STUDY 1: Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (Glick & Fiske, 1996)

Introduction to Ambivalent Sexism and the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory

State of Sexism in the Global World

Examples of Globally Studied Sexist Attitudes

The Indian Context
Current Trends in Society

Why is it Important to Know About Sexism?

Relevance to College-Going Students

Aim: To examine gender differences in hostile and benevolent sexism as assessed by

Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (Glick & Fiske, 1996) in a sample of college students.

Basic Concept:
Hostile, benevolent and ambivalent sexism
Ambivalent sexism is an ideology consisting of both a "hostile" and "benevolent" prejudice
toward women. Hostile sexism is an antagonistic attitude toward women, who are often
viewed as trying to control men through feminist ideology or sexual seduction. Benevolent
sexism is a chivalrous attitude toward women that feels favorable but is actually sexist
because it casts women as weak creatures in need of men's protection.
According to Professors Glick and Fiske, sexist ambivalence is the result of two basic facts
about relations between women and men: male dominance (patriarchy) and interdependence
between the sexes. Male dominance is prevalent across cultures, with men dominating high
status roles in business, government, religious institutions, and so forth. Hostile sexism arises
in large part because dominant groups tend to create hostile ideologies concerning the
inferior+ity of other groups. Even in societies where males dominate, men are often very
reliant on women as wives, mothers, and sexual partners. Dependency breeds benevolent
sexism, wherein women are seen as worth having and desirable (an emotionality rarely
found in discrimination like racism, anti-Semitism, and homophobia in which victims of
discrimination tend to be avoided or abhorred).

Hostile sexism and benevolent sexism are compatible ideologies. In a 19-nation study
published in the May, 2000, issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
responses from more than 15,000 people who completed the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory
showed that countries high in hostile sexism were invariably high in benevolent sexism. Both
hostile sexism and benevolent sexism also are substantially correlated at the individual level
- that is, scoring high on one scale tends to go with a high score on the other-but this
correlation is far from strong.
Benevolent sexism may seem chivalrous, noble or even "romantic", but its consequences can
be extremely injurious. As is the case with hostile sexism, benevolent sexism is an ideology in
support of gender inequality and can, in some ways, be even more insidious. Benevolent
justifications for discrimination are more likely to be accepted than hostile justifications
(e.g., "Women should forego a career because they excel at childcare" vs. "Women should
forego a career because they lack ability"). While women are less likely than men to accept
hostile sexism, they are more likely to endorse benevolent sexism -- especially in countries
high in hostile sexism, where male protection is most appealing. Ironically, it may be that
high levels of hostile sexism among men lead to high levels of benevolent sexism among
women.

(GIVE studies)
Susan Fiske and colleagues (2000) reported ambivalent sexism among over 15,000
participants in 19 countries from Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia, and Europe.
Although hostile and benevolent sexism were pervasive across all cultures, their mean scores
were highest for participants from Africa and Latin America, whereas they were lowest
among Northern Europeans and Australians. Again without exception, men endorsed hostile
sexism more than women. In contrast, women in about half the countries endorsed
benevolent sexism as much as or even more than men did. Thus, the more hostile sexism the
men showed, the more likely women were to embrace benevolent sexism, even to the point of
endorsing it more strongly than men. How can this be explained? The more threatening the
hostile sexism is from a society's men, the stronger the incentive for women to adopt
benevolent sexism's protective nature.

Hypotheses:

1. All factors remaining constant, male college students would endorse hostile sexism
much more than their female counterparts.
2. All factors remaining constant, female college students would endorse benevolent
sexism much more than their male counterparts.
3. All factors remaining constant, all participants would endorse benevolent sexism
much more than hostile sexism.
4. All factors remaining constant, male college students would show higher levels of
ambivalent sexism as compared to their female counterparts.

DESIGN:
The study consisted of 19 males and 19 females who were administered the ASI. All
participants were instructed to rate the items on ASI.
METHOD
Participants/Sample: The participants were undergraduate female students, living in urban
Delhi and had adequate knowledge of English. The sample size of 10 males and 10 females
was chosen (each of the researchers collected data from 2 participants: one male and one
female) through accidental sampling. The average age of the participants was 19 years.
Preliminaries of the two participants:
 Name: XYZ
 Age:
 Gender:
 Education
 SES (self reported):
 Place of Administration:
 Date of administration:

 Name: XYZ
 Age:
 Gender:
 Education
 SES (self reported):
 Place of Administration:
 Date of administration:

Measure used: Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (Glick & Fiske, 1996)

The Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (Glick & Fiske, 1996) is an instrument used to examine
both hostile and benevolent sexism toward women. The ASI was developed by Glick and
Fiske (1996) and is based on Ambivalent Sexism Theory. This measure allowed the concepts
of benevolent and hostile sexism to be measured separately. It is a 22-item self report
measure and has two subscales, consisting of 11 items each. Whereas hostile sexism is
associated with endorsement of negative stereotypes about women, benevolent sexist
attitudes are correlated with ascribing positive stereotypes to women.
1. Hostile sexism: This stems from the view that women do not possess the qualities
necessary to exercise power in legal, economic, and political domains is the hallmark of
hostile sexism. This subscale covers three categories:
 Dominative paternalism: Dominative paternalism attributes child-like qualities to
women, who are deemed to be less than fully competent adults and therefore suggests
that men should control women.
 Competitive gender differentiation: This is characterized by a belief that only men
have the necessary qualities to govern social institutions; women's domain should be
the home or private sphere.
 Heterosexual hostility: heterosexual hostility (HS) views women as sexual objects for
men's pleasure and promotes the fear of women's capacity to manipulate men by
engaging in or withholding sexual activity

2. Benevolent sexism: Benevolent sexism has its roots in women's dyadic power. Because
men typically depend on women to fulfill their needs (e.g., those involving sexual
reproduction, sexual intimacy, psychological intimacy, etc.), women possess power in dyadic
relationships. Benevolent sexism takes the form of protective attitudes toward women,
reverence for women as nurturers, and romanticized concepts of women as love objects.
 Protective paternalism: This implies that men should protect and care for women
 Complementary gender differentiation: This places importance on traditional gender
roles for women (e.g., mother & wife) and assumes that men depend on women to
fulfill these roles.
 Heterosexual intimacy: This romanticizes women as having sexual purity and views
romantic intimacy as necessary to complete a man.

The ASI is scored on a 6 point Likert scale, ranging from 0 to 5. Possible answers for items
on the ASI are as follows: 0 = disagree strongly, 1 = disagree somewhat, 2 = disagree
slightly, 3 = agree slightly, 4 = agree somewhat, 5 = agree strongly. Scoring is reversed for
the following items: 3, 6, 7, 13, 18, and 21. In order to achieve scores for each scale, items on
that scale are averaged. Scores higher than 2.5 are considered to be “relatively sexist” (Glick,
2007).
Ambivalent Sexism is scored by the average of Hostile and Benevolent Sexism scores (Glick,
2007). Ambivalent sexists are individuals who have high levels of both Hostile and
Benevolent Sexism (above 2.5 on each subscale). These individuals are likely to have
extreme reactions to women based on which attitudes are currently active (BS or HS).
The scale has norms based on over 2000 male and female participants, who were mainly
undergraduates, and two small samples of community members. Reliability was established
through analysis in six separate studies by Glick and Fiske (1996) for the total Ambivalent
Sexism Inventory and ranged from: .83 to 92. For the Hostile Sexism scale the following
range of reliabilities were found: .80 to .92. For the Benevolent Sexism scale the following
range of reliabilities were found: .73 to .85. Concurrent validity coefficients were reported to
be lying between .40s and .80s, divergent validity coefficients were .20s to .30s, construct
validity coefficients were .40s to .90s. While predictive validity coefficients ranged from .10s
to .50s for different groups.

Precautions
• Room should be well lit.
• Room should be free from any noise.
• All items should be answered.

Procedure

 Rapport formation:
 Instructions:
 Administration:

Data Analysis and Results

Interpretation and Discussion:

Conclusion:
References: