The SAGE Handbook of Gender and Psychology (2013) is a multi-author synthesis of the literature and research trends in the field of gender psychology.

Exec Summary

• Gender stereotypes create or reinforce the reality of gender differences. Stereotypes aren’t just descriptive, but prescriptive, applying social pressure on men and women to conform and be ‘good men/women’
• People exaggerate and over-generalize gender differences, but gender differences are small
  • Even small effects can be significant when applied to whole population, when consistent (and, we add, when they shift the full ‘bell curve’)
• Must must ‘prove’ their masculine worth, while women don’t need to prove femininity

FULL SUMMARY

About the Authors:
Various authors by chapter. The main editors are:
Michelle K. Ryan is a Professor of Social and Organisational Psychology at the University of Exeter and the University of Groningen. She co-developed the concept of the glass cliff: women promoted in leadership roles during crises and declines, setting them up for failure. Her research spans gender, leadership, and workplace diversity.
Nyla R. Branscombe is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Kansas. She is a leading scholar in social psychology, with a focus on intergroup relations, social identity, prejudice, and discrimination. Her work often explores how group memberships shape attitudes and behaviors, including issues around gender and inequality.

Small Effects Are Still Significant If Consistent

small effect sizes are not necessarily unimportant in daily life. Small effects can have substantial impact when they consistently describe female and male behavior across time and situations.
As explained by Abelson (1985, p. 133), ‘small variance contributions of independent variables in single-shot studies grossly understate the variance contribution in the long run’
(…)
In addition, when experiments are designed to have particularly weak manipulations or difficult-to-influence dependent variables, even small effects can be impressive and important (Prentice & Miller, 1992).
These considerations raise serious concerns about routinely interpreting effect sizes in terms of Cohen’s (1988) guidelines of 0.20 for small, 0.50 for medium, and 0.80 for large.

And:

if studies’ measures are not ‘single-shot’ but aggregated across multiple observations of behaviors, effect magnitudes are larger and sometimes dramatically larger (Eagly, 2009).

The authors mention the democratic VS autocratic leadership style for men and women as an example of a ‘small’ difference, but that was larger when based on measures that aggregated behaviors across more observations.

I’d also add that the ‘small’ difference is much larger at the extreme, so that despite the small different, almost all autocrats are men.

Researchers Favor Their Own Sex in Research

(…) tendencies that are sometimes observed in meta-analyses for the sex of studies’ authors to predict studies’ outcomes, generally in the direction that authors of each sex obtain or publish more findings that favor their own gender and thereby shore up their gender identities (e.g., Anderson & Leaper, 1998; Eagly & Carli, 1981; Wood, 1987).

The Science and Politics of Comparing Women and Men

Eagly challenges the notion of simplistic sex comparisons, noting that such comparisons often reinforce stereotypes rather than clarify differences. She advises to focus on understanding context-dependent behavior.

In the next chapter Fine debunks pseudoscientific claims of hardwired sex differences found in brain imaging studies, and the limitations of neuroscans.
Any region can be recruited for most functions, so jumping to conclusions about the meaning of an area ‘lighting up’ is fraught with potentials for errors.
She emphasizes the role of context, expectations, and socialization in shaping brain activity.

• Avoid simplistic male-female comparisons.
• Understand when differences matter in real-world settings.
• Consider how social roles influence behavior rather than assuming innate sex differences.

An Evolutionary Understanding of Sex Differences

Jennifer Byrd-Craven and David C. Geary apply an evolutionary lens to sex differences, arguing that male and female behaviors evolved to maximize reproductive success.

They highlight men’s tendency toward competitive and risk-taking behaviors and women’s focus on nurturing and relationship-building, rooted in differential parental investment, but urge caution against overgeneralizing evolutionary explanations.

