BENEVOLENT SEXISM: AN ASPECT OF GENDER INEQUALITY

BY- HARSHITA ARORA

If something sounds really nice, it cannot be sexist, right?

Getting compliments isn’t a bad thing, is it? it makes you feel noticed, yet there are many comments that, while seemingly complimentary, somehow feel wrong. In social psychology, these seemingly positive yet still somewhat unsettling comments and behaviors have a name: Benevolent Sexism.

What is Benevolent Sexism?

In 1996, Peter Glick and Susan Fiske wrote a paper on the concept of ambivalent sexism, noting that despite common beliefs, there are actually two different kinds of sexist attitudes and behavior. Hostile sexism and Benevolent sexism.

Hostile sexism is normally what comes in people’s mind when they hear “sexism” i.e., overtly negative evaluations and stereotypes about a gender for e.g., the ideas that women are incompetent and inferior to men. But what doesn’t occur in people’s mind is Benevolent sexism which represents evaluations of gender that may appear subjectively positive, but are actually damaging to people and gender equality more broadly for e.g., the ideas that women need to be protected by men. For the most part, psychologists have studied hostile forms of sexism.

Glick and Fiske assert that hostile and benevolent sexism complement each other in reinforcing traditional gender roles and preserving patriarchal social structures of women as subordinate to men. Sexism is founded in conceptualizations of one gender as being superior or having higher status than the other gender in a particular domain, which can lead to discrimination. Research has indicated that stereotypes about socially appropriate gender roles for women and men are a driving factor in the endorsement of sexism. Patriarchy, defined as men’s power and “structural control over political, legal, economic, and religious institutions”, is a feature of sexism and is related to hostile attitudes toward women.
Anthropological research suggests that patriarchy is pervasive among the majority of human societies, such that women have been systematically discriminated against, oppressed, and marginalized by men throughout history. Sexism maintains patriarchal social structures and reinforces prescribed gender roles.

Hostile sexism reflects misogyny i.e., the hatred of women by men, and is expressed through blatant negative evaluations of women. Examples of hostile sexism include beliefs about women as incompetent, unintelligent, overly emotional, and sexually manipulative. Benevolent sexism reflects evaluations of women that are seemingly positive. Examples of benevolently sexist attitudes include the reverence of women in wife, mother, and child caretaker roles, the romanticizing of women as objects of heterosexual affection, and the belief that men have a duty to protect women.
Because benevolently sexist attitudes appear positive, people often do not identify these beliefs as a form of gender-based prejudice. Social and cultural norms may encourage benevolently sexist beliefs among women and men. A classic illustration of this is the endorsement of modern-day chivalry in interactions between women and men. It can be considered traditional and polite for a man to insist that he holds a door open or carries a heavy object for a woman. However, this tradition is founded in historical representations of women as weaker than men. In these types of circumstances, people may find it difficult to distinguish between kindness, tradition, and benevolent sexism. Men and women often disagree on whether or not a specific incident should be considered sexist.

Let’s see how some comments that we hear in our everyday life are a part of benevolent sexism.

1. “Women Have Motherly Nurturing Instincts.“
In an article for Fortune, leadership expert Liz Wiseman explains that the “Mama Bear” persona some women politicians have latched onto not only promotes gender stereotypes but also can lead to ineffective leadership. Any stereotype in the workplace or politics, Wiseman points out, can be flipped to women’s disadvantage. If women tell their coworkers that women get things done while men are all talk, for example, they may be more likely to put men in public roles involving oration while women get stuck with administrative tasks.

2. “Women Are More Compassionate.”
The Dalai Lama has been praised for saying that there should be more women leaders because women are more compassionate. However, such statements only express conditional support for gender equality. How would the Dalai Lama feel about a woman leader who does not fit that stereotype? Viewing women as more compassionate and gentle and men as more aggressive can penalize women who are assertive, leading people to deem them “bossy” or “too harsh.” Expectations for women to have a more soft-spoken, accommodating leadership style can lead people to criticize women who don’t adopt it.

3. “Women Are Neater.”
I feel ashamed to let others see my room in a state that many men’s room have been in. This is because women are supposed to be neat and clean and generally good around the household, while men are supposedly slobs and should be forgiven for it because boys will be boys. This belief system is dangerous because it leaves women stuck with chores while men use their own supposed incompetence to buck them. The same idea also applies to our appearances, with women feeling pressure to constantly look put together where men’s sloppiness is not preferable but still excused.

And the list continues, all of these comments can somehow feel both nice and wrong at the same time. It might sound like a compliment, but it still counts as sexism.

Why is benevolent sexism a problem?

If benevolently sexist comments seem like nothing more than compliments, why are they problematic? Is it really “sexism” if the content of the statements seems positive towards women?
Well, for one thing, benevolently sexist statements aren’t all rainbow and butterflies. They often end up implying that women are weak, sensitive creatures that need to be “protected.” While benevolent sexism may not appear to be harmful to women on the surface, these beliefs are extremely caustic to gender equity and restrict women’s personal, professional, political, and social opportunities. This is because these seemingly positive evaluations imply that women are weak and need to be protected, women should not deviate from traditional gender roles as mothers and caretakers, and women should be idolized by men for their sexual purity and availability.

As Glick and Fiske themselves note in their seminal paper:
We do not consider benevolent sexism a good thing, for despite the positive feelings it may indicate for the perceiver, its underpinnings lie in traditional stereotyping and masculine dominance (e.g., the man as the provider and woman as his dependent), and its consequences are often damaging. Benevolent sexism is not necessarily experienced as benevolent by the recipient. For example, a man’s comment to a female coworker on how ‘cute’ she looks, however well-intentioned, may undermine her feelings of being taken seriously as a professional (Glick & Fiske, 1996, p. 491-492).

In a later paper, Glick and Fiske went on to determine the extent to which 15,000 men and women across 19 different countries endorse both hostile and benevolently sexist statements. First of all, they found that hostile and benevolent sexism tend to correlate highly across nations. So, it is not the case that people who endorse hostile sexism don’t tend to endorse benevolent sexism, whereas those who endorse benevolent sexism look nothing like the “real” sexists. On the contrary, those who endorsed benevolent sexism were likely to admit that they also held explicit, hostile attitudes towards women (although one does not necessarily have to endorse these hostile attitudes in order to engage in benevolent sexism).
Secondly, they discovered that benevolent sexism was a significant predictor of nationwide gender inequality, independent of the effects of hostile sexism. In countries where the men were more likely to endorse benevolent sexism, even when controlling for hostile sexism, men also lived longer, were more educated, had higher literacy rates, made significantly more money, and actively participated in the political and economic spheres more than their female counterparts. The warm, fuzzy feelings surrounding benevolent sexism come at a cost, and that cost is often actual, objective gender equality.

To conclude, I would like to pose a question to those people who still may be tempted to argue that benevolent sexism is nothing more than an overreaction to well-intentioned compliments: What happens when there is a predominant stereotype saying that women are better stay-at-home parents than men because they are inherently more caring, maternal, and compassionate? It seems nice enough, but how does this ideology affect the woman who wants to continue to work full time after having her first child and faces judgment from her colleagues who accuse her of neglecting her child? How does it affect the man who wants to stay at home with his newborn baby, only to discover that his company doesn’t offer paternity leave because they assume that women are the better candidates to be staying at home?

At the end of the day, “good intent” is not a panacea. Benevolent sexism may very well seem like harmless flattery to many people, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t insidiously dangerous.

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