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I Took The Bem Sex Role Inventory Test From 1974 & This Is What Happened
By Lara Rutherford-Morrison
If you had to rank your tendency to be affectionate, on a scale from "never" to "always," what would you say? What about cheerfulness? Or your ability to stand up for your beliefs? And would you see these traits as markers of your masculinity or femininity? These questions come from the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI), a survey developed in 1974 to measure how people adhere to traditional notions of gender. It's been used in gender research for decades, and often crops up in Psych 101 classes as an activity for students. I did the BSRI today, and the experience has led me to draw two scientific conclusions: (1) The '70s had some weird, outmoded ideas about gender, and (2) Things have changed. (THANKFULLY.)
The BSRI asks respondents to rank 60 personality traits according how strongly they see them in themselves, on a seven point scale from "never" to always." In the test, the 60 traits are mixed together without any apparent separation, but actually they are comprised of three categories: 20 are supposedly "feminine," 20 are "masculine," and 20 more are "neutral." Some of the gender distinctions seem fairly obvious, even if they seem really outdated now (For example, "athletic" is coded as masculine, and "gentle" as feminine), while others are total head scratchers to me (Apparently loyalty is a feminine thing?).
At the end of BSRI, you get a score that tells you how you rank along three lines: Masculine, feminine, and "androgynous" (neither masculine nor feminine). Some test-takers might be quick to interpret these scores as a statement about their own gender, but that isn't the case. The BSRI is actually saying something more complicated — and for that, we need…
A little history.
The BSRI was developed in the 1970s by psychologist Sandra Bem as a way to evaluate the extent to which test subjects align themselves (or don't align themselves) with cultural definitions of gender. It's important to note that the gendered characteristics Bem included in the test ("yielding," "aggressive," etc.) were traits that Bem thought were central to social constructions of gender — not biologically innate facets of being male or female. So the test isn't suggesting that being "soft spoken" is something inherent to women, but that being soft spoken — in the 1970s, at least — was a trait that society regarded as desirable in women.
Bem developed the BSRI as a way to study androgyny and the ways that people don't always conform to stereotypes of masculinity and femininity. In assuming that all people have both masculine and feminine qualities, the BSRI allowed for a more complex view of gender than previous models. But although the BSRI was intended to question traditional distinctions of gender, the test has been criticized for having the opposite effect. After all, one could argue (and people have) that the very nature of the BSRI only reinforces gender stereotypes by categorizing human personality traits — which are not intrinsically gendered — as masculine or feminine. If the point of the BSRI was to show that we are all a mix of so-called "masculine," "feminine," and "androgynous" characteristics, what is the point of giving those traits gendered labels at all?
In an article looking back on decades of research using the BSRI, scholars Rose Marie Hoffman and L. DiAnne Borders question the BSRI's usefulness and suggest that the test has frequently been misused. They write, "Results of myriad studies using the BSRI are misinterpreted by researchers to confirm hypotheses that lack adequate theoretical support." In her later years, Bem herself proposed a more complex view of gender than the one the BSRI was designed to measure. She argued, "[H]uman behaviors should no longer be linked with gender, and society should stop projecting gender into situations irrelevant to genitalia."
So what happened when I took the test?
Making my way through the 60 questions was an odd experience. I knew the basic purpose of the test, and could tell, for at least some of the questions, which traits would be coded as "masculine" or "feminine." So I question how a self-reported test like this could be valid, with me sitting there, trying to figure out what my choices would say about my supposed gender alignment. Needless to say, I approached my results with a fair dose of skepticism. After completing the survey, I got my results:
I'll admit that I stared at those three numbers rather blankly for a few minutes. What was I supposed to get from this? Were these results supposed to be revelatory somehow? Here are the basics of how to interpret these scores:
A high score of "feminine" and a significantly lower score of "masculine" means you are primarily "feminine" (according to this test's conception of what that means), and a high score of "masculine" accompanied by a significantly lower score of "feminine" means that you adhere to this test's version of "masculine." (But I cannot stress enough that these are culturally constructed terms and therefore should be taken with a grain of salt approximately the size of Pluto.)
If you score equally high on both the "masculine" and "feminine" scales, you fall into the category of "androgynous."
If you have similarly low scores on the "masculine" and "feminine" scales, you fit into a category Bem describes as "undifferentiated."
