An analysis of data from the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study revealed that women who feel powerless tend to endorse benevolent sexism more strongly. When their feelings of powerlessness increase, their endorsement of benevolent sexism at a later time also tends to rise. The research was recently published in the European Journal of Social Psychology.
Sexism is the belief that one gender is inferior to the other. It manifests in various forms, including institutional sexism, where policies and laws disadvantage one gender; interpersonal sexism, involving discriminatory behavior between individuals; and internalized sexism, where individuals adopt sexist beliefs and attitudes about their own gender.
Sexism can be either hostile or benevolent. Hostile sexism is characterized by overt negativity and aggression towards individuals of a specific gender. In contrast, benevolent sexism appears positive but is based on the belief that individuals of each gender have specific roles they must perform, thus reinforcing these roles. Benevolent sexism perpetuates the idea that women are in need of care and are inherently weaker than men, while men are expected to be strong, stoic, and responsible for taking care of others. This reinforces the notion that men and women must conform to specific, restrictive roles in society.
Study author Matthew D. Hammond and his colleagues sought to investigate whether feelings of powerlessness motivate the endorsement of sexist attitudes. They hypothesized that powerless individuals might endorse sexism as a way to increase their power. Specifically, powerless men might be motivated to endorse attitudes that derogate women (i.e., hostile sexism) to elevate their perceived power over them. Conversely, powerless women might be more inclined to endorse benevolent sexism as a way to accentuate their power in relationships and secure resources by making men responsible for their care.
The researchers analyzed data from the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study, a large, longitudinal research project that began in 2009. This study is designed to track the social attitudes, personality, and values of New Zealanders over time. Participants are randomly selected from the New Zealand Electoral Roll and invited each year to complete questionnaires assessing demographics, individual differences, beliefs, and perceptions about themselves and society.
For this analysis, data were used from 58,405 participants, who, on average, completed 2.77 questionnaires over four years during which the relevant measures were collected. Of these participants, 36,944 were women. The average age of participants was 50 years at the 10th data collection wave in 2018-2019.
Among other questionnaires, participants completed assessments of hostile and benevolent sexism (using the short version of the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory) and of feelings of powerlessness (e.g., “I do not have enough power or control over important parts of my life” and “Other people have too much power or control over important parts of my life”).
In their analysis, the researchers compared associations between feelings of powerlessness and sexism at different time points—for example, the association between earlier sexism and later feelings of powerlessness, as well as the reverse. Such comparisons allow researchers to differentiate which of the studied factors is the likely cause and which is the consequence, as causes can produce effects in the future but not in the past.
The results showed that, overall, men who felt more powerless tended to display more hostile sexism. However, when the researchers examined whether changes in powerlessness in men were followed by changes in hostile sexism, no such association was found. There was no link between variations in feelings of powerlessness in men and changes in their hostile sexism over time. Men who endorsed hostile sexism also tended to endorse benevolent sexism.
For women, those who endorsed hostile sexism were also more likely to endorse benevolent sexism. Women who generally felt more powerless were more likely to endorse both hostile and benevolent sexism. However, when women’s feelings of powerlessness changed at one point, their endorsement of benevolent sexism at the following time point also tended to change. In other words, when women felt more powerless, they strengthened their endorsement of benevolent sexism, and vice versa.
“These results indicate that women may attempt to overcome feeling powerless by adhering to sexist attitudes that offer power via idealization of women’s qualities in intimate relationships. The novel evidence that women’s powerlessness motivates benevolent sexism represents a novel advance to understanding the conditions that promote women’s endorsement of attitudes that justify gender inequalities,” the study authors concluded.
The study makes an important contribution to the scientific understanding of the factors leading to the endorsement of sexism. However, it is important to note that the study was conducted solely on New Zealanders, and the results might not be identical for individuals from other cultures.
The paper, “Does powerlessness motivate men and women to endorse sexism?”, was authored by Matthew D. Hammond, Nickola C. Overall, and Chris G. Sibley.