Sex-Role Traditionalism, Assertiveness, and Symptoms of Puerto Rican Women Living in the United States

Abstract

Clinical experience with Puerto Rican women living in the United States and a review of relevant literature suggested a casual model relating acculturation, sex-role traditionalism, assertiveness, and symptoms of mental and physical illness. A questionnaire (in either Spanish or English) containing objectively scored measures of migration history, educational attainment, sex-role traditionalism, assertiveness, and symptoms was completed by 278 Puerto Rican women living in the New York metropolitan area. The questionnaire also asked about religious beliefs and practices as well as family background. Correlational and path-analytic results indicated that second-generation Puerto Rican women (those born in the United States), when compared with first-generation counterparts, were better educated and less sex-role traditional. As hypothesized, sex-role traditionalism correlated negatively with assertiveness, and assertiveness in turn correlated negatively with symptoms. Implications of the results for clinicians and educators are discussed.