• Humans have more intrasexual reproductive strategies variation than other species.
• Men in successful coalitions have more reproductive opportunities and success than men in less successful coalitions
  • High status men in successful coalitions being the most reproductively successful (Zerjal et al., 2003).
• Sex differences start at around 3 years
• Bullying among boys of this age often increases at the beginning of the school year and decreases later in the year, likely a result of the establishment of a dominance hierarchy (Pellegrini & Bartini, 2001).
• Physical bullying in adolescent boys is associated with social dominance, as defined by peers and teachers, and with a higher frequency of dating and higher rated attractiveness by girls (Bukowski, Sippola, & Newcomb, 2000).
  They’re not liked, but have ‘social presence’ (Berger, 2007).
• Both socially dominant men and women use a mix coercion and prosocial strategies to achieve dominance, depending on the context and the relationship (Hauntil hewley et al., 2007); the sex difference is in the frequency and pattern of physical aggression and social manipulation.
• Girls are more sensitive to relational aggression, and twice as likely to suffer from depression or anxiety than boys. The author suggests that’s the reason why women use relational aggression: to disempower competitors

Precarious Manhood

The authors explore how manhood is often seen as earned and easily lost, leading men to engage in riskier behaviors to affirm masculinity.

Bosson, Vandello, and Caswell introduce the concept of “precarious manhood,” positing that masculinity is a socially conferred status that men must continually prove through action.
Unlike womanhood, which is seen as biologically assured, manhood is vulnerable to threats like job loss or perceived weakness, leading to compensatory behaviors like aggression. This chapter offers practical strategies for addressing toxic masculinity in clinical and organizational settings.

In Manhood in The Making author Gilmore lists three recurring themes of masculinity across cultures:

• Impregnator
• Protector
• Provider

There have been many categories and traits that various authors listed and that makes a man a man, but what’s striking is that, the authors suggest, there is cross-cultural consensus in beliefs about manhood:

Cross-cultural consensus in beliefs about manhood is consistent with research by Williams and Best (1990), who conducted a 27-nation study of gender stereotypes.
Respondents (approximately 100 university students in each country) read a list of 300 adjectives and rated whether each was more descriptive of men or women, or not differentially associated with either.
High degrees of consensus were reached both within and across cultures, with people from every nation rating men as more adventurous, dominant, and independent than women.
In short, the results suggest that despite cultural differences in specific norms and customs regarding manhood, there is substantial agreement across cultures regarding stereotypes of men.

• Masculinity is seen as a status to prove, unlike femininity.
  Some researchers stated that’s remained the same despite cultural changes in ‘what it means to be a man’
• Men may overcompensate when masculinity is threatened.
  • This dynamic contributes to aggression, competitiveness, and emotional suppression.
• Perceived ‘manhood’ impacts men’s health: men who believed job loss made others question their manhood and lose status suffered anxiety and depression

Gender-Based Standards of Competence

This chapter discusses how competence judgments are filtered through gendered expectations in work and parenting contexts.

• Men and women are held to different standards for the same roles.
• Success is often seen as more surprising for women.
• Women in leadership face a “double bind”: competent but disliked.
• Fathers are often overpraised for caregiving; mothers are scrutinized.

Minimum requirements VS confirmatory requirements

Minimum standards are low-bar expectations based on group stereotypes (women need less competence to be considered ‘good enough’ because expectations are lower).

Confirmatory standards are the higher bar of proof needed to confirm that someone has a quality (women need more evidence to prove competence, men more to prove warmth).

• In hiring, women often meet minimum standards more easily (e.g., get shortlisted), but:
  • They must exceed higher confirmatory standards to be hired.
  • Men, by contrast, are often hired with the same evidence that just got them shortlisted — for them, “suspicion equals confirmation.”
• In firing decisions, women are judged more harshly:
  • Fewer mistakes are tolerated before concluding they’re incompetent.
  • Men can make more errors before others conclude they are truly incompetent.
• These shifting standards show that:
  • Women have to work harder to prove competence.
  • Men are given more benefit of the doubt — both in being hired and retained.

This means that Lower expectations (minimum) help stereotyped groups initially but higher requirements (confirmatory) hurt them at critical decision points like hiring or firing.

Gender and Personality

The authors emphasize that personality differences often reflect gendered social roles more than inherent traits.

Luisa Batalha and Katherine J. Reynolds challenge traditional views of personality as fixed, emphasizing social identity’s role in shaping gendered traits. They argue that women’s and men’s personalities shift in response to group norms and social change, with women adopting more agentic traits in egalitarian contexts. This chapter provides actionable insights for fostering personality flexibility in educational and organizational settings.

