Hostile, Benevolent, Implicit: How Different Shades of Sexism Impact Gendered Policy Attitudes

Abstract

Advances in gender equality and progressive policies are often stymied by cultural sexist systems and individual-level sexist attitudes. These attitudes are pervasive but vary in type—from benevolent to hostile and implicit to explicit. Understanding the types of sexism and their foundations are important for identifying connections to specific social and political attitudes and behaviors. The current study examines the impact of various manifestations of sexism on attitudes regarding policies and public opinion issues that involve gender equality or have gendered implications. More specifically, we look at attitudes on reproductive rights, support for the #MeToo Movement, equal pay, and paid leave policies. In Study 1 we use data from a high-quality web panel (n = 1,400) to look at the relationship between hostile, benevolent, and implicit sexism, and reproductive rights attitudes, as well as support for the #MeToo Movement. In Study 2 we use data from the American National Election Study (n = 4,270) to examine the relationship between hostile and modern sexism and attitudes on abortion, equal pay, and paid family leave. Overall, these results reveal a complicated relationship between different conceptualizations of sexism and gendered attitudes, underscoring the need to consider how different forms of sexism shape broader social and political views, from both a normative perspective for societal change and a measurement approach for research precision.

Insecurity and Self-Esteem: Elucidating the Psychological Foundations of Negative Attitudes toward Women

“…While fragile self-esteem is a personality trait characterized by a general increase in social aggression, building on theories of masculine insecurity, we argue that identification with negative stereotypes toward women emerges from social and psychological factors that motivate men to compete for status and to depict women as a lower-status group. Furthermore, in alignment with scholarship showing that sexism and antagonism toward women are expressions of willingness to maintain social hierarchies (Cassese and Holman 2019;Gothreau, Arceneaux, and Friesen 2022), we hypothesize that individuals whose implicit (private internal) view of self is negative relative to their explicit (externalized, "self-reported" social) view of self-in other words, those whose self-esteem is fragile (Kernis et al 2008)-are more likely to hold sexist attitudes and negative perceptions of women than individuals with positive implicit and explicit views of self.…”

Gendered Leadership Beliefs and U.S. Presidential Elections

“…Likewise, benevolent sexism was found to be positively related to support for the #MeToo Movement, whereas hostile sexism was negatively related. Modern sexism was found to be related to less support for equal pay and paid leave policies, but hostile sexism was not (Gothreau, Arceneaux and Friesen, 2022). And people higher in hostile sexism opposed female candidates more, whereas people higher in benevolent sexism opposed candidates with feminine styles and favored candidates with masculine styles more, regardless of candidate sex (Winter, 2022).…”

Hostile Sexism and Abortion Attitudes in Contemporary American Public Opinion

“…As Petterson and Sutton (2018, 235) show, “hostile sexism is associated with perceptions that men have the right to constrain women’s reproductive choices.” Hostile sexism, and the ability of men to control women, can be a predictor of abortion attitudes, regardless of pro-woman frames. Since “hostile sexism uncovers antipathy toward women,” Gothreau, Arceneaux and Friesen (2022, 2) also find that “hostile sexism predicts less support for abortion and birth control access, as well as funding for Planned Parenthood.” Petterson and Sutton (2018, 236) note that despite the role of hostile sexism in abortion attitudes, those opposed to abortion “seldom describe their position as being motivated to preserve male control over women. More typically, they couch their position as a desire to protect the fetus, and often the pregnant woman herself.” Petterson and Sutton provide important theoretical contributions to the study of sexism’s relationship to abortion attitudes using a sample of undergraduate psychology students in the United Kingdom and Amazon Mechanical Turk workers.…”