The current study looked at university aged females in America and Pakistan with a focus on their masculinity, femininity and androgyny when it comes to life adversity and its relationship between PTG (posttraumatic growth) and optimism. Literature suggests that individuals, especially females, who encounter adversity in life have a higher likelihood of experiencing PTG as a result. The purpose of this study was to determine if masculinity, femininity and androgyny amongst American and Pakistani females had any impact on PTG and optimism after going through adversity or stress in life. Hypothesis 1 investigated how feminine females in Pakistan will have lower optimism levels as compared to feminine females in America and that androgynous females from both countries will have higher optimism overall. 455 total participants completed this study, and for hypothesis 1 results from a one-way ANOVA showed that androgynous females having higher levels of optimism than feminine females was only significant with the American sample. Hypothesis 2 investigated if femininity and optimism scores significantly predict higher levels of PTG. Results from a multiple regression analysis revealed that the results were only significant in the American sample. In the case of hypothesis 2, there was a significant and positive correlation with femininity and PTG along with a negative correlation between optimism and PTG. Hypothesis 2 held insignificant results for the Pakistan sample. Hypothesis 3 investigated how Americans rank their female participants as first having first masculine, feminine and then androgynous traits while Pakistan rank their females as first having feminine, androgynous and then masculine traits. Chi-square test for independence revealed that this hypothesis was only significant for Pakistan. This study is important because it allows societies from different cultures to see that females may not only hold feminine traits but also masculine and androgynous traits. In addition, it reveals how these traits may affect these individuals' PTG and optimism beliefs after some adversity in life. Therapeutic interventions can be put into place for those who have experienced negative events that can be tailored to their gender identification.

"In Women in College, Mirra Komarovsky interviewed women who entered Barnard College in the fall of 1979, finding that the demands of college life facilitated and occasionally forced many of these women to change their self-concept. Most felt trapped between new ideals of femininity - including action, vigor, rational competence, and effectiveness - and traditional notions of femininity, centered around emotional nurturance, passivity and kindness."

I am very pleased to have been asked to do abrief foreword to this second CRISP volume, The Social Context o[ Coping. I know most of the participants and their work, and respect them as first-rate and influen tial research scholars whose research is at the cusp of current concerns in the field of stress and coping. Psychological stress is central to human adaptation. It is difficult to visualize the study of adaptation, health, illness, personal soundness, and psychopathology without recognizing their dependence on how weil people cope with the stresses of living. Since the editor, John Eckenrode, has portrayed the themes of each of the chapters in his introduction, I can limit myself to a few general comments about stress and coping. Stress research began, as unexplored fields often do, with very sim ple-should I say simplistic?-ideas about how to define the concept. Early approaches were unidimensional and input-output in outlook, modeled implicitly on Hooke's late-17th-century engineering analysis in which external load was an environmental stressor, stress was the area over wh ich the load acted, and strain was the deformation of the struc tu re such as a bridge or building.

Gender has a fundamental influence on the human brain, not only by virtue of biological and hormonal differences between the sexes but also because of the impact of gender-specific cultural, social, anthropological and environmental factors. Nevertheless, the relation of gender and psychopathology remains a largely neglected field. Gender perspective has been treated as a paradigm in this book on psychopathology because it determines the way in which a psychiatric symptom is defined, perceived and understood. This conception of gender as being of key importance in the definition of psychiatric symptomatology is exceptional in the literature. The book opens by examining historical and cultural aspects of mental health in women worldwide and the relation of sex, brain and gender, with coverage of both neurobiological and psychosocial aspects. The significance of gender with regard to specific aspects of psychopathology is then addressed in detail. A wide range of psychological disorders are considered, as well as hormonal influences and issues concerning body image, self identity, sexuality and life instinct. It is hoped that this book will make a significant contribution in ensuring that gender perspective receives due attention within descriptive psychopathology.

The term "adversity" is used to describe exposure to unpropitious or calamitous circumstances. It occurs in extreme situations such as prolonged combat or natural disasters, both of which affect whole groups or communities of people simultaneously. It is also observed in more individually targeted events, such as child abuse, bereavement, rape, physical illness, marital separation or divorce, unemployment, and homelessness. This volume brings together contributions from leading investigators in the field. They review and analyze research on the nature of adversity and its relationship to major types of psychopathology including schizophrenia, depression, alcoholism and other substance use disorders, antisocial personality disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and nonspecific distress. Adversity, Stress, and Psychopathology is the only book to offer such a comprehensive and authoritative overview of the role of psychosocial stress in mental disorders. It will be welcomed by psychiatrists: psychologists, especially clinical, health and social; public health researchers, especially epidemiologists; and social scientists, especially sociologists.