• Women are moderately more neurotic and agreeable from crosscultural findings measuring Big Five personality. The differences in openness, extraversion, and conscientiousness were small.
  But it varied greatly across cultures, with a larger difference in the West (Costa, Terraciano, & McCrae, 2001)
• Women’s assertiveness has increased over time and varies depending on role, suggesting that human traits aren’t stable across time but varies with culture and role (Twenge, 2001)
• Differences in traits like agreeableness or assertiveness are context-dependent.
• Gender identity and social expectations shape behavior.
• Men embrace sexism because it benefits them

Long quote:

the association of beliefs in gender hierarchy (sexism) with beliefs in innate gender differences (essentialism), is dependent on whether essentialism promotes or challenges the status quo (Morton, Postmes, Haslam, &
Hornsey, 2009).
When men consider increasing gender equality (social change) their sexism scores go hand in hand with essentialism scores.
On the other hand, when they (…) think about areas in which they are disadvantaged in relation to women (reversed status quo), this relationship disappears or reverses.
Clearly, when the status quo is threatened the more powerful group (men) adopt beliefs concerning natural disadvantage and innate differences, which provide justification for gender inequality.

The Social Basis of Emotion in Men and Women

🙋🏼‍♂️ My note: the title of this chapter may suggest something about the preference of culture over biology.

Agneta Fischer and Catharine Evers explore gendered emotional expression, debunking myths like women’s greater emotionality.

They find that women cry more and smile more, while men express anger more readily, but they lean more towards a social norms explanation, rather than biology (note: I don’t necessarily fully agree it’s only social norms).

• Women are more emotionally expressive
• Gendered emotions showing differences are:
• Women cry more, and a greater variety of situations or interactions. But as adults, not as children. This suggests that socialization, social roles, and social costs for men’s crying play a role <— 🙋🏼‍♂️ Lucio’s note: not necessarily, biology changes wit hage, so it may reflect biological development
• Men may express anger more due to permissive norms.
• Emotional intelligence is influenced by gender roles.

The authors argue on this emotional categorization:

Anger, pride, and contempt

This text examines gender differences in emotions typically associated with male roles—especially anger, pride, and contempt.

• Pride and contempt, often linked to dominance and superiority, show no consistent gender differences according to existing studies.
• Anger is stereotypically male, but research finds no evidence that men feel anger more intensely or more often than women. Differences emerge only when the anger-triggering event aligns with gendered concerns (e.g., appearance for women, intelligence for men).
• The main gender difference lies in how anger is expressed, not experienced:
  • Men are more likely to use physical and verbal aggression.
  • Women tend to show indirect or relational aggression (e.g., ignoring, gossiping), due to higher concern about social harmony, fear of retaliation, and traditional subordinate roles.
• Social context and gender roles influence these patterns:
  • In egalitarian relationships, women express anger more directly.
  • In traditional contexts, they regulate it more, fearing social consequences.
• Women often view anger as a loss of control, while men see it as a tool, which further drives women’s tendency to regulate it.

Overall, gender differences in anger expression depend on context, social roles, and perceived consequences than on actual emotional experience.

Different Expectations for Men and Women

Emotion norms have changed over time, and modern media shows both men and women expressing vulnerability (Labott et al., 1991).

However, implicit norms still guide how men and women “should” express emotion (Timmers et al., 2003):

• Norm 1: Women must show positive emotions
  • Women are expected to smile, express love, enthusiasm, and warmth—linked to their perceived communal, caregiving role (Graham et al., 1981; Stoppard & Gunn Gruchy, 1993).
  • Women face greater social sanctions for failing to appear positive (e.g., seen as cold or “bitchy”).
  • In the workplace, female managers suppress negative and display positive emotions; male managers tend to do the opposite (Simpson & Stroh, 2004).
• Norm 2: Men must avoid powerless emotions
  • Men are expected to express dominant, powerful emotions (e.g., anger), which signal competence and status (Brescoll & Uhlman, 2008).
  • Powerless emotions (e.g., sadness, fear, shame) are seen as inappropriate for men but expected in women (Timmers et al., 2003).
  • A man showing sadness may be judged as weak, while a woman showing anger may be penalized as unfeminine or aggressive.

Gendered Communication and Social Influence

Linda L. Carli investigates how gender shapes communication and influence, finding that women use more communal language (e.g., affiliative speech) and men more agentic (e.g., assertive speech).
These differences affect perceptions of influence, with women often facing backlash for assertive behavior.

