Fragile And Feminine? The Effects Of Benevolent Sexism On College Women’s Physical Activity

Abstract

Women are generally less active than men but the reasons for this gender disparity are not well understood. Benevolent sexism is a seemingly positive, covert form of sexism based on the idea that women are fragile and feminine to compliment the masculinity of men. Endorsement of benevolent sexism has been shown to have a negative impact on work and academic performance in women. Benevolent sexism may inform underlying reasons for the PA gender disparity. PURPOSE: To explore the relationship between PA and endorsement of benevolent sexism in young women. METHODS: Nineteen women (20.7±1.1 yrs.) completed the International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ) Short Form and the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (ASI). The IPAQ was scored for total weekly; minutes of moderate-to-vigorous-PA (MVPA), MET-mins., and Sitting time (ST). The ASI is a 22-item questionnaire with two subscales measuring an individual’s endorsement of benevolent and hostile sexism; the mean score (range 0-5) on the benevolent sexism items was used for analyses. Spearman correlations assessed the associations between PA outcomes and endorsement of benevolent sexism. Participants were split into tertiles for each PA outcome. Wilcoxson Rank-Sum tests and Cohen’s d assessed the differences in ASI scores between the 1st (T1) and 3rd (T3) tertile. RESULTS: MVPA and MET-mins were both negatively associated with benevolent sexism (r=-0.32, r=-0.35, respectively) but there was no association with ST (r=-0.06). There was no significant difference between endorsement of benevolent sexism between participants in T1 and T3 for MVPA (x͂ and Interquartile Range) [T1;x͂=40,IQR=55), T3;x͂=685,IQR=150, p=0.84, d=-0.1] and MET-mins [T1;x͂=300,IQR=960), T3;x͂=2680,IQR=5040), p=0.44, d=0.72]. CONCLUSION: There was a small, inverse relationship between benevolent sexism and both MVPA and MET-mins, in the hypothesized direction. Additional work needs to further explore these relationships in larger, more diverse samples.