A study on college students from eight universities has found that sexism is positively associated with ageism.
The research by Indiana University research Jill M. Chonody, which was published in the feminist journal Affilia, examined whether two types of sexism were related to two types of ageism.
Ambivalent Sexism Theory holds that sexist attitudes about women come in two main forms: a hostile version and a benevolent version. Benevolent sexism describes the belief that women are nurturing, caring and gentle, but cannot function properly without protection from a strong male partner. Hostile sexism, on the other hand, represents overt antipathy or dislike of women. Both forms of sexism maintain that women should be subordinate to men.
Similarly, ageism comes in both negative and positive forms. “Negative stereotypes include beliefs about cognitive decline, grumpiness, and lack of libido, just to name a few,” the researcher said. Positive stereotypes portray older people as cute or helpless, and promote behaviors such as speaking to older people like a child.
The study of 1,042 participants from the United States, England, and Australia found “moderate levels” of positive ageism and sexism among the students. Negative ageism, however, was relatively low. Chonody also found that benevolent sexism was endorsed slightly more than hostile sexism.
Participants who held more sexist attitudes also showed more ageist attitudes.
“While benevolent and hostile sexism were both significant in the positive ageism analysis, benevolent sexism had a larger effect,” Chonody wrote in her study. “This is of note because both benevolent sexism and positive ageism have paternalistic components highlighting an association between beliefs that women need protected and so do older people.
“Similarly, hostile sexism was associated with negative ageism, which also overlap in sentiment in that items on these scales contain negative stereotypes.”