• Women persuade better with a mix of power and warmth: combining communal with agentic behavior increases favorable reactions than merely agentic (Heilman & Okimoto, 2007).
  Women influenced men mixing nonverbal warmth (e.g., by smiling and nodding) with competence than competence alone (Carli et al., 1995).
• Influence is more challenging for women as because of the ‘lower competence and authority’ stereotype
• Women use more tentative language to avoid backlash.
• Men are perceived as more authoritative by default.

The Social Psychology of Gender across Cultures

Serge Guimond, Armand Chatard, and Fabio Lorenzi-Cioldi examine how culture shapes gender stereotypes and differences.
They find that egalitarian cultures reduce gender gaps in traits like assertiveness, while hierarchical cultures amplify them.

Men tend to dominate in high-status roles across cultures, but social comparison processes can mitigate stereotypes.

The various traits attributed to men and women are structured along two main dimensions: an individualistic dimension, typical of men, usually called agency, with traits such as dominant, assertive and boastful, and a more social or collectivistic dimension, typical of women, usually called communion, with traits such as affectionate, gentle and sensitive (Wood & Eagly, 2010; see also Carli, Chapter 13 this volume).

• Gender inequality correlates with rigid gender norms.
• Westerners, men, and people in general were attributed agency, Asians were attributed communion.
  My note: this may partially explain Asian men’s challenges in dating, not being seen as masculine
• Leaders are typically endowed with masculine, agentic characteristics. The ‘think manager—think male’ phenomenon (Schein, 1996), making it difficult for women to combine leadership with femininity (see Eagly & Karau, 2002; Heilman, Wallen, Fuchs, & Tamkins, 2004).
• Gender differentiation is greater in individualistic (and more egalitarian) nations than in collectivistic (and less egalitarian) nations.
  • Egalitarian difference increase is known as ‘gender equality paradox’
  • Some studies show that in egalitarian societies gender differences may decrease, for example in women placing less value on men’s status and earning <— My note: this may be a confounding factor. Egalitarian societies tend to be richer, and women can ‘afford’ to care less about resources because resources are more abundant and more equally distributed

For a quick overview of the current literature between these two opposing theories:

Stereotypes of gender differences create realities

A wide range of studies—from Rosenthal and Jacobson’s (1968) pioneering research on self-fulfilling prophecies in classrooms, to Snyder’s (1984) laboratory experiments, and the broader literature on stereotype threat (e.g., Steele & Ambady, 2006; see Betz, Ramsey, & Sekaquaptewa, Chapter 26)—support the idea that stereotypes can shape reality by influencing behavior and memory in line with those stereotypes.

The findings underscore the prescriptive nature of gender stereotypes—not just describing typical behavior, but suggesting how individuals should behave (Prentice & Carranza, 2004).

Consequently, gender differences in behavior may result from conformity to social expectations rather than innate differences, highlighting the critical role of social influence processes (Haslam et al., 1996; Haslam, Oakes, Reynolds, & Turner, 1999). This strengthens the case for using social psychological approaches to understand gendered behavior patterns.

My note: but ‘stereotypes’ aren’t necessarily ‘plucked from thin air’ and instead can start from biological differences

Gender Differences in Motivation

This was one of my favorite chapter, and in one quote:

Men and women differ more in motivations tha in capabilities

Roy F. Baumeister argues that men’s and women’s differing motivations—men’s drive for status and women’s for relationships—shape social structures and inequalities.

Baumesteir also goes into dating market dynamics applying the social exchange paradigm.
He states that men’s higher sex drive empowers women (principle of least interest, Waller, 1937).
I agree with Roy, but also add that it’s not only about wanting sex more, but also about differential reproductive maxima, and risks and benefits. No risk for men in adding one sex partner, only benefit, and much bigger risks for women.

Finally, I’d also argue that while Roy’s analysis is true for most and women, it also depends on mate value, and the power dynamics invert at the top.
And high-value men have more options and power than high-value women.

However, could only partially agree with this:

The notion that men conspire together against women is typical of a victim fantasy (see Baumeister, 1997) but has very little evidence to support it. Hence, let me offer an alternative hypothesis (from Baumeister, 2010).

