Laura Steffen, Brigham Young University
Psychology
There is a wide spectrum of opinion on female gender roles, or what behaviors are appropriate for women. Attitudes towards gender roles can hypothetically be influenced by a variety of factors, including religion. Sexist views have been found to be held by members of many faiths, including Catholics, Muslims, and Evangelical Christians (Glick, Lameiras, & Castro, 2002; Maltby, Hall, Anderson & Edwards, 2010; Tasdemir & Sakalli-Ugarlu, 2010). To our knowledge, this phenomenon had not yet been studied among members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). Our measure, the LDS Attitudes Towards Female Gender Roles Scale, (LDS-AFGR) was created in the hopes of accurately assessing opinions of female gender roles among the LDS population, in regards to both religious social contexts. All questions on the LDS-AFGR yielded superior to moderate content validity, and two components were yielded by factor analysis. This suggests that our scale has initial promise, and could be further revised to obtain more accurate data about opinions on female gender roles among LDS church members.