THE ROLE OF "LENSES OF GENDER" IN CONSTRUCTION OF SEX IN PERCEPTION OF GENDER-NEUTRAL IMAGES

We investigated how gender lenses (androcentrism and polarization) conceptualized by S. Bern display themselves in perception of gender-neutral images by Russian participants (N = 302, 218 female, age 17-57) with various characteristics of gender structure and stereotypes. The procedure included experimental and diagnostic stages. During the first stage, 12 black-and-white pictures of an animal (a cat) in neutral/masculine/feminine contexts were shown. Russian version of the Male Attitude Norms Inventory (Kletsina I., Ioffe E.), Sexism Structure Inventory (Zizevskaia E., Shchukina M.), Masculinity, Femininity and Gender Type of Personality Inventory (Lopuhova 0.) were used in the diagnostic stage. It was found that in 97% cases the image of the animal was constructed as having a particular sex. The animal was seen as a male cat more often (7.3 times more when counting each act of perception and 8.8 times when analyzing perception of each individual), which indicates the presence of lens of androcentrism in perception of gender-neutral images. Sex, gender structure and age of participants didn't have an influence on constructing gender of the animal. Lens of polarization was activated in 10% of participants and it displayed itself through the influence of gender-stereotyped context on perception, while the stimuli "baby carriage" and "embroidering" made participants perceive the animal as female more often. When the first stimulus was a feminine-stereotyped one, it influenced only male participants. Activation of lens of polarization was correlated with accepting the conventional norms of masculinity and sexism, and was not correlated with sex, age and gender structure.