Ambivalent sexism theory states that prejudice toward women comprises two interrelated ideologies. Endorsement of hostile sexism—aggressive and competitive attitudes toward women—is linked with ...endorsement of benevolent sexism—paternalistic and patronizing attitudes toward women. We conduct the first systematic tests of how endorsement of sexism differs across age and across time, using six waves of a nationally representative panel sample of New Zealand adults (N = 10,398). Results indicated U-shaped trajectories for men’s endorsement of hostile sexism, women’s hostile sexism, and women’s benevolent sexism across the life span. However, over time, endorsement of these sexist attitudes tended to decrease for most ages. In contrast, men’s benevolent sexism followed a positive linear trajectory across age and tended not to change over time. These results provide novel evidence of how ambivalent sexism differs across age and highlight that benevolent sexism is particularly tenacious.
According to ambivalent sexism theory (Glick & Fiske, 1996), the coexistence of gendered power differences and mutual interdependence creates two apparently opposing but complementary sexist ...ideologies: hostile sexism (HS; viewing women as manipulative competitors who seek to gain power over men) coincides with benevolent sexism (BS; a chivalrous view of women as pure and moral, yet weak and passive, deserving men's protection and admiration, as long as they conform). The research on these ideologies employs the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory, used extensively in psychology and allied disciplines, often to understand the roles sexist attitudes play in reinforcing gender inequality. Following contemporary guidelines, this systematic review utilizes a principled approach to synthesize the multidisciplinary empirical literature on ambivalent sexism. After screening 1,870 potentially relevant articles and fully reviewing 654 eligible articles, five main domains emerge in ambivalent sexism research (social ideologies, violence, workplace, stereotypes, intimate relationships). The accumulating evidence across domains offers bottom-up empirical support for ambivalent sexism as a coordinated system to maintain control over women (and sometimes men). Hostile sexism acts through the direct and diverse paths of envious/resentful prejudices, being more sensitive to power and sexuality cues; Benevolent sexism acts through prejudices related to interdependence (primarily gender-based paternalism and gender-role differentiation), enforcing traditional gender relations and being more sensitive to role-related cues. Discussion points to common methodological limitations, suggests guidelines, and finds future avenues for ambivalent sexism research.
Public Significance Statement
Ambivalent sexism theory (Glick & Fiske, 1996) posits that two complementary ideologies aim to control women: hostile sexism (antipathy toward nontraditional women) coexists with benevolent sexism (seemingly favorable yet demeaning beliefs about conforming women). This review systematically scopes the multidisciplinary empirical literature on ambivalent sexism (654 articles), identifies the main domains, and shows how it reinforces gender inequality in terms of vulnerability to prejudiced ideologies, gendered violence, workplace discrimination, stereotyped representations, and close relationships disadvantage.
We tested the novel hypothesis that men lower in status-linked variables—that is, subjective social status and perceived mate value—are relatively disinclined to offset their high hostile sexism with ...high benevolent sexism. Findings revealed that mate value, but not social status, moderates the hostile–benevolent sexism link among men: Whereas men high in perceived mate value endorse hostile and benevolent sexism linearly across the attitude range, men low in mate value show curvilinear sexism, characterized by declining benevolence as hostility increases above the midpoint. Study 1 (N = 15,205) establishes the curvilinear sexism effect and shows that it is stronger among men than women. Studies 2 (N = 328) and 3 (N = 471) show that the curve is stronger among men low versus high in perceived mate value, and especially if they lack a serious relationship partner (Study 3). Discussion considers the relevance of these findings for understanding misogyny.
Student evaluations of teaching are widely believed to contain gender bias. In this study, we conduct a randomized experiment with the student evaluations of teaching in four classes with large ...enrollments, two taught by male instructors and two taught by female instructors. In each of the courses, students were randomly assigned to either receive the standard evaluation instrument or the same instrument with language intended to reduce gender bias. Students in the anti-bias language condition had significantly higher rankings of female instructors than students in the standard treatment. There were no differences between treatment groups for male instructors. These results indicate that a relatively simple intervention in language can potentially mitigate gender bias in student evaluation of teaching.
Despite progress towards equality on many fronts, sexism remains a problem. If sexism is to be combatted, an understanding of the attitudes underlying its various expressions is required. Previous ...research has strongly linked sexism to right-wing authoritarianism (a preference for collective security) and social dominance orientation (a preference for group-based hierarchy). Both are often considered unitary constructs, however recent attention to their facets has revealed finer details. This study breaks ground by utilising these facets to predict benevolent sexism (paternalistic attitudes towards women) and hostile sexism (antipathy towards women) in an Australian sample (N = 229). Both sexism variables were significantly predicted by two of the five attitude facets. For benevolent sexism, these were traditionalism and dominance, and for hostile sexism, they were conservatism and anti-egalitarianism. Hostile sexism was also predicted by gender. These findings add to the theoretical understanding of ambivalent sexism, have implications for addressing sexism in society, and support calls for future research to utilise the facets of right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation.
Women are more likely than men to perceive institutional sexism. In the present study, we examined the gender gap in perceptions of a legal case in which a female plaintiff claims she was a victim of ...institutional gender discrimination by an employer. Participants were randomly assigned to receive information about institutional forms of sexism (or not) prior to learning the facts of the case. In addition, participants were randomly assigned to take the female plaintiff's perspective (or remain objective) while reviewing the case. In isolation, sexism awareness and perspective-taking both independently eliminated the gender gap in perceptions of discrimination. However, contrary to expectations, the gender gap reemerged among participants who were made aware of sexism prior to perspective-taking such that women perceived more discrimination than men. Implications for interventions to increase perceptions of institutional sexism are discussed.
Each year, people spend less time reading and more time viewing images
, which are proliferating online
. Images from platforms such as Google and Wikipedia are downloaded by millions every day
, and ...millions more are interacting through social media, such as Instagram and TikTok, that primarily consist of exchanging visual content. In parallel, news agencies and digital advertisers are increasingly capturing attention online through the use of images
, which people process more quickly, implicitly and memorably than text
. Here we show that the rise of images online significantly exacerbates gender bias, both in its statistical prevalence and its psychological impact. We examine the gender associations of 3,495 social categories (such as 'nurse' or 'banker') in more than one million images from Google, Wikipedia and Internet Movie Database (IMDb), and in billions of words from these platforms. We find that gender bias is consistently more prevalent in images than text for both female- and male-typed categories. We also show that the documented underrepresentation of women online
is substantially worse in images than in text, public opinion and US census data. Finally, we conducted a nationally representative, preregistered experiment that shows that googling for images rather than textual descriptions of occupations amplifies gender bias in participants' beliefs. Addressing the societal effect of this large-scale shift towards visual communication will be essential for developing a fair and inclusive future for the internet.
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