Are People Prejudiced Against Women? Some Answers From Research on Attitudes, Gender Stereotypes, and Judgments of Competence

The Ambivalent Sexism Inventory: Differentiating hostile and benevolent sexism.

“…Research on helping behavior shows that female targets are more likely to elicit help than male targets are (see Eagly & Crowley, 1986 for a meta-analysis of this effect). Both men and women are more likely to seek intimacy with female than with male strangers, as indexed by interpersonal distance (Riess & Salzer, 1981 ), touching (Major, Schmidlin, & Williams, 1990), and self-disclosure (Cozby, 1973;Morton, 1978 ).2 Even the commonly accepted notion among social scientists that stereotypes of women are more negative than those of men has been called into question by Eagly and her colleagues (Eagly & Mladinic, 1993;Eagly, Mladinic, & Otto, 1991 ), who have found evidence for more positive stereotypes of women than men, on certain dimensions.…”

“…This creates downward comparisons, in which women serve, in Virginia Woolf's ( 1929Woolf's ( / 1981 words, as "looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of a man at twice its natural size" (p. 35), allowing individual men to enhance their self-esteem by association with a male social identity (Tajfel, 1981 ). Alongside the competitive drive to differentiate, however, the dyadic dependency of men on women (as romantic objects, as wives and mothers) fosters notions that women have many positive traits (Eagly, 1987;Eagly & Mladinic, 1993;Poplau, 1983) that complement those of men (complementary gender differentiation). Just as the traditional division of labor between the sexes creates complementary roles (men working outside the home, women within), the traits associated with these roles (and hence with each sex) are viewed as complementary.…”

“…Relationships between men and women, however, do not easily fit the mold of ethnic prejudice, at the very least because no other two groups have been as intimately connected (S. T. Fiske & Stevens, 1993). Furthermore, cultural images of women from ancient to modern times are not uniformly negative; women have been revered as well as reviled (Eagly & Mladinic, 1993;Guttentag & Secord, 1983;Tavris & Wade, 1984 Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Peter Glick, Department of Psychology, Lawrence University, Appleton, Wisconsin 54912-0599. Electronic mail may be sent via the Internet to peter.s.glick@lawrence.edu 491 indeed a prejudice, but in this article we argue that it is, and probably always has been, a special case of prejudice marked by a deep ambivalence, rather than a uniform antipathy,,toward women.…”

Science faculty’s subtle gender biases favor male students

“…Past studies indicate that people's behavior is shaped by implicit or unintended biases, stemming from repeated exposure to pervasive cultural stereotypes (14) that portray women as less competent but simultaneously emphasize their warmth and likeability compared with men (15). Despite significant decreases in overt sexism over the last few decades (particularly among highly educated people) (16), these subtle gender biases are often still held by even the most egalitarian individuals (17), and are exhibited by both men and women (18).…”

Estereotipos de género, maternidad y empleo: un análisis psicosociológico

“…El hecho de que en algunos estudios se observen actitudes más positivas hacia las mujeres se debe, fundamentalmente, a la alta valoración que estas consiguen en rasgos relacionados con la afectividad y la empatía. Esto da lugar a lo que algunos autores han denominado como el efecto "las mujeres son maravillosas" (Eagly y Mladinic, 1994), una especie de sexismo benevolente que evalúa de forma muy favorable a las mujeres pero no evita su discriminación, ya que no son estos precisamente los rasgos más valorados en el mercado laboral. Lo que da lugar a la discriminación no es, por tanto, la actitud más o menos positiva hacia las mujeres, sino la falta de ajuste entre los rasgos propios del estereotipo femenino y los perfiles psicológi-cos que se valoran en el mercado laboral (Heilman, 2012;Heilman y Eagly, 2008), algo especialmente evidente en las ocupaciones consideradas tradicionalmente como masculinas, así como en los puestos de dirección y responsabilidad.…”