Understanding Femininity: Types, Theories, and Cultural Impacts

1.1 Definition of Femininity

Femininity, also referred to as womanhood or womanliness, is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles associated with girls and women. As with masculinity, femininity is distinct from biological sex: it is a social construct that varies across cultures and historical periods (Ferrante, 2008). What counts as “feminine” in one society or era may be unremarkable, or even masculine, in another. Readers new to this distinction may find it useful to begin with our introduction to gender as a psychological construct.

Femininity is often defined by the traits and ideas that shape the stereotypical or ideal woman, with traditional femininity being the most widely recognized stereotype. Yet traditional femininity is not a single trait. It is a cluster of norms governing appearance, emotion, relationships, sexuality, and domestic life that together prescribe how women are expected to behave (Mahalik et al., 2005). These norms operate largely below the level of conscious choice, shaping what feels natural, appropriate, or shameful in different social contexts.

An important theoretical distinction separates femininity from the female body. Butler (1990) argued that gender is not something a person has but something a person repeatedly does: a performance sustained by countless small, socially rewarded acts. On this view, femininity is not the expression of an inner female essence but a script that individuals of any sex may enact, resist, or revise.

1.2 Types of Femininity

Just as researchers speak of multiple masculinities, contemporary scholarship recognizes multiple femininities. These forms exist in relation to one another, to men and masculinity, and to intersecting factors such as race, class, sexuality, age, and religion. Femininity is fluid, and its meanings shift with historical and cultural context.

The theoretical development of multiple femininities has lagged behind the study of masculinities. Connell’s (1987) concept of hegemonic masculinity generated decades of empirical work, but Schippers (2007) observed that no comparable conceptualization of hegemonic femininity had been developed, and set out to build one. The categories below draw on both traditions.

1.2.1 Emphasized Femininity

Connell (1987) proposed emphasized femininity as the counterpart to hegemonic masculinity: the form of femininity organized around compliance with male dominance and oriented toward accommodating the interests and desires of men. It is characterized by sociability rather than technical competence, acceptance of marriage and childcare as central life projects, and a receptive rather than assertive sexuality.

Crucially, Connell argued that emphasized femininity is not hegemonic in the strict sense. Hegemony implies dominance over other groups, and because women as a class do not hold structural power over men, Connell held that no femininity could occupy the position hegemonic masculinity occupies. Emphasized femininity is instead the most culturally amplified and rewarded form, the one held up in advertising, media, and popular culture as what a woman should be.

1.2.2 Hegemonic Femininity

Schippers (2007) revised Connell’s position. She argued that hegemonic femininity consists of those characteristics defined as womanly that establish and legitimate a hierarchical, complementary relationship to hegemonic masculinity. On this account, femininity does exercise a hegemonic function: not over men, but in securing the consent of women to the existing gender order. This mechanism sits at the centre of our discussion of patriarchy and the psychology of gender norms.

The traits are defined by their complementarity. If masculinity is coded as physically strong, then femininity is coded as physically vulnerable. If masculinity is authoritative, femininity is deferential. If masculine desire is understood as active, feminine desire is understood as the object of that desire. Each pairing appears natural precisely because the two halves are defined against each other.

1.2.3 Pariah Femininities

Schippers (2007) introduced a category with no clean equivalent in masculinity theory. When women embody characteristics reserved for hegemonic masculinity, including aggression, sexual assertiveness, authority, or desire for other women, the resulting configuration is not treated as masculinity, since female bodies are not culturally permitted to be masculine. It is instead treated as contaminating, and sanctioned accordingly.

These are pariah femininities, and they are policed through a specific vocabulary of stigma: the “bitch,” the “slut,” the “prude,” the “dyke.” Schippers stressed that pariah femininities operate through social exclusion rather than through subordination. Subordinate masculinity places a man lower in a hierarchy he still belongs to. Pariah femininity casts a woman out of the category altogether. The persistence of sexual double standards, examined in our article on whether body count affects relationships, illustrates how one of these labels continues to operate. Notably, Budgeon (2014) observed that in some contexts, femininities perceived as excessively traditional are also constructed as pariah, so the norm punishes both deficiency and excess.

1.2.4 Alternative and Resistant Femininities

Not every departure from the dominant script is stigmatized. Budgeon (2014) analyzed the “new femininities” that valorize assertiveness, individuality, and achievement, embodied by the confident professional woman of contemporary media. These are not read as masculine, because they retain enough conventional markers, particularly around appearance and heterosexual relationship status, to remain legible as feminine.

