Gender Expression and Health among Youth and Young Adults

• In Event: Sociology of Sex and Gender Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 4. Embodiment, Medicine, and Health

Abstract

This paper draws on self-reported gender expression (i.e., degree of femininity and masculinity) from a recent nationally representative survey of U.S. youth and young adults to address a critical gap in the literature on gender as a fundamental cause of health disparities (Harder and Sumerau 2018, Link and Phelan 1995). Gender expression refers to how people communicate their gender to others through behavior and appearance and can provide insight into diversity within gender categories that are otherwise assumed to be monolithic (e.g., differences in health outcomes for feminine-presenting cisgender women compared to masculine-presenting cisgender women). Extant research examining the relationship between gender expression and health has more often focused on samples of adults (Johns et al. under revision, Garbarski 2023, Hart et al. 2019), with relatively less attention paid to youth and young adults who are more likely than prior generations to identify beyond the gender binary (Herman and Flores 2025).

Between September 2023 and February 2024, a total of 5,210 respondents ages 10-34 years old were surveyed using a probability-based panel designed to be representative of the U.S. household population. The web survey measured respondents’ self- and reflected appraisals of gender expression (how one sees themselves, how they think others see them) on seven-point unipolar scales where the end points were labeled Not at all and Very, in a grid that asked about femininity followed by masculinity. The survey also included common measures of health, such as Self-Rated Physical Health and the Mental Health Inventory (MHI-5).

The analytic sample included 48.3% cisgender girls and women, 48.0% cisgender boys and men, and 3.6% transgender and nonbinary respondents. Associations between gender nonconformity and health are interpreted using relational approaches that theorize gender inequality as resulting from complex interplays between individual, interactional, and structural arrangements (Connell 2012, Risman 2004).

Author

• Christopher Hansen, Loyola Marymount University