Implicit Sexism Research Articles

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

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.

Understanding period poverty and stigma: Highlighting the need for improved public health initiatives and provider awareness

Period poverty affects millions of people who menstruate, but there is limited research to fully understand the scope and impact. Societal stigmas and cultural taboos negatively affect menstruation, a natural, biologic process. When unable to afford or find appropriate menstrual products, individuals may resort to alternative, poorer quality items, which increase their risk of infections. In addition, lack of products may cause individuals to miss events and have negative emotions. Implicit sexism and gender inequality are notable through the high cost of essential period products. Uncomfortable environments prevent patients from openly discussing menstruation with health care providers, who may lack training to competently assess needs and address barriers. Period poverty is a public health issue that not only needs to be addressed by our health care providers but also through increased education in schools and changes in local and federal legislation. In this paper, we discuss the financial, physical, and mental health impacts of period poverty and describe our experience creating a period pantry at a free medical clinic.

Overcoming hurdles of gender and race: seasoned U.S. practitioners reflect on their career progressions in journalism and public relations

ABSTRACT This study gives voice to US women who overcame the challenges of their gender or race and had to switch jobs or industries to achieve success in the journalism and public relations professions. A feminist theoretical approach was adopted to conduct in-depth qualitative interviews with 18 racially diverse journalists and public relations practitioners over the age of 50 who reflected on their professional mobility in different stages of their careers and in different organizational settings. Regardless of the industry and type of organization, women shared firsthand experiences of gender inequalities in pay and career progressions, double standards in physical appearance, and subtle sexism. Minority journalists and public relations practitioners reported instances of subtle racial inequalities and gendered racism. Women who switched from journalism to public relations found more flexibility in the workplace but did not necessarily improve their job security. Participants’ accounts underscored the need for recruiting, retaining, training, and empowering employees of diverse genders, races, ethnicities, and ages and addressing implicit sexism and implicit racism in all communication industries. This research also calls for improved industry standards that allow older women, especially women of color, to have more opportunities for leadership and professional development.

Motherhood Penalty: The Expansion of Gender-Based Inequality in the Fertility Aspects

Despite many years of campaigns fighting for womens rights, there is still a tremendous gap in realizing gender equality. In particular, the issue of fertility, which was a matter of benefit to the whole family and society, has increasingly become a severe social problem that highlights or exacerbates gender inequality. An item called motherhood penalty has been widely discussed in academia in recent years. It represents a issue that womens rights are damaged severely once they become mothers. Especially in the economic aspect, women face losses, having a difficulty in finding a job, promotion, and salary increases. Although having children enriches our society economically, women suffer financial consequences for doing so. Employers are less likely to recruit them than those without children. Even if they do, they often pay them a much less salary than men. Contrarily, men not only do not experience financial losses as a result of having children, but they also receive benefits known as the Fatherhood Premium by academics. It is not difficult to find that implicit sexism is implicit in fertility problems, and it is more prominent in the economic aspect. This study seeks to find the underlying mechanism and ways to solve the problem.

Understanding Electability: The Effects of Implicit and Explicit Sexism on Candidate Perceptions

ABSTRACT During US electoral campaigns, arguments about “electability” are frequently leveled against candidates. For instance, voters may use strategic discrimination where they hesitate to support women candidates and candidates of color because they perceive others will discriminate against them, decreasing their electability. In this article, we seek to better understand the concept of perceived electability by assessing how voters’ implicit and explicit attitudes about gender influence their candidate preferences. To do this, we conduct a survey experiment with a nationally representative sample (n = 745) from the United States that incorporates an original measure of implicit sexism.

The Effect of Gender Psychology Courses on Sexism: A Prospective Study

Today, research are continued to be conducted to deal with the issues of sexism and discrimination in all layers of social life. In the studies conducted with mental health experts within the literature in the literature, it is understood that mental health experts do not have sufficient knowledge on this subject. This study, which aims to inform undergraduate psychology students on the issue of sexism, seeks to investigate the effect of the course specifically prepared to reduce sexism taken by the students during a semester. Participants were chosen from undergraduate psychology students, and it is a cross-sectional study. A sociodemographic form and The Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (ASI) were applied to the participants. 35 students participated in the research, the research was conducted with the pre-test and the post-test. A certain amount of difference has been observed between the scores of the pre-education and post-education hostile and benevolent sexism of all participants. (p<0.001). Moreover, while there was no relationship between students' attendance and hostile sexism scores, students who regularly attended the course had a decrease in their implicit sexism score (p<0.05). According to the results of the research, it was seen that the gender equality course changed the sexist attitudes of undergraduate psychology students positively. Furthermore, similar studies on sexism and discrimination have provided much scientific data on this issue. The government and the public sector should aim to reach larger masses by using this scientific data to advance its interventions on this issue in Turkey.