This raises a question the literature has not settled. New femininities may represent genuine transformation of the gender order, or they may represent its adaptation: a version of femininity that adds the demand for professional achievement without subtracting any of the older demands regarding appearance, care, and relational labor. Alongside these sit consciously resistant femininities, including feminist, queer, and culturally specific forms that reject the complementary relationship to masculinity outright.

1.3 Theories of Femininity

Several frameworks attempt to define and measure femininity. The most influential fall into three broad groups: models that treat femininity as a personality dimension, models that treat it as an internalized ideology, and models that trace its psychological consequences.

1.3.1 Bem’s Androgyny Model

Bem (1974) broke with the prevailing assumption that masculinity and femininity were opposite poles of a single continuum, where being more of one necessarily meant being less of the other. She proposed instead that they are independent dimensions, and developed the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) to measure them separately.

This allowed for four classifications rather than two: feminine-typed, masculine-typed, undifferentiated (low on both), and androgynous (high on both). Bem argued that androgynous individuals, having access to a wider behavioral repertoire, would show greater psychological flexibility across situations. The BSRI became one of the most widely used instruments in gender research, though later scholars criticized its reliance on the stereotypes of a specific time and place, since its items reflect 1970s American norms.

1.3.2 Femininity Ideology

Femininity ideology refers to the cultural standards regarding femininity that girls and women are socialized to internalize, the counterpart to the masculinity ideology construct. Tolman and Porche (2000) developed the Adolescent Femininity Ideology Scale to measure this internalization during adolescence, when gender norms intensify sharply.

Their measure identified two central dimensions: inauthentic self in relationships, the suppression of one’s own thoughts and feelings to preserve connection with others, and objectified relationship with the body, the tendency to relate to one’s own body as something to be viewed and evaluated. Both were associated with poorer psychological outcomes in adolescent girls.

1.3.3 Mahalik’s Feminine Norms

Mahalik et al. (2005) developed the Conformity to Feminine Norms Inventory (CFNI), the direct counterpart to the Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory. Constructed through literature review and focus groups and refined by factor analysis, the CFNI identified eight distinct feminine norms found in the dominant culture of the United States:

• Nice in Relationships – maintaining caring, compassionate, agreeable connections with others
• Thinness – valuing a slender body
• Modesty – remaining humble about one’s talents and achievements
• Domestic – prioritizing care of the home
• Care for Children – centering the raising of children
• Romantic Relationship – treating a romantic partnership as essential to a complete life
• Sexual Fidelity – restricting sexual activity to a committed relationship
• Invest in Appearance – devoting substantial time and resources to physical presentation

As with masculinity, a woman’s perceived femininity is often judged by her conformity to these norms. The CFNI demonstrated strong internal consistency, reliably distinguished women from men, and related to Bem Sex Role Inventory and Feminist Identity Development Scale scores in theoretically expected patterns.

The comparison with the masculine norms is instructive. Where the CMNI norms cluster around dominance, competition, and control, including winning, violence, and power over women, the CFNI norms cluster around relationship, appearance, and self-restraint. The two inventories describe complementary halves of a single system.

1.3.4 Objectification Theory

Fredrickson and Roberts (1997) proposed that girls and women in cultures that sexually objectify the female body gradually internalize an observer’s perspective on themselves. This self-objectification produces habitual body monitoring, a persistent background attention to how one appears rather than how one feels or what one is doing.

The theory specifies a chain of consequences. Habitual monitoring generates shame and anxiety, reduces awareness of internal bodily states, and disrupts the absorbed attention required for peak performance and flow. Fredrickson and Roberts linked these mechanisms to the gendered distribution of depression, disordered eating, and sexual difficulties. At its clinical extreme, preoccupation with perceived appearance flaws overlaps with the presentation described in body dysmorphic disorder. Objectification theory has no clean equivalent in masculinity research, and it explains variance that norm-conformity measures alone cannot.

1.3.5 Silencing the Self

Jack (1991) developed a complementary account focused on relationships rather than the body. She argued that women socialized to prioritize connection learn to suppress feelings and self-expression judged likely to threaten a relationship, particularly anger and dissent. The self that remains visible in the relationship becomes progressively less authentic, while the silenced self accumulates resentment and a sense of loss.

Jack proposed this self-silencing as a pathway to major depressive disorder, and the construct has since been widely applied to close relationships, workplace dynamics, and health behavior. Its everyday form is familiar enough to have become a common presenting complaint, which we address practically in our guide on how to stop being too nice.

1.4 Femininity Across Cultures

The cross-cultural record is the strongest evidence that femininity is constructed rather than given. Mead (1935) documented three neighboring societies in New Guinea with sharply divergent temperamental expectations by sex, including one in which the pattern of male and female disposition ran opposite to Western assumptions. Her methods have been contested, but the central claim has held: the content of gender norms varies far more than any purely biological account would predict.

Hofstede (2001) approached the question at the level of national culture, treating masculinity and femininity as poles of one dimension along which societies differ. Cultures scoring toward the feminine pole place higher collective value on cooperation, care for the vulnerable, quality of life, and modesty, and show less sharply differentiated expectations for men and women.

Glick and Fiske (1996) added a further layer with their theory of ambivalent sexism. They distinguished hostile sexism, which openly derogates women, from benevolent sexism, meaning subjectively affectionate attitudes that idealize women as pure, nurturing, and in need of protection. Benevolent sexism rewards conformity to traditional femininity with warmth and admiration, which makes it considerably harder to identify and resist than open hostility, while still restricting the range of acceptable behavior.

1.5 The Impact of Traditional Femininity

Traditional femininity is best understood as a blend of the norms described above, with appearance and relational accommodation carrying particular weight. Beliefs such as “I should not upset anyone” or “my worth depends on how I look” can heavily shape self-perception and behavior.

The research on outcomes is more mixed than the corresponding masculinity literature, and this nuance matters. Studies using the CFNI have found that conformity to some feminine norms is associated with increased psychological distress, while conformity to others appears protective. Norms centered on appearance and thinness show fairly consistent associations with poorer outcomes, including body dissatisfaction and disordered eating risk. Norms centered on relational investment show a more complicated pattern. Strong social connection is among the best established protective factors in mental health, yet the same orientation, when it requires the systematic suppression of one’s own needs, produces the self-silencing Jack (1991) described.

The distinction is between valuing relationships and being unable to exist outside them, a boundary explored further in our article on the difference between dependency and codependency. A woman who invests deeply in others while retaining the capacity to voice disagreement occupies a different position from one whose relational skill is purchased by the erasure of her own preferences, even though a norm-conformity questionnaire may score them similarly.

Findings also vary substantially across cultural and ethnic groups, which is expected given that the CFNI was developed within one dominant cultural context. Norms carrying a cost in one setting may carry meaning and support in another.

Conclusion

Femininity is a complex and evolving social construct that varies according to cultural, historical, and individual context. While traditional femininity has long dictated societal expectations for women, contemporary theory recognizes a plurality of femininities, including emphasized, hegemonic, pariah, and resistant forms, each defined by its relationship to the prevailing gender order rather than by any fixed content.

Recognizing multiple femininities allows for a more flexible understanding of what it means to be a woman. It also clarifies the task for practitioners and researchers alike. The goal is not to determine whether femininity is good or harmful, but to distinguish the parts of it that a person genuinely values from the parts that were imposed and are now costing her something, and to widen the space in which that distinction can be made freely.

References

Bem, S. L. (1974). The measurement of psychological androgyny. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 42(2), 155–162.

Budgeon, S. (2014). The dynamics of gender hegemony: Femininities, masculinities and social change. Sociology, 48(2), 317–334.

Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge.

Connell, R. W. (1987). Gender and power: Society, the person and sexual politics. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Ferrante, J. (2008). Gender and sexualities: With emphasis on gender ideals. In J. Ferrante (Ed.), Sociology: A global perspective (7th ed., pp. 269–272). Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth.

Fredrickson, B. L., & Roberts, T.-A. (1997). Objectification theory: Toward understanding women’s lived experiences and mental health risks. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 21(2), 173–206.

Glick, P., & Fiske, S. T. (1996). The Ambivalent Sexism Inventory: Differentiating hostile and benevolent sexism. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70(3), 491–512.

Hofstede, G. (2001). Culture’s consequences: Comparing values, behaviors, institutions and organizations across nations (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Jack, D. C. (1991). Silencing the self: Women and depression. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Mahalik, J. R., Morray, E. B., Coonerty-Femiano, A., Ludlow, L. H., Slattery, S. M., & Smiler, A. (2005). Development of the Conformity to Feminine Norms Inventory. Sex Roles, 52(7/8), 417–435.

Mead, M. (1935). Sex and temperament in three primitive societies. New York: Morrow.

Schippers, M. (2007). Recovering the feminine other: Masculinity, femininity, and gender hegemony. Theory and Society, 36(1), 85–102.

Tolman, D. L., & Porche, M. V. (2000). The Adolescent Femininity Ideology Scale: Development and validation of a new measure for girls. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 24(4), 365–376.