Androgyny

An individual with characteristics of Androgyny are not bound by traditional gender roles, but are more inclined to demonstrate characteristics reminiscent of both. Weiten (1997) defines (as cited in Holt, 1998) gender roles as “expectations about what is appropriate behaviour for each sex”. What really makes a male or female behave entirely in that manner? Is it the image presented? Could it be the culture, and environment surrounding the individual or is it biological. In 1973, a psychologist named Sandra Bem decided to invent a new method of testing these attributes and explored the reality behind a word that has been in use since classical methodology and early literature. Even though Androgyny has only been a concept, Bem’s idealisation that healthy women and men could possess similar characteristics, soon changed the perception the psychology world had surrounding the psychometrics of Androgyny.

Bem’s (1973) study on “The Measurement of Psychological Androgyny”, discussed how it was possible to characterise someone as either male or female or both. The study explored the notion of Androgyny and challenged bipolarity - gender identity either being male or female, no in between. The concept that males and females could possess characteristics of the opposite gender was controversial at the time of the research, but 30 years later, the consistency of the BSRI (Bem Sex-Role Inventory) is still relevant in testing the concept behind psychological androgyny.
The Bem Sex-Role Inventory (BSRI) is quite distinctive from other masculinity-femininity scales such as the Masculinity-Femininity scale of the California Psychological Inventory (Gough 1957, as cited in Bem, 1974). The scale incorporates a Masculinity and Femininity scale of 20 characteristics based on “sex-typed” social desirability (Bem, 1974). It also tests for Androgyny in masculine and femininity characteristics.

By taking approximately 200 personality characteristics that were of