Are Gender Roles Fixed or Malleable?: An Implicit Theory Relevant to “Having It All”

Abstract

This chapter addresses individuals’ implicit theories about the fixedness vs. malleability of gender roles and their influence on preferences for gendered divisions of labor, gender role conformity pressure, system justification and expected work-life tradeoffs. It demonstrates that “entity theorists”, believing in the fixedness of gender roles, compared to “incremental theorists”, believing in the malleableness of gender roles, are more likely to support traditional gender roles, to stress the importance of gender, to view the current gender social system as fair and to expect work-life tradeoffs for women more than men.