Self-esteem of Indian Adults: The Role of Androgyny

Abstract Self-esteem is an individual’s feeling of belief, respect and value of his or her own self. The present study addresses issues concerning the role of androgyny in self-esteem of the participants. The study aims to find out the role of gender role perception and gender on self-esteem of participants. A 2 (androgynous and sex-typed) × 2 (male and female) factorial design has been employed in the study. Initially, 600 participants (300 females and 300 males) in the age group ranging from 30-45 years from various areas of Bhubaneswar city in Odisha, India were purposively chosen for the study. On the basis of the median split of their scores on the Sahoo Sex Role Inventory, the males were categorized into 150 androgynous male and 150 sex-typed group. Similarly, the females were divided into 150 androgynous female and 150 sex-typed group. Therefore, based upon their scores the participants were divided into 4 groups, namely androgynous female, androgynous male, sex-typed female and sex-typed male. 60 participants securing extreme scores from each group were considered for further study, thus making the total sample size of 240 (120 females and 120 males). Findings revealed that the participants who were of androgynous gender role orientation had higher self-esteem than the participants having sex-typed orientation, which is supported by the literature. No difference has been obtained between males and females. Further, no significant interaction effect has been seen between gender role perception and gender. Keywords: androgyny, gender, gender role perception, self-esteem, sex-type