I agree there is no ‘conspiracy’… But not a conscious one.
Otherwise, there is an emergent property of individual men who’d rather have lower-power women for their mating success.

See:

• Male sexuality is more natural, female sexuality more cultural (higher plasticity)
  • Men have higher rates than women of almost all sexual paraphilias — but these do not seem to reflect plasticity per se.
• Men are more driven by status, women by relational goals.
• Monogamy is good for men, not women
• These patterns influence workplace dynamics and courtship.

Men believe in evolutionary psychology and women in cultural learning because it reflects their reality

This struck me as incredibly insightful by Baumeister, something I had never thought about but that immediately clicked after hearing it:

My own reading of the literature uncovered one factor that almost certainly contributed to the disagreements about what mixture of nature and culture shapes the human sex drive: The answer differs by gender. In brief, male sexuality is more natural, female sexuality more cultural. This can also be phrased in terms of differing degrees of erotic plasticity, which is defined as the degree to which sexual motivation is shaped by social, cultural, and situational factors: Women have higher erotic plasticity than men (Baumeister, 2000).

And later:

The difference in erotic plasticity may help explain some of the acrimony in the overarching debate between social constructionists and evolutionary psychologists about sexual motivation, because there really are different answers.
Males may be intuitively more comfortable with theories that emphasize the innate and inflexible nature of sexual desire, whereas females may be more drawn to theories that depict sexuality as fluid and changing in response to circumstances.

Sexism in Contemporary Societies

Manuela Barreto and Naomi Ellemers analyze modern sexism, distinguishing between overt, hostile sexism and subtle, benevolent sexism.
Women are more likely to detect sexism but face social costs for confronting it, while men may overlook subtle forms.

Some takeaways:

• You can use prejudice to maintain high self-esteem: in individual performance contexts (…) members of socially stigmatized groups can protect their self-esteem by attributing a negative outcome to prejudice or discrimination of the evaluator instead of their personal inadequacy (Major, Kaiser, & McCoy, 2003).
  However, this only works if prejudice is perceived as rare (Schmitt & Branscombe, 2002a) and it’s harmful for individuals for whom this is a pervasive or recurring event (Schmitt, Branscombe, Kobrynowicz, & Owen, 2002).
  • Women with high self-esteem didn’t need to ‘blame shift’
• Benevolent sexism can be more ‘effective’ in keeping women lower down compared to no sexism or to overt sexism, including in giving up leadership more easily
  • Benevolent sexism decreases pushbacks: blatant discrimination leads to intentions to protest, subtle discrimination does not (Ellemers & Barreto, 2009). This is partly because blatant discrimination is perceived as discriminatory and elicits anger in its targets (Barreto & Ellemers, 2005a, 2005b), an emotion that is an important precursor to collective action (Van Zomeren, Postmes, & Spears, 2008). The negative emotions more typically elicited by subtle prejudice, such as anxiety or sadness, are directed at the self, and are less likely to lead to protest responses. (…) Thus, another way in which subtle prejudice is self-fulfilling is that it impairs group identification and collective protest, and fails to fuel attempts at social change.
• Women who encounter sexism can increase their ‘woman identification’, which can have positive mental health effects: Identifying with a socially devalued group has important psychological benefits, such as increases in self-esteem (Schmitt et al., 2002). One reason why group identification has this effect is that it draws individuals to the group, exposing them to its positive definition of the group, its social support, and its resources. In this sense, group identification itself constitutes a resource to which group members can turn to resist the negative effects of prejudice or discrimination (Leach, Rodriguez-Mosquera, Vliek, & Hirt, 2010).
• Successful women may become women’s worst enemies (queen bees): Yet, women who succeed in entering high-status positions often decrease the extent to which they identify with their gender group, and derogate ingroup members who have not fared as well (Ellemers et al., 2004). These so-called ‘queen bees’ distance themselves from other women as a way to escape sexist treatment at work (Derks, Van Laar, Ellemers, & De Groot, 2011).