My results show that I exhibit so-called "masculine" traits and "androgynous" traits, but that I skew toward femininity, at least as it was defined by a limited group of people in 1974. TBH, I'm not particularly surprised by the results. As a card carrying feminist,* am I supposed to feel bothered that I apparently fall into the parameters of 40-year-old cultural expectations of femininity? I'm not. Really, I think that the most interesting part of taking this test isn't what it may or may not say about me — it's what it can show us about gender conventions, and how those have evolved over time.
Things have changed.
In their 2001 retrospective of the BSRI's long career, Borders and Hoffman surveyed a group of undergraduates to see how they felt about how the BSRI categorizes masculine and feminine traits. When Bem designed the BSRI in the early 1970s, she surveyed undergrads about socially desirable traits for men and women, and they agreed with the ones she included.
Borders and Hoffman got very different results: Of the 60 traits on the test (20 "masculine," 20 "feminine," and 20 "neutral"), only two were regarded as "masculine" or "feminine" by 75 percent or more of the students. And those two were fairly obvious; students agreed that "masculine" is a masculine trait, and "feminine" is a feminine trait. All other 58 traits were either regarded as gender-neutral or lacked the consensus to categorize as one gender or the other.
Our society still feels frustratingly plagued by constricting and unrealistic expectations about gender, but this survey shows that, at least in regard to this single test, our conceptions of gender, and what it means to be "masculine" or "feminine," are becoming more flexible over time.
You can try out the BSRI for yourself here.
* Just kidding. We don't have cards. I only WISH we did. They would be covered in equality and glitter.
Images: Todd Ehlers/Flickr; Giphy (1, 2, 3); Bem Sex Role Inventory (2)


As the USF Softball team prepares to kickoff the 2017 season Thursday against Illinois State, the coaches and team welcomed USF Softball alumni back to their old stomping grounds. A new tradition was born Saturday afternoon as current players partook in on-field batting practice and exchanged athletic banter with the alumni on hand. The new tradition was a perfect way to meld the old with the new, while allowing the alumni to spend time at a place they once called home for several years.
After a few hours of hitting and fielding to relive the glory days, the players of the past hung their worn gloves and rusty spikes to allow the current team to play the official 'Green & Gold' game. It was a splendid afternoon and a great way for the alumni to meet and spend quality time with the newest members of the USF Softball family.
Following a strong 2016 campaign (45-16), the team begins the season ranked at No. 23/24 in the USA Today/NFCA Preseason Coaches Poll. The Bulls enter the season with eight new freshmen, bolstering the Bulls' strong veteran lineup. The 2017 Bulls are expected to contend for the American Athletic Conference Championship and advance to the NCCA Post-Season Tournament for the second consecutive season. Senior Juli Weber, The AAC 2016 Player of the Year, is one of 50 players nationally to be named to the Softball Collegiate Player of the Year watch list.
As Coach Ken Eriksen enters into his 21st year as head coach, he has made it abundantly clear that the alumni are considered family and an integral part of the team's success. "We wouldn't be where we are now, without each of you," Eriksen said to the 20+ alumni present. Softball has historically set the watermark for success at the University of South Florida, and Eriksen is the winningest coach in USF history. In November, he was inducted into the National Softball Hall of Fame as head coach.
Stay tuned for more USF Softball coverage from this alumni and Bulls insider.


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Laura Barnett: 'write a novel that feels as if it couldn't possibly have been written any other way'
Photograph by Chris O'Donovan
by Katie Smart Author Interviews, Writing Tips
Laura Barnett joined the Curtis Brown Creative teaching team in 2018 and is now a regular tutor of our London-based courses. We've been huge fans of Laura's work ever since her wonderful debut The Versions of Us came out in 2015, and we're pretty chuffed to have her on our teaching team.
Laura's debut was a Sunday Times number-one bestseller, translated into 24 languages, and shortlisted for Debut of the Year at the British Book Awards. Her follow-up, Greatest Hits was published in 2017, with an accompanying soundtrack album by the musician Kathryn Williams. Laura has taught creative writing for Guardian Masterclasses, delivered a TedX talk on originality in fiction, and worked as a writing mentor for the charity Arts Emergency. She is also a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University's Writing School.
Laura, we're very excited to welcome you to the CBC tutor team! This week you have been guest tutoring some of our current London-based students, what's the most rewarding part of teaching creative writing?
