GENDER STEREOTYPES AND SEXISM

Gender Stereotypes and Sexism

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In the contemporary world, when males occupy the roles of being house-husbands or

when females become CEOs, they are evaluated with prejudice. This is due to the pervasiveness

of gender stereotyping which evidently affects how we perceive and assess others, in contrast to

how we perceive those who are in congruent to such stereotypes. Blaine & Brenchley (2018)

implied that gender stereotypes and sexism, more often than not, harms women than it harms the

other sex i.e., these are “focused heavily on attitudes and beliefs about women” and “have the

potential to be more discriminatory.” To conceptualize stereotypes, they are oversimplified

pictures of the world which are used to satisfy our need to see the world as more predictable and

understandable than it truly is (Lippmann, 1922 as cited in Kincaid, 2017). Thus, gender

stereotypes are oversimplified and overgeneralized perceptions of what constitutes “maleness”

and “femaleness” i.e., what are men and women like and what traits and behaviors are to expect

of them. On the other hand, sexism is defined as “individuals' attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors,

and organizational, institutional, and cultural practices that either reflect negative evaluations of

individuals based on their gender or support unequal status of women and men” (Swim & Hyers,

2017). Like gender stereotyping, sexism is mostly antifemale (as represented by most

psychological research on sexism), but it is important to note that both men and women

experience sexism.

This paper will present a discussion of the individual impact of gender stereotypes and

sexism to the lives of people in the society while anchoring psychological aspect of the same

therein.

The integration of gender stereotypes can be traced back since childhood. After knowing

the gender of the child during pregnancy, gendering first happens in buying clothes or from the

gifts received for the child e.g., blue onesies and truck toys for boys and pink onesies and bows

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for girls which progresses after birth in the toys they are encouraged to play with. Gendering

continues through communication that suggests that boys are though, strong etc. and girls are

delicate and sweet among others. From these as people get older, the negative and positive

components of psychological masculinity and femininity are identified such as men’s positive

traits include but not limited to: independence, self-confidence, and competitiveness while

examples of negative traits of men are egotism, cynicism, and arrogance. In comparison,

women’s positive traits include helpfulness, gentleness, and warmness to others; examples of

negative traits of women are spinelessness, servility, and gullibility (Spence, Helmreich, &

Holohan, 1979 as cited in Blaine & Brenchley, 2018). Gendering, as children grows, also

