", one factor of the scale. The findings were discussed in the context of gender equality society as well as life-span development.
To explore the implicit structure of gender-stereotype which was considered having complex and multiple properties, we conducted an experiment using an implicit priming paradigm. Participants were presented gendered names as primes at pre-conscious level(150ms.), and were asked to name adjectives which were differed in their typicalities and preferences of gender properties. The results showed that gender congruent effects(participants' sex - gender label) were found in women participants only, but typicality effects were found toward other sexes and preferences were found toward women all in both sexes. These results were discussed from a point of view of asymmetrical representation of gender stereotype and prescriptive qualities of gender stereotype toward women.
In this study, I made an analysis of gender stereotype used as psychological mechanism, concerning the discharge of married women employees in Nonghyup(Korean Agricultural Cooperatives), for which they worked together with their male spouses. The stereotype on a married woman clerk is presented to the employers, the co-workers, and the family in various ways, and they allow or punish her according to their own stereotype. I tried to show that when this stereotypical system of allowance and punishment results in an illegal act of gender discrimination, all the employees are psychologically forced to acknowledge that sort of act. First of all, with a help of selective inattention to women employees with low-income and low-status, and of some statistical means, the employers activated the stereotype on married woman. Then familism of whole Korean society, which is based on kin-oriented, Confucian relationships, operated the stereotypical system of allowance and punishment, making other employees consent to the employer's decision. Besides discharged women faced the psychological demands for domestic role in their family. Thus, it was the three axes of the employers, the employees, and the discharged that activated the operation of stereotype in this discharge case. Nonghyup case is considerable, because it was an illegal act depended not on physical violence or pressure, but on psychological mechanism like gender stereotype. When gender discrimination in labor market was caused by deep-rooted social stereotype, it is justified in general by forcing the whole society to consent to. The analysis above tells us the need for feminist psychology, not only to expose the correlation between gender stereotype and discriminative act, but also to show the adherent gender stereotype and to search for the possibility of its change.
The purposes of the study were to explore knowledge and attitudes of elementary school children on sex and gender and needs of the teachers & parents on sexuality education for children in order to develop sexuality education program. For the purposes, we developed questionnaire and implemented to 1,448 elementary students. Also we conducted qualitative interviewing with 27 teachers, 44 students, and 15 parents. The findings are summarized into six items and some implications are discussed. Based on the findings, it is concluded that the content of sexuality education for upper elementary school children should include scientific knowledge and systematic understanding about sex-related physical and mental development, balanced understanding of human relationship, and culture and ethics of sexuality.
This review study was to explore why the gender stereotype is persistent and how it affects women negatively more than men. The review covers studies of dimensions of gender stereotype, of social structure not symmetrical between men and women, of stereotype activation which takes place pre-consciously or consciously, and of stereotype which works as self-construal and self-fulfilling prophecy.