Sexism on display: The image of women politicians through the prism of journalistic discourse

From 1960s onwards sexist language intended to denigrate, objectify and trivialize women has been seriously exposed internationally and huge efforts were made to replace it with gender-neutral language. However, to date, sexism has not been fully suppressed and it is especially conspicuous in relation to women who assume active roles in public life. This study has both qualitative and quantitative design and looks into the presence of overt and implicit sexism (as categorized by Mills, 2008) in journalistic discourse and the role of sexist language in molding the image of modern day women politicians. For the purposes of this study, we conduct a critical discourse analysis of a corpus of 40 news articles published on various online news portals and electronic platforms of traditional media. All analyzed articles comment on the political statements and actions of two Macedonian female politicians currently in office – the Minister of Defense and the Mayor of the city of Skopje. The findings suggest that Macedonian journalistic discourse, under the pretext that politicians’ dealings need to be monitored closely, scrutinized and even criticized, still leaves the door slightly open for both overt and implicit sexist linguistic forms, which, in turn, depicts female politicians as ill-suited for this type of professional occupation.

Hostile, Benevolent, Implicit: How Different Shades of Sexism Impact Gendered Policy Attitudes

Advances in gender equality and progressive policies are often stymied by cultural sexist systems and individual-level sexist attitudes. These attitudes are pervasive but vary in type—from benevolent to hostile and implicit to explicit. Understanding the types of sexism and their foundations are important for identifying connections to specific social and political attitudes and behaviors. The current study examines the impact of various manifestations of sexism on attitudes regarding policies and public opinion issues that involve gender equality or have gendered implications. More specifically, we look at attitudes on reproductive rights, support for the #MeToo Movement, equal pay, and paid leave policies. In Study 1 we use data from a high-quality web panel (n = 1,400) to look at the relationship between hostile, benevolent, and implicit sexism, and reproductive rights attitudes, as well as support for the #MeToo Movement. In Study 2 we use data from the American National Election Study (n = 4,270) to examine the relationship between hostile and modern sexism and attitudes on abortion, equal pay, and paid family leave. Overall, these results reveal a complicated relationship between different conceptualizations of sexism and gendered attitudes, underscoring the need to consider how different forms of sexism shape broader social and political views, from both a normative perspective for societal change and a measurement approach for research precision.

Intellectual Vices as Implicit Attitudes

The article analyzes an important concept of contemporary virtue epistemology – the concept of intellectual vice, that is a trait of intellectual character that hinders responsible research. The purpose of this article is to formulate a hypothesis that, today, in the modern culture, a significant part of epistemic vices are implicit attitudes. The first part of the article explores the concept of implicit attitude, examines examples of implicit attitudes that have become widespread in the research literature: implicit sexism and racism. The second part of the article shows that in cases of implicitly biased behavior there is a manifestation of epistemic vice, and that the “motivational” theory based on Zagzebski’s ideas cannot explain the manifestation of intellectual vice in cases of implicit bias. In the third section of the article, it is demonstrated that implicit attitudes can be traits of the agent’s character (like moral vices that are not recognized by the subject herself): they can be acquired, rooted in the personality, and can be corrected. The fourth paragraph of the article analyses the conditions under which intellectual vices can be explicit attitudes. It is possible if the agent is a diabolical being (guided by evil as a goal), has egoistic vices (applies different criteria of vice to himself and to others), or is irrational. In the final section, it is shown that the spread of critical thinking in modern society should lead to the transition of intellectual vices from explicit attitudes to implicit ones. The conclusion is made about the theoretical and practical significance of the hypothesis under discussion. From a theoretical point of view, it allows us to explain why intellectual vices are widespread and difficult to eradicate, to place vices as character traits between the local (situational) and global levels, to apply to the concept of epistemic vice all the research concerning implicit attitudes, to develop a theory of epistemic responsibility. In practical terms, this hypothesis can be used to analyze the manifestations of implicit vices in various spheres.

Gender, language and prejudice: Implicit sexism in the discourse of Boris Johnson

AbstractWhile linguistic prejudice is commonly understood to concern individuals or social groups because of the way they speak, we can also see it as damaging language usedaboutindividuals or social groups. In this article, I start by looking at the traditional sociolinguistic understanding of linguistic prejudice, then go on to look rather widely at various forms of prejudicial/sexist language aboutwomen. In doing so, I identify various lexical asymmetries and associated “lexical gaps”. The main part of the article takes this further by exploring how certain insults to men draw on an understood prejudice again women. I illustrate this with a “telling case”: three naturally occurring examples of prejudicial, sexist language recently used by British prime minister Boris Johnson:big girl’s blouse,man upandgirly swot. For all three to work, they draw on what we might call a discourse of “Women as ineffectual”. I conclude with a discussion of intentionality as regards this sort of prejudicial language use, what it is intended to achieve and how it can be resisted.