Benevolent sexism is well-meaning but harmful

Benevolent sexism can be manifested in several ways, such as by introducing restrictions on women’s activities in order to protect them (Moya, Glick, Expdsito, de Lemus, & Hart, 2007) or by paternalistic forms of help (Becker, Glick, Ilic, & Bohner, 2011). Such behaviors are enveloped in a positive layer of protection and flattery, but they also subtly convey the belief in women’s inferior abilities to defend themselves, help themselves, or deserve rewards. The positive tone of benevolent sexism is thus only superficial.

Read more here for how these dynamics work and how you can handle them:

• Benevolent racism: dynamics and solutions

Sexual Harassment: Motivations and Consequences

Anne Maass, Mara Cadinu, and Silvia Galdi investigate sexual harassment, highlighting its prevalence and impact on women, who are primary targets due to power dynamics and objectification.
Men’s motivations often stem from dominance or sexual interest, while women face career and psychological consequences. The chapter offers practical strategies for prevention and intervention in workplaces and institutions.

The 3 Main Motivators Driving Sexual Harassment

There have been three main drivers hypothesizes to drive sexual harassment:

Sexual Motivation:
Some perpetrators harass in pursuit of sexual arousal or satisfaction, especially in cases like sexual blackmail. However, this motivation doesn’t fully explain other types like gender harassment, which often targets less traditionally feminine women.
(Source: Maass & Cadinu, 2006; Berdahl, 2007a, 2007b)

Power Motivation:
Harassment can serve as a tool to assert dominance, especially in societies with entrenched gender power imbalances. For some men, sex and power are cognitively linked, making power-driven harassment more likely, particularly toward vulnerable victims.
(Source: Bargh et al., 1995; Maass et al., 2003)

Gender Identity Protection:
Harassment may function as a defensive reaction when a man’s masculine identity feels threatened. It often targets women who challenge traditional gender roles (e.g., feminists), serving to reaffirm the perpetrator’s in-group male identity, especially when reinforced by peers.
(Source: Maass & Cadinu, 2006; Maass et al., 2003; Hunt & Gonsalkorale, 2011; Siebler et al., 2008)

Traits of Men Likely to Sexually Harass

Men high in Likelihood of Sexual Harassment Scale (LSH) include:

• high levels of hostile sexism
• rape myth acceptance
• authoritarianism
• endorsement of traditional gender roles
• masculine ideology
• low levels of agreeableness, openness to experience, and empathy (see O’Leary-Kelly, Bowes-Sperry, Arens Bates, & Lean, 2009; Pina, Gannon, & Saunders, 2009 for reviews).
• High Social Dominance Orientation (SDO)

Reducing Gender-Based Violence

In samples varying from college-aged men to juvenile offenders to adult male sexual offenders, men who gain gratification from controlling or dominating women or who are distrustful of women, often display the following pathological personality traits:

• callousness
• disinhibition
• narcissism
• antisocial personality disorder colored by impulsivity
• Social dominance orientation

Another path to sexual aggression, which can interact with pathological traits, arises from a personal history that includes (Malamuth, 2003):

• lack of emotional bonding with sexual partners
• familial conflict or abuse
• adolescent delinquency

Psychological Perspectives on Gender in Negotiation

Hannah Riley Bowles examines gender differences in negotiation, finding that women face stereotype threat and social backlash for assertive bargaining, unlike men. Contextual factors, like ambiguity, exacerbate these gaps, but training can mitigate effects.

• Men offer smaller concessions and worst first offer to female (and black) buyers
• Peace offers from women may be more persuasive: Maoz (2009) hypothesized that negotiators would be more receptive to peace proposals that came from female than male opponents because stereotypes suggest women are more willing to compromise than men are. As hypothesized, negotiators rated identical proposals more favorably when they came from female than male opponents.
• Too much warmth harms you in negotiations: The findings of multiple studies suggested that feminine warmth is more of a liability than flirtatious charm because warmth signals a lack of competitiveness and concern for self. There were no comparable effects for men.
• Women perform better in negotiations advocating for others (Bowles et al., 2005)

MORE WISDOM

People over-estimate the links between behavior and power

A meta-analytic review of the literature testing the association of nonverbal behaviors with verticality, a construct encompassing power, status, and dominance effects, revealed that people perceive stronger links between verticality and communication than actually exist (Hall et al., 2005).
Specifically, people perceive possessing high power to be associated with an erect posture and open body position; rapid speech and lower vocal pitch; increased gazing, nodding, interrupting, gesturing, speech loudness, and touching of others; and decreased speech hesitations, smiling, brow raising, self-touch, and interpersonal distance.
However, only three of these behaviors actually correlate with verticality: High-power individuals speak more loudly and have more open bodies and smaller interpersonal distances

But I think these signals can ALL indeed be power-cues, it just depends on the context.
Interrupting for example can be a cue of dominance indeed, especially successful interruptions.

