Women are praised only when they stay in traditional roles

Evidence

These findings are compatible with Glick and Fiske’s (1996) demonstrations that people often hold benevolently sexist beliefs that describe women favorably in the implicit context of the traditional female roles that are inherent in patriarchal arrangements. Even though Allport acknowledged that dictionary definitions recognize positive as well as negative prejudice (p. 6), he disallowed positive sentiments as relevant to his understanding of prejudice and confined his analysis to prejudice as antipathy. — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 184 (#expands, via linked claim)

The clearest challenge to the traditional analysis of prejudice derives from research on sexism, a topic that Allport neglected. Sexism researchers have since documented that women elicit predominantly positive sentiments but are often targets of prejudice. Initial explanations for sex discrimination rested upon the belief that attitudes toward women were negative (see Rudman, ch. 7 this volume), but empirical examination of evaluations of women and men as social groups showed positive attitudes toward women (see review by Eagly & Mladinic, 1994), deriving especially from the communal qualities that people associate with women (e.g., warm, friendly, sensitive). The evaluative edge of women over men appears on standard attitude measures, such as evaluative thermometer ratings or semantic differential ratings of women as a social group, and has been dubbed the women-are-wonderful effect (Eagly & Mladinic, 1994). — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 183 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Women who wielded feudal power were admired only by imitating male cruelty — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 207; Female power only earns honor once it is explicitly abdicated. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 368; Tech women’s success is dismissed as appearance-driven rather than earned — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 707 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Benevolent sexism praises women within patriarchally defined roles #expands (0.92) — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 184
• People evaluate women more positively than men overall despite sex discrimination. #complicates (0.85)
• Women receive positive evaluations yet remain targets of discrimination #complicates (0.78) — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 183