Both men and women hold pro-female rather than anti-female attitudes.
Evidence
Conceptualizing sexism as antipathy did not prepare researchers for the (originally shocking) finding that men and women alike tend to report favorable beliefs about and attitudes toward “the fairer sex.” In their initial demonstration of the women are wonderful effect, Eagly and Mladinic (1989) found that people viewed women as nicer, more supportive, and interpersonally sensitive, compared with men – in a word, more communal (see also Eagly & Diekman, ch. 2 this volume). As a result, people reported liking women more than they liked men. That is, female communality beliefs were associated with pro-female bias. This was shocking because it suggested the prevalence of reverse sexism – a phenomenon that has been supported even when researchers use implicit methods that do not rely on asking people for their preferences (Rudman & Goodwin, 2004). — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 761
Categorization
Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims
- XREF: Relates to the benevolent sexism concept and the broader ‘prejudice is not only antipathy’ theme from the introduction of Allport’s book.
Related
- People report liking women more than men because women are seen as more communal (similarity 0.93)
- Prejudice toward women includes positive beliefs, not just antipathy (similarity 0.87)
- Hostile and benevolent sexism positively correlate in all cultures studied. (similarity 0.84)
- Positive group attitudes can coexist with pervasive discrimination against that group (similarity 0.84)
- Women receive positive evaluations yet remain targets of discrimination (similarity 0.84)
- Benevolent sexism blocks women’s advancement despite appearing favorable. (similarity 0.83)
- Women participate in benevolent sexism as strongly as men do (similarity 0.83)
- Some prejudices involve positive affect combined with low respect (similarity 0.82)
- Sexism challenges defining prejudice as antipathy (similarity 0.82)
- Prejudice takes benevolent paternalistic forms that disadvantage groups without antipathy (similarity 0.82)
- Hostile and benevolent sexism target different subtypes of women. (similarity 0.82)
- Benevolent and hostile sexism positively correlate worldwide (similarity 0.81)
- Benevolent sexism praises women within patriarchally defined roles (similarity 0.81)
- Female targets of discrimination are nonetheless liked more than men (similarity 0.80)
- Prejudice flourishes even without overt antipathy toward its targets (similarity 0.80)