Benevolent Sexism and the Traditional Gender Role Ideology in Argentina and Spain

ETCHEZAHAR, E.; PRADO GASCO, V. J.; COSTA, G.

Estocolmo

Congreso; 13th European Congress of Psychology; 2013

ECP

Undoubtedly, one of the biggest global change that has characterized the twentieth century has been the incursion of women in social, political and economic. However, role ideology remains holding traditional social inequalities between men and women (Moya, Exposito, & Padilla, 2006). According to Glick and Fiske (1996, Glick et al., 2000) ambivalent sexism theory explains how two overlapping sets of sexism beliefs coexists: hostile (eg. less intelligent, hysterical, promiscuous) and benevolent (eg. weak, sensitive, fragile). This new approach to the problem of gender bias can explain the maintenance of an ideology of unequal gender role (male breadwinner, female caregiver). The aim of this study was to evaluate whether benevolent forms of sexism are associated with an ideology of traditional gender roles in Spain and Argentina. We conducted two studies with a sample of university students from Spain (n = 253, 38% women) and Argentina (n = 361, 34% women) who responded the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (ASI), the Gender Role Ideology scale (GRI) and sociodemographic variables. The main results shows that ambivalent sexism is related with a traditional gender role ideology in both samples (Spain: r = .34, p < .01; Argentina: r = .37, p < .01). Also there were significant differences between men and women, the latter being those that obtain higher scores on the ideology of traditional gender role as ambivalent sexism.