Sex Prejudice Among White Protestants: Like or Unlike Ethnic Prejudice?

Abstract

Analysis of attitudes about female participation in politics from two recent national polls reveals divergence between white Protestant prejudice toward women and white Protestant prejudice toward race and ethnic groups documented by previous research. Like ethnic prejudice, political sex prejudice is higher among white Protestants than among unaffiliated whites. Unlike ethnic prejudice, (1) persons affiliated with fundamentalist Protestant groups do not display greater sex prejudice than those affiliated with nonfundamentalist groups; (2) among the sample as a whole and among nonfundamentalists, the less religious are not more prejudiced toward women than the more religious; and (3) within fundamentalist groups the more religious exhibit higher levels of sex prejudice, an association that does not appear due to variations in localism. This divergence seems more a result of a biblical bias against women pervasive among Protestant groups (unlike the absence of biblical statements about most current race and ethnic groups) rather than of women's in-group status (unlike the usual out-group status of race and ethnic groups). Among white Protestants, the relationship of denominational affiliation and religiosity to prejudice toward blacks, Jews, and Catholics is reasonably well documented. Gorsuch and Aleshire conclude from their review of 112 studies on Christian faith and ethnic prejudice that white Protestants associated with groups possessing fundamentalist belief systems are generally more prejudiced than members of nonfundamentalist groups, with unchurched whites exhibiting the least prejudice. High religiosity, however, seems to mitigate ethnic prejudice: highly active members of both *Revision of a paper presented at the annual meeting of the Southern Sociological Society, 1978. We would like to thank the Texas Tech Secondary Analysis Research Institute for making available the data for this analysis from Roper Public Opinion Center; the Texas Tech Computer Center for use of their facilities to analyze these data; and several colleagues-Jack Balswick, Paul Chalfant, Margaret Farnworth, George Lowe, Marietta Morrissey, and Joe Ventimiglia-as well as anonymous referees for helpful comments. ? 1980 The University of North Carolina Press. 0037-7732/80/010169-85$01.70