Hostile sexism and Benevolent sexism: ambivalent sexism

The concept of “ambivalent sexism” is a theory advanced by Glick and Fiske in 1996 (1). Ambivalent sexism has two distinct but related aspects: the hostile sexism and the benevolent sexism.

Hostile sexism is sexism as you understand it traditionally: hostility toward women, such ideas as “a woman is unable to create”, “a woman is not made to work.”

Benevolent sexism is more subtle: it’s more the idea that men must be gallant and protective with the weak women. It also ideas like “women should be treated like princesses” or “we love women, we need them”. This paternalistic view is consistent with the concept of “gender complementarity”, in which men are described as having characteristics that women are lacking, and vice versa.

The two kinds of sexism promote gender inequality and traditional gender roles, because they imply that female sex is the weaker one.

Benevolent sexism, behind its friendly façade, is very dangerous because it is not easily identifiable, as suggested by experiments in psychology (2). Even worse, some studies indicate that women exposed to benevolent sexism obtain lower scores on cognitive testing, than in view of a hostile or neutral speech (3). Thus it would be more efficient for dominant groups to maintain social inequalities through the kindness that the hostility.

Studies have shown that hostile sexism and benevolent sexism are correlated, i.e in countries where the average level of hostile sexism is high, the level of benevolent sexism is also high (4;5), suggesting that, even if these two forms of sexism are different, they are intimately connected.

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