Ready for Hillary?: Explicit and Implicit Sexism in the 2016 Presidential Election

AbstractThe 2016 nomination of Hillary Clinton as the first female major party nominee for president created an unprecedented opportunity to test for evidence of explicit sexism in the electorate. Presidential elections normally produce two equally matched nominees with impressive public service resumes who behave similarly on the campaign trail. However, while Democrats were making history nominating the first female nominee, the Republicans also made history by selecting a nominee with no public service experience, a controversial personal background, and conduct that conflicted sharply with traditional norms of presidential candidates. In survey after survey, voters recognized that Clinton held a significant qualification advantage over Donald Trump. Yet, despite the fact that both men and women were more likely to rate Clinton as more qualified than her opponent overall, using an innovative approach via an original survey, we find evidence of implicit sexism in the way that some males evaluated Clinton compared to their female counterparts.

The generalizability of gender bias: Testing the effects of contextual, explicit, and implicit sexism on labor arbitration decisions.

Decades of social-psychological research show that gender bias can result from features of the social context and from individual-level psychological predispositions. Do these sources of bias impact legal decisions, which are frequently made by people subject to factors that have been proposed to reduce bias (training and accountability)? To answer the question, we examined the potential for 3 major social-psychological theories of gender bias (role-congruity theory, ambivalent sexism, and implicit bias) to predict outcomes of labor arbitration decisions. In the first study, undergraduate students and professional arbitrators made decisions about 2 mock arbitration cases in which the gender of the employee-grievants was experimentally manipulated. Student participants' decisions showed the predicted gender bias, whereas the decisions of experienced professionals did not. Individual-level attitudes did not predict the extent of the observed bias and accountability did not attenuate it. In the second study, arbitrators' explicit and implicit gender attitudes were significant predictors of their decisions in published cases. The laboratory and field results suggest that context, expertise, and implicit and explicit attitudes are relevant to legal decision-making, but that laboratory experiments alone may not fully capture the nature of their effect on legal professionals' decisions in real cases.

SPEP Co-director's Address: Progress, Philosophical and Otherwise

SPEP Co-director's Address: Progress, Philosophical and Otherwise

Supplemental Material for The Generalizability of Gender Bias: Testing the Effects of Contextual, Explicit, and Implicit Sexism on Labor Arbitration Decisions

Supplemental Material for The Generalizability of Gender Bias: Testing the Effects of Contextual, Explicit, and Implicit Sexism on Labor Arbitration Decisions

The Generalizability of Gender Bias: Testing the Effects of Contextual, Explicit, and Implicit Sexism on Labor Arbitration Decisions

Decades of social-psychological research show that gender bias can result from features of the social context and from individual-level psychological predispositions. Do these sources of bias impact legal decisions, which are frequently made by people subject to factors that have been proposed to reduce bias (training and accountability)? To answer the question, we examined the potential for three major social-psychological theories of gender bias (role-congruity theory, ambivalent sexism, and implicit bias) to predict outcomes of labor arbitration decisions. In the first study, undergraduate students and professional arbitrators made decisions about two mock arbitration cases in which the gender of the employee-grievants was experimentally manipulated. Student participants' decisions showed the predicted gender bias, whereas the decisions of experienced professionals did not. Individual-level attitudes did not predict the extent of the observed bias and accountability did not attenuate it. In the second study, arbitrators’ explicit and implicit gender attitudes were significant predictors of their decisions in published cases. The laboratory and field results suggest that context, expertise, and implicit and explicit attitudes are relevant to legal decision-making, but that laboratory experiments alone may not fully capture the nature of their effect on legal professionals’ decisions in real cases.

Graphing the order of the sexes: Constructing, recalling, interpreting, and putting the self in gender difference graphs.

Graphs seem to connote facts more than words or tables do. Consequently, they seem unlikely places to spot implicit sexism at work. Yet, in 6 studies (N = 741), women and men constructed (Study 1) and recalled (Study 2) gender difference graphs with men's data first, and graphed powerful groups (Study 3) and individuals (Study 4) ahead of weaker ones. Participants who interpreted graph order as evidence of author "bias" inferred that the author graphed his or her own gender group first (Study 5). Women's, but not men's, preferences to graph men first were mitigated when participants graphed a difference between themselves and an opposite-sex friend prior to graphing gender differences (Study 6). Graph production and comprehension are affected by beliefs and suppositions about the groups represented in graphs to a greater degree than cognitive models of graph comprehension or realist models of scientific thinking have yet acknowledged.