Women and men of the past, present, and future:
evidence of dynamic gender stereotypes in Ghana
Bosak, JanineORCID: 0000-0001-5701-6538, Eagly, Alice, Diekman, Amanda and Sczesny, Sabine
(2017)
Women and men of the past, present, and future:
evidence of dynamic gender stereotypes in Ghana.
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 49
(1).
pp. 115-129.
ISSN 0022-0221
People represent social groups by their trajectories through time, producing dynamic
stereotypes. To the extent that these stereotypes derive from observations of group members’
behaviors in their typical roles, change in the roles of women and men over time should fuel
beliefs that the sexes adopt traits associated with their new roles. Thus, earlier studies have
found that stereotypes about the past, present, and future traits of women and men are
consistent with beliefs about changes in their social roles. To examine such dynamic
stereotypes in an African context, 150 participants from Ghana rated the likelihood of
gender-stereotypical personality, cognitive, and physical characteristics of women or men of
the past, present, or future in their society. Among the major findings were perceptions of
increases over time in women’s masculine characteristics and men’s feminine characteristics.
Also, both sexes increased in masculine and feminine cognitive characteristics. Comparison
of these Ghanaian findings with those obtained earlier from five other countries revealed both
similarities and differences.