Masculinity and violence: Sex roles and violence endorsement among university students

Abstract

The relationship between masculinity and violence is examined in this paper. Masculinity is defined by key characteristics such as a willingness to take risks, having self-reliance, possessing a strong personality, exhibiting leadership abilities, defending ones self-beliefs and acting rationally. To be a real man, an individual must be seen being ambitious, dominant, self-reliant, competitive, independent, assertive and aggressive. Most of the characteristics of masculinity mentioned here are often associated with a culture of violence which is male dominated. The data was drawn from a survey administered to college students in a Turkish University by the authors. The results of this research confirmed that sex, masculinity and violence are very closely related.