Contending with Catcalling: The Role of System-justifying Beliefs and Ambivalent Sexism in Predicting Women’s Coping Experiences with (and Men’s Attributions for) Stranger Harassment

Abstract

The alarming frequency with which women face stranger harassment (i.e., catcalling) calls for further understanding of how they cope with it, and the present research sought to examine coping strategies within the context of system justification theory (Jost and Banaji 1994). We explored whether women’s strategies (Study 1) and men’s prescriptive strategies (Study 2) for coping with stranger harassment were associated with system-justifying motives. Study 1 (N = 143) revealed that system justifying ideologies positively predicted the degree to which women made benign attributions for stranger harassment experiences. Additionally, we found that self-esteem negatively predicted both: (a) women’s benign attributions for stranger harassment and (b) women’s propensity to engage in self-blame following stranger harassment encounters. Study 2 (N = 117) found that ambivalent attitudes toward women (i.e., benevolent and hostile sexism) differentially predicted the degree to which men believed that women should engage in active coping; hostile sexism negatively predicted active coping, while benevolent sexism positively predicted it. Hostile sexism also positively predicted the degree to which men believed that women should make benign attributions, blame themselves, and employ passive coping strategies when harassed by strangers. These results suggest that the ways in which women cope with stranger harassment (and the way that men felt that a stranger harassment victim should cope with her encounter) tended to result from their status quo-legitimizing ideologies about gender relations.