Sex-Typing of Leisure Activities: a Test of Two Theories

ABSTRACT - Leisure activities are considered here as a subset of consumption, and we are interested in the relationship between gender schema and leisure activities. In order to test rival predictions about gender schema, sex-typing of leisure activities is related to two individual difference measures: gender personality (Bem 1981) and gender-role attitudes (Spence 1984). 271 subjects were given a list of 75 leisure activities and asked to indicate whether they felt the activity was masculine, feminine, or somewhere in between. We do not find support for Bem’s (1981) theory, but do find partial support for Spence’s (1984) theory. The findings indicate that males sex-type leisure activities to a greater extent than females. Both sex and gender-role attitudes are found to be significant (p<.05) predictors of sex-typing.

Citation:

George M. Zinkhan, Penelope J. Prenshaw, and Angeline Grace Close (2004) ,"Sex-Typing of Leisure Activities: a Test of Two Theories", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 31, eds. Barbara E. Kahn and Mary Frances Luce, Valdosta, GA : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 412-419.