Experimental work shows the tendency for over-generalization

Reflecting the particular tendency to essentialize gender, experimental work has shown that people readily generalize information about a single individual to their gender category as a whole (Prentice and Miller, 2006).

Essentialist thinking is an inevitable feature of certain individuals (e.g., those high in need for cognitive closure) and certain groups (i.e., higher status ones) and, the authors argue, it’s an hallmark of male sexism.

Collectivist cultures may be seen as more feminine

A series of studies by Lorenzi-Cioldi (2002) highlights the resulting greater ambivalence of perceptions concerning lower-status groups. Male and female Swiss participants judged the extent to which various attributes apply to people in general, to men and women, to Westerners and Asians, and to themselves. Two attributes represented the Western culture (‘independent’ and ‘individualistic’), and two other attributes represented the Asian culture (‘collectivistic’ and ‘follower’). The findings showed that, overall, Westerners, men, and people in general were attributed agency, whereas Asians were attributed communion.

Large cities are for attractive women

A regions-of-significance analysis indicates some evidence of a ‘liberation’ pattern, but only among a very select group of women at the extremely high end of the attractiveness distribution (i.e., who reported low WHR).
These women experienced higher quality friend relations and more life satisfaction if they inhabited the high mobility ecology of urban settings rather than the relatively restrictive ecology of rural settings.
However, among the much larger group of women in the middle-to-low range of the attractiveness distribution (1.e., who reported high WHR), the regions of significance analysis indicated a ‘risk’ pattern, such that women experienced lower quality friend relations and worse life satisfaction in urban settings than in rural settings (Plaut et al., 2009).

Women had peak emotions in intimate relationships, men in groups

When people were instructed to recall a single event from their lives marked by strong positive or negative emotion, women talked about intimate relationship events, whereas men were more likely to mention events involving groups or organizations.

Solitary events were a minority for both.

Feminist self-identity is healthy

Perhaps because of the greater sense of control and efficacy such a decision reflects, a stronger feminist identity is also related to better health and well-being (Yakushko, 2007; Zucker & Bay-Cheng, 2010).

Monogamy benefits men as a whole, not women

Baumeister says:

Although laypersons have often expressed surprise at hearing that women outnumber men two to one among humankind’s ancestors, thinking it would be closer to equality, experts have tended to be surprised for the opposite reason — they thought the imbalance would be even larger than it is (again, as is often found in other species).
What has reduced the gap has been the spread of monogamy through the civilized world during the last couple of centuries.
This is often depicted as a benefit to women, but it is difficult to see how enforced monogamy actually benefits women. It reduces their options. Indeed, even a woman who wants monogamy would be better off in a polygamous society, because there will be an oversupply of single men. Almost certainly, monogamy was institutionalized in order to ensure that almost every man could have a mate.

I agree at a population level.
But monogamy doesn’t serve high value men well.

QUOTES

Crying has generally been considered as the ultimate sign of helplessness, because it signals the inability to act in order to cope with a situation (Frijda, 1986).

On one often underestimated reason for men and women’s different outcomes:

Men and women differ more in motivations tha in capabilities

CONS

• Socialization and nurture bias

Several chapters and authors felt like over-leaning towards socialization, social roles, and culture, rather than genes and biology.

The cautioning -or complaints- against generalizations, genes, and biology sometimes felt overdone, without equally appreciating their impact and importance.

REVIEW

The Sage Handbook of Gender and Psychology offers a broad overview of gender differences and commonalities.

It seems to me it over-represents the constructionists’ and feminist-leaning takes, but I could still learn a lot from it.

The Sage Handbook book also made me realize how benevolent sexism is the specular concept of benevolent racism. It was an old dynamic we described on this website, but only thanks to this book was I able ot give it the appropriate name, and provide it with academic references.

Check the best books to read or get this book on Amazon.