Getting to sit in a room with a group of people who are all as passionate about writing as I am. I see teaching as very much a reciprocal process: I learn as much from the writers I teach as I hope they learn from me. And it's wonderful to be able to pass on my own experience of the working life of a novelist – from finding an agent, to working with editors, marketing and publicity teams, and actually seeing a book on the shelves. Before a writer is published, a lot of these things can seem shrouded in mystique; I know I was always desperate to learn more about them from writers who were experiencing them first-hand.
Your first novel, The Versions of Us explores three alternative realities of one couple. What was the most difficult part of constructing the book's 'what-if' multiple narrative structure?
Maintaining my confidence in the story I was trying to tell, and in the way I wanted to tell it. I was aware that such a structure had, to the best of my knowledge, never been attempted before: three alternative versions of one couple's relationship, woven together into a cohesive whole. After I first came up with the idea, I spent several days frantically googling "novel with three versions of the same story", and found nothing. My next thought was that if nobody else had attempted it, I was mad even to try. But I knew I had to tell this story – or stories. The hardest thing, then, was setting aside that fear of failure – which is, I believe, common to almost every writer or artist.
For your second novel, Greatest Hits, you collaborated with musician Kathryn Williams, she set lyrics that you wrote to correspond to each of the book's chapters to music, creating a companion album to the novel. What inspired you tell this story collaboratively across two mediums?
Several things. Firstly, I knew that I wanted to write a "long-view" novel about a woman in her sixties, looking back on her life as a singer-songwriter, and the ways in which she had tried to make sense, through music, of all her experiences – her triumphs, her disappointments, her mistakes. It seemed really logical, then, to try to give that music a life beyond the page: to collaborate with a musician on a real-life album containing the character's fictional songs.
I was excited, too, about the potential this offered, again, to do something that had never done before: to bring together music and literature in a new, and hopefully compelling, way. Before The Versions of Us was published, I'd spent more than a decade as an arts journalist, writing about all sorts of "crossover" projects that were breaking down the barriers between art forms, and finding new ways for audiences to experience them. This, then, felt like a really exciting way to do that for fiction and music.
If you could only pass on one piece of advice to aspiring novelists about writing innovative fiction what would you say?
Don't just experiment for the sake of it: make sure that your story has a heart and a soul. I'm not a fan of experimental fiction that seems to exist just to show off. Be as ambitious and innovative as you want to be, but ask yourself whether this is really the way your story has to be told. The aim, ultimately, is to write a novel that feels as if it couldn't possibly have been written any other way.
When you're working on a novel do you have a writing routine or any rituals?
Not really. I write in the mornings – the afternoons, for me, are for editing, emailing or napping – and I like to get out for a run, or do some yoga, before sitting down at my desk: it's always good to exercise the body before slipping back into the mind. But in my view, the only ritual worth paying any attention to is getting down to the tough business of writing, day by day, sentence by sentence, page by page.
To find out about our longer, selective-applications novel-writing courses in London or online, and to apply, visit our courses page.
Or enrol today on one of our 6-week online courses novel-writing courses for different stages of your novel-writing journey: Starting to Write Your Novel, Write to the End of Your Novel, and Edit and Pitch Your Novel.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Hotel prices in Sochi, Russia, have more than doubled in the run up the Winter Olympics, according to a price comparison website.
Visitors to the Black Sea resort can expect to pay £163 per person per night at the peak of the games, a 144 per cent increase on the average price this month of £67, according to research by Trivago into 293 hotels in Sochi.
The Opening Ceremony, traditionally an impressive spectacle setting the tone for the games, marks the beginning of the 22nd Winter Olympics on February 7. However, this is when prices are at there most affordable at £136 per person per night, second only to a night's stay on the day of the Closing Ceremony on February 23, which costs an average of £125.
The run up to the Winter Olympics has been marred by everything from alleged corruption and embezzlement to homophobia and a lack of snow. Yet it seems this has not dampened hoteliers' optimism since the price hike is greater than that of London hotels before the city hosted the Olympics in 2012.
Denise Bartlett, UK PR manager at Trivago, said Sochi's hotel prices were similar to other cities around the world but that the percentage increase was especially steep. "The maximum increase during London 2012 was 84 per cent, from an average of £185 during July 2011 to £340 during the games," she said.
She added that room availability was low in Sochi and it was possible hoteliers realised they are able to reach capacity so last minute price drops are unlikely.
One of the UK's largest ski tour operators Crystal Ski is offering packages to Sochi, but has said availability is limited due to the number of test events before the games as well as the games itself and that those considering visiting should wait until late March. The skiing is across two resorts - Gazprom and Rosa Khutor.


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