3 Sandra Bem

General Biography

Sandra Bem was born to Peter and Lillian Lipsitz on June 22, 1944 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In her formative years, Bem was viewed as having a rebellious character for her unconventional actions and views about her own life and women’s lives. In her grade school years, Bem’s mother contributed to her ungoverned sense of self to pursue a life equal to men. With that encouragement, Bem insisted on wearing pants instead of a skirt, which almost caused her expulsion from her Orthodox Jewish School (Golden and McHugh, 2017). These situations inspired her later research on gender roles, sexuality, and androgyny.

After earning her bachelor’s degree in Psychology at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, later called Carnegie-Mellon, Bem married Daryl Bem and continued to pursue her professional interests. At first, Sandra was hesitant to marry as she believed it would hold her back. However, Daryl had asked if she wanted an equitable marriage, which meant encouraging career achievements and splitting the household chores and parenting duties. When their two children grew into their teenage years, Sandra and Daryl decided to live in separate households since their agreement to share both parental roles started to falter, but they remained married and friends until Sandra’s death (Lips, 2017).

After Bem graduated from the University of Michigan with her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology, she returned to Carnegie-Mellon and worked as a professor for three years before moving to Stanford University. Then Bem moved to Cornell University as a Professor in Women’s Studies after her application for tenure was rejected at Stanford. From there, Bem focused on her research career. Unfortunately, Bem was diagnosed with Alzheimers at the age of 65, and four years later ended her own life before the illness became too debilitating (Golden and McHugh, 2017). Daryl kept her company the entire day before she took the drug and in the moments after as well (Lips, 2017). Bem died at the age of 69 at her home in New York on May 20, 2014 (Golden and McHugh, 2017).

Important Achievements

Bem, a feminist psychologist, is best known for her pioneering work concerning androgyny, gender stereotypes, and gender roles. Some of her major publications include Case Study of Nonconscious Ideology: Training the Woman to Know Her Place (1970) and The Lenses of Gender: Transforming the Debate on Sexual Inequality (1993), both of which challenged the gender norms at the time of publication. Her most significant contributions to the field of psychology are the development the Bem Sex-Role Inventory (BSRI) and the Gender Schema Theory (GST) (Golden and McHugh, 2015). In all of her work, Bem desired to challenge established gender conventions and roles and the culture that sought to undermine these concepts (Keener and Mehta, 2017).

In 1970, Bem co-authored Case Study of Nonconscious Ideology: Training the Woman to Know Her Place with her husband, Daryl Bem, kickstarting her work on gender. Way ahead of its time, this article elaborated heavily on sexual inequality, which is shown through the use of the word “sexism” before it was widely utilized, as well as the authors’ desires to live in a society where everyone is able to live as desired regardless of their gender (Bem and Bem, 1970). The authors, while practicing these principles themselves, proposed an idea of marriage where responsibilities are equally shared between partners (Bem and Bem, 1970; Keener and Mehta, 2017). This work inspired her to merge her interests in gender and sexual inequality, which eventually led to her research on androgyny, or the quality of being neither exclusively feminine or masculine (Keener and Mehta, 2017).

Developed in 1971, when gender was seen as more definitive than as a spectrum, the Bem Sex-Role Inventory (BSRI) was an assessment that measured masculinity, femininity, and androgyny, and included 60 characteristics that are feminine, masculine, or neutral (Lips, 2017). This assessment is still widely used in research today and its results are associated with many aspects of behavior, such as marriage intimacy and mental health (Golden and McHugh, 2015). After some time, Bem decided to turn away from the BSRI, as feminine and masculine traits were being misinterpreted to be inherent to men and women, instead of as constructs that created gender polarization (Golden and McHugh, 2015). By the 1980’s, Bem had moved on to the concept of gender schematicity, which referred to the categorization of sex roles by society (Golden and McHugh, 2015). The Gender Schema Theory (GST), developed in 1981, is a theory about how people become gendered from an early age, and the impact of this on their cognitive and categorical processing (Starr and Zurbriggen, 2017). Bem was determined to create social change in a gender-polarized world through her work, and this was no different for the GST. This theory offered a more cognitive account of the gendering of individuals than the BSRI, and was developed to investigate ways that society creates and enforces gender categories without individuals ever realizing it (Starr and Zurbriggen, 2017). Bem used her theory to argue for the creation of “gender-aschematic” children to form a future society full of androgynous individuals, which she attempted with her own children (Golden and McHugh, 2015). The GST was predicted to have an impact on psychology for many years to come (Starr and Zurbriggen, 2017).

Arguably her most ambitious and impactful publication, The Lenses of Gender (1993) detailed Bem’s vision of a just world by incorporating her earlier work with other literary and biological perspectives (Golden and McHugh, 2015). This interdisciplinary work examined the systematic production of male dominance and power in society, which is attributed to three significant social lenses: andro-centrism, gender polarization, and biological essentialism (Golden and McHugh, 2015). “Andro-centrism” referred to the notion that males and their experience are treated as the norm, while females and their experience are a deviation of that norm (Golden and McHugh, 2015). This lens was a concept from Bem’s early work on gender biases and it demonstrated that bias is present in both society and our minds. The basis of social life around male versus female distinctions was known as “gender polarization,” a lens which Bem thought to be imposed on every aspect of our lives, such as attire and emotional expression (Golden and McHugh, 2015). The belief that differences between genders are inevitable due to internal biological differences was referred to as “biological essentialism” (Golden and McHugh, 2015). Bem was interested in how this belief validated the other two lenses, i.e., if women and men are truly biologically different, then gender is most likely inevitable and not socially constructed (Golden and McHugh, 2015). Bem argued that these lenses work together to oppress women and other sexual minorities, and her book elaborated on how embedded the lenses are in Western culture (Keener and Mehta, 2017). These concepts have a very broad focus that are hard to condense into one concrete contribution, but are still impactful nonetheless.

Historical Context

Sandra Bem was influenced by a few key people in her life, the first being her husband. Daryl Bem was a supportive husband and was someone who deeply respected Sandra’s views on gender roles and marriage, as well as her career aspirations. They worked closely at points during Bem’s career, focusing on sex-based discrimination and gender roles. Daryl helped Sandra build the professional life she wanted while supporting her goals and fundamental beliefs about how men and women should behave in the home and within a marriage. Another influential person in Bem’s life was one of her professors at Carnegie-Mellon who she encountered as an undergraduate student. This professor was very impressed by Bem’s capabilities and suggested that she go to medical school. Bem recalled that “his suggestion shifted my vision of myself not so much around gender as around class, and thereby also began to shift my vision of a possible future” (Bem, 1998). Gender, sexuality, and aspects of familial structure were very topical issues within the zeitgeist when Bem was first emerging as a prominent figure in the field of psychology. For example, the feminist movement was focusing on addressing workplace inequality as well as discrimination in all facets of society. Women were experiencing frustration in their expected “housewife” roles and seeking ways in which they could feel fulfilled.

Bem was at the forefront of an emerging attitude and perspective in the psychology community that challenged a long-established theory, which was that women who behaved and presented as traditionally feminine and men who behaved and presented as traditionally masculine embodied optimal mental health (Dean and Tate, 2017). At the time, Bem’s belief that it was healthy for people to engage in what she called “psychological androgyny” was considered radical and not in line with what psychologists thought they knew about gender. Jerome Kagan and Lawrence Kohlberg were two researchers who theorized about gender role-typing and the internalization of gender standards. They argued that sex-role identity is the individual’s concept about themself about being masculine or feminine, and once a sex-role identity is developed, there is an internal drive and desire to act in accordance to sex role stereotypes (Storms, 1979). Their theories provided a basis for Bem to work from and inspired the creation of the previously mentioned Bem Sex-Role Inventory (BSRI). Not a lot of energy was being put into examining the social impact of gender, as well as how it impacted a person’s mental health when they adhered to strict gender roles. Psychologists were also in need of ways to measure the impacts of gender rather than simply making assumptions about it, noting that “it became clear that the advances in theorizing about gender soon outpaced the methodology for measuring gender differences” (Dean and Tate, 2017). Bem not only shifted the conversation to focus on gender studies, she expanded our knowledge of what could be studied. Researchers today still find her theories to be revolutionary as well as relevant to the current field. Bem was ahead of her time in a number of ways when it came to feminist psychology, marriage and family roles, and what was possible for women.

Historical Impact

While Sandra Bem’s forthmost impact is her theories concerning androgyny and gender schemas, she also elevated awareness regarding women’s equality. By helping shape the psychology of gender and sexuality over the past four decades, it presented the multifaceted features distinguishing the two, as well as the terms femininity and masculinity (Leaper, 2017; Dean and Tate, 2017). Breaking down these terms let women and men showcase individualistic aspects of themselves (Starr and Zubriggen, 2017). With her committed objectives, Bem also lead the second-wave of feminist psychology in the 1970s, which challenged the androcentric way that society established (Starr and Zubriggen, 2017). Bem’s research about gender roles constructed the negative psychological consequences for all genders, not just for women (Leaper, 2017) and led the APA’s Divisions of General Psychology and History of Psychology classifying her as an “eminent woman in psychology” (Lips, 2017). Sandra Bem’s legacy changed the lives for women by breaking down the social standards that held them tightly.

References

Bem, S. L. (2005). An unconventional family. Yale University Press.

Bem, S. L., & Bem, D. J. (1970). Case study of a nonconscious ideology: Training the woman to know her place. Pennsylvania Department of Education.

Dean, M. L., & Tate, C. C. (2017). Extending the legacy of Sandra Bem: Psychological androgyny as a touchstone conceptual advance for the study of gender in psychological science. Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, 76(11–12), 643–654. https://doi.org.unr.idm.oclc.org/10.1007/s11199-016-0713-z

Golden, C., & McHugh, M. (2015). Sandra Lipsitz Bem (1944–2014). American Psychologist, 70(3), 280–280. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0038638

Golden, C. R., & McHugh, M. C. (2017). The personal, political, and professional life of Sandra Bem. Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, 76(9–10), 529–543. https://doi-org.unr.idm.oclc.org/10.1007/s11199-016-0674-2

Keener, E., & Mehta, C. (2017). Sandra Bem: Revolutionary and generative feminist psychologist. Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, 76(9-10), 525–528. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-017-0770-y

Leaper, C. (2017). Further reflections on Sandra Lipsitz Bem’s impact. Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, 76(11–12), 759–765.
https://doi-org.unr.idm.oclc.org/10.1007/s11199-017-0760-0

Lips, H. M. (2017). Sandra Bem: Naming the impact of gendered categories and identities. Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, 76 (9–10), 627–632. https://doi-org.unr.idm.oclc.org/10.1007/s11199-016-0664-4

Starr, C. R., & Zurbriggen, E. L. (2017). Sandra Nem’s gender schema theory after 34 years: A review of its reach and impact. Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, 76(9–10), 566–578. https://doi-org.unr.idm.oclc.org/10.1007/s11199-016-0591-4

Storms. (1979). Sex role identity and its relationships to sex role attributes and sex role stereotypes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37(10), 1779–1789. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.37.10.1779