"science of woman," the doctrine of the nature and diseases of woman as distinct from man, became embodied in gynecology. Moreover, this new specialty of physicians constructed a theory of femininity which prescribed social roles without raising opposition, because they had the validation of science. Women became identified as a special group of patients, based upon their reproductive capacitie...

Despite a growth in single women UK society over the past two decades, femininity continues to be highly stigmatised. Drawing on Judith Butler’s theory of heterosexual matrix and applying this qualitative interview data with 25 women, I argue that is produced as abject through processes silencing which render female ‘failed’ subject reinscribe heteronormative coupled femininity. Yet while deepl...

Africa is a continent known for its rich oral arts. Proverbs are the most widely and commonly used in the continent’s long-standing tradition of oral arts. Among such oral arts, the African proverbs have been facilitating the transmission of knowledge and conventions from generation to generation. This paper analyzes the role of African proverbs in creating and perpetuating gendered culture. Th...

The authors investigated whether differences in facial stimuli could explain the inconsistencies in the facial attractiveness literature regarding whether adults prefer more masculine- or more feminine-looking male faces. Their results demonstrated that use of a female average to dimorphically transform a male facial average produced stimuli that did not accurately reflect the relationship betw...

The political correlates of the authoritarian personality have been well established by researchers, but important linkages to other major constructs in psychology need fuller elaboration. We present new data and review old data from our laboratories that show the myriad ways in which authoritarianism is implicated in the important domain of gender roles. We show that women and men high in auth...

Many women wear facial makeup to accentuate their appeal and attractiveness. Makeup may vary from natural (light) to glamorous (heavy), depending of the context of interpersonal situations, an emphasis on femininity, and current societal makeup trends. This study examined how light makeup and heavy makeup influenced attractiveness ratings and facial recognition. In a rating task, 38 Japanese wo...

BACKGROUND The frequency components of the human voice play a major role in signalling the gender of the speaker. A voice imitation study was conducted to investigate individuals' ability to make behavioural adjustments to fundamental frequency (F0), and formants (Fi) in order to manipulate their expression of voice gender. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Thirty-two native British-English adul...

This historiographical essay analyzes the feminist challenge, dating from the 1970s, to the accepted view of childbirth which equated technologicaland male intervention with progress and consigned traditional midwifery to the dark ages. The challenge has come from two groups: feminists whose primary concerns are present-day issues and historians whose objective is a ''social history of childbir...