Table of differences between male & female adult gender personality and sex roles

Male personality Female personality
Agentic/agency

Communal/communion: Embeddedness in social interaction and personal relationship, relational personality

Individualistic; Formation of separations, denial of relation

Participation in larger organism of which individual is a part; lack of separations,

Men defined by achievements Women in most societies defined relationally (someone's wife, mother, daughter, daughter in law)
Clear self-other distinction More flexible ego boundaries

Self-protection, self-assertion, self-expansion

Being at one with other organisms
Isolation, alienation, aloneness Contact, openness, union

Urge to master

Urge to cooperate, nurture

Repression of thought, feeling, impulse

Lack of repression
Represent experiences in individualistic, objective, and distant ways

Represent experiences in relatively interpersonal, subjective, immediate ways