Is Androgyny Better than Masculinity——The Influence of Gender Role on College Students' Self-Worth

With rapid economic and social development,the ideal gender role has become a big issue in China.On one hand,the neutral gender role has become popular;yet,on the other hand,more and more people have observed that boys seem to have lost their masculinity.However,there has been no data which has tested the effect of gender roles on the social-individual framework;not to mention the social aspect of self-worth.In this study,we have introduced a multi-domain and multi-level self-worth assessment to test the effects of gender roles on college students.ANVOA results show that androgynous college students and masculine college students show no significant difference in their global self-worth,general self-worth,and most specifically self-worth factors;but in five other aspects,the score of self-worth for the androgynous students is significantly higher than that of the masculine students.These two types of college students' self-worth are both significantly higher than that of the feminine and undifferentiated students.The regression result indicates that self-worth is dominated by masculinity,and the relativity importance analyses show that masculinity contributes more on almost all factors of self-worth than femininity.Combined with the group difference and social changes,this paper suggests that the ideal gender role for college students is androgyny,while masculinity contributes more to self-worth than femininity.