Ambivalent Sexism Essay

685 Words3 Pages
Sexism is defined in our textbook as any attitude, action, or institutional structure that subordinates a person because of his or her sex. What this is basically saying is that someone who is sexist will think differently and act negatively towards the opposite sex. Sometimes an individual can be sexist towards their own sex. Most western societies have minimal sexism and more racial hostilities. In other parts of the world sexism is more prominent because males have dominant roles over women and therefore look down upon them. Not only is there sexism, but there is ambivalent sexism which is defined as sexism directed against women based on both positive and negative attitudes (hostility and benevolence) rather than uniform dislike. To better understand ambivalent sexism I took a test that would rate my hostile and ambivalent sexism. The Ambivalent sexism inventory measure how sexist you are towards men and women. My scores from this test were quite surprising to me. My hostile sexism score was 3.36 and my benevolent sexism score was 2.09. Hostile sexism involves negative feelings toward women, benevolent sexism is a knight-in-shining armor ideology that offers protection and affection to women who conform to traditional gender roles (e.g., cute girlfriend, obedient wife, etc.). These scores run on a scale of 0-5, I have a greater amount of sexism towards women than I do towards men according to my hostile sexism score. My benevolent sexism score is not necessarily negative feelings or attitudes towards women, but more of a disliking towards women that venture outside of the traditional female roles. I was not surprised that my benevolence score was low because I, myself tend to venture outside of traditional roles for my sex (having short hair, not wanting children, and looking to support myself eventually). I was, however, surprised that my ambivalence score was
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