Men who feel like they are in a disadvantaged position are more likely to endorse sexist attitudes towards women, according to new research published in Psychology of Women Quarterly. The new research provides evidence of a causal relationship between feelings of personal deprivation among men and hostile sexism towards women.
The new study was based on ambivalent sexism theory, which holds that sexism can have both hostile (overtly negative) and benevolent (apparently positive) aspects, and that both forms of sexism can coexist in a single individual or society. It suggests that individuals who hold sexist beliefs might also simultaneously hold positive attitudes towards women, which can make sexism more insidious and difficult to challenge.
“Hostile sexism acts as a barrier to gender equality,” explained study author Xijing Wang, an assistant professor at City University of Hong Kong.
“Hostile sexism describes a blatant and explicit form of sexism, openly showing hostility or even hatred toward women to preserve men’s dominance over women (Glick & Fiske, 1996). Unfortunately, women experience hostile sexism frequently. For example, incels (members of an online subculture consisting of mainly heterosexual men) engage in behaviors such as posting violent misogynistic content online, endorsing and celebrating violence against women, and even mass murdering.”
“To reduce gender inequality, immediate solutions that naturally come to people’s minds are those that pull women out of their disadvantaged positions and/or focus on empowering them, such as giving girls access to education, demanding equal pay for equal work, and speaking out against misogynistic behavior.”
“We wanted to examine men’s perspective and, in particular, by understanding men’s perception of their experience and environment and see if this can also potentially promotes gender equality,” Wang said. “Therefore, we focused on personal relative deprivation of men, a prevalent experience in people’s lives, such as not having a romantic partner, suffering from repeated rejections by others, and experiencing inferiority in financial status.”
The researchers carried out a series of five studies to investigate the relationship between perceptions of relative deprivation and sexism.
The first study, which included 329 heterosexual Chinese participants, found that relative deprivation was positively associated with hostile sexism among men but not women. In other words, men who agreed with statements such as “I think my development is restricted compared to others” were more likely to endorse sexist attitudes towards women. In their second study, the researchers replicate the findings in a sample of 269 heterosexual participants from the United States. In both studies, relative deprivation was unrelated to the endorsement of benevolent sexism.
Next, Wang and her colleagues examined whether a sense of control (or the lack thereof) could help explain the relationship between perceptions of relative deprivation and hostile sexism. Their third study, which included 284 heterosexual American men, found that heightened feelings of deprivation were associated with a reduced sense of control, which in turn was linked to hostile sexism.
Study 4 confirmed the results of Study 3 by using a different method to measure sexism. Rather than completing a sexism questionnaire, the participants were asked to choose between two options for advice to give to a male friend having trouble with his girlfriend, with one option conveying hostile sexism and the other being neutral.
In the final study, the researchers conducted an experiment to test whether the observed relationship between relative deprivation and hostile sexism was causal in nature.
Two hundred heterosexual Chinese men were asked to filled out a short survey about their income. They were then randomly assigned to one of two conditions. The participants in the deprivation condition were told that their disposable income was 73.82% lower than the average for people with a similar background, while those in the control condition were told that their disposable income was 6.21% higher than the average for people with a similar background.
The researchers found that men in the deprivation condition were more likely to endorse hostile sexism against women compared to men in the control condition, providing evidence of a causal relationship.
“We showed that personal relative deprivation can be predictive of and result in men’s hostile sexism toward women,” Wang told PsyPost. “In other words, men can utilize hostile sexism as a way to compensate for individual inadequacy when women are not the source of their feeling of deprivation. This is particularly alarming because prior research has shown that although women are more likely to face bias and discrimination, men are more likely to feel deprived than women.”
The study, “Personal Relative Deprivation Increases Men’s (but Not Women’s) Hostile Sexism: The Mediating Role of Sense of Control“, was authored by Fei Teng, Xijing Wang, Yi’an Li, Yue Zhang, and Qiao Lei.
