Sexism, Role Of Power In

Sexism is a bias or prejudice based upon gender categorization that comprises beliefs (e.g., stereotypes about women and men), emotions (e.g., more negative or positive feelings toward one sex), and behavior (e.g., discriminatory hiring practices) that promote and maintain gender inequality.

As social role theory notes, gender hierarchy both fosters and, in turn, is reinforced through sexist beliefs, emotional reactions, and behavior. In societies across the globe, as a group, men tend to have more structural power than women (i.e., to dominate the most powerful positions in business, government, and other important social institutions). One of the most robust findings in prejudice research is that dominant groups promote belief systems (such as sexism and racism) that justify and perpetuate their dominance (e.g., by portraying members of a subordinated group as incompetent and therefore unsuited to wield power). Sexism is an example of this general rule.

Because sexist stereotypes serve to justify a gendered division of labor, they are not only [Page 599]descriptive (expectations about what men and women are typically like), but prescriptive (exhortations about how men and women ideally ought to be). This prescriptive element drives a system of social rewards and punishments that help to shunt men and women into roles that reinforce gender hierarchy.

Although rooted in a gendered division of formal roles, sexist beliefs and practices also diffuse into unstructured social interaction. Because men are more readily associated with status and strength, whereas women are associated with deference and weakness, daily social interactions favor men's exercise of power and promote distaste for powerful women. Thus, men are more likely than women to emerge spontaneously as leaders among peers, both because men are more likely to elicit deference and because dominance is more socially acceptable when exhibited by men. In contrast, women who enact a high-power style are disliked and devalued, a phenomenon known as the backlash effect.

Power relations between the sexes (and, consequently, the nature of sexism), however, are complicated by the degree to which the sexes are intimately interdependent due to heterosexual attraction and reproduction. Although women are an oppressed group, they have frequent and intimate interaction with men. Further, women's roles as objects of men's sexual and romantic longings, as wives, and as mothers of men's children, makes women indispensable in most men's eyes and can lend women indirect power through their close relationships with men.

Due to intimate interdependence, power differences between the sexes are justified, in part, through an idealization of women who enact social roles that serve men's needs (e.g., homemakers). Although sexism is popularly viewed as being overtly hostile toward women, subjectively favorable sexist beliefs, emotions, and behaviors toward women also act to promote male dominance by reinforcing a division of labor that cedes structural power to men and confines women to low-status roles. Such “benevolent sexism” represents an often overlooked aspect of how male power is maintained. Viewed as harmless or even desirable by many women (as well as men), benevolent sexism punctures women's resistance to inequality by promising men's protection, affection, and provision if women accept conventional female roles. Endorsement of benevolent (as well as hostile) sexism is associated with greater gender inequality in cross-national comparisons (e.g., a more unequal ratio of men vs. women in high-power positions in business and government).

...