Relationships of modern sexism and misogyny to feminist attitudes and engagement in China

Abstract

According to previous research, sexism is associated with feminist attitudes in Western nations. The current study examined whether implicit sexism (i.e., modern sexism) is related to feminist nonsupport, and in turn, to low feminist activity engagement intention in Chinese population. Furthermore, we investigated whether the association between modern sexism/feminist nonsupport and engagement intention is exacerbated by individual's entrenched and overt prejudices against women (i.e., misogyny). One hundred and sixty-nine cisgender women and two hundred and eighty-six cisgender men completed measures of modern sexism, feminist attitudes, misogyny, and a self-adapted feminist activity engagement intention scale. The mediating role of feminist attitudes on the association between modern sexism and feminist activity engagement intention, and whether the paths were moderated by misogyny were tested via a latent moderated mediation model. Feminist attitudes significantly mediated the association between modern sexism and feminist activity engagement intention. For men, the association between feminist support and engagement was stronger when individuals endorsed lower levels of misogyny. These findings highlight the determinative/overwhelming role of misogyny on feminist activity engagement intention. Reducing misogyny is one of the prerequisite conditions of promoting feminist activity engagement intention via enhancing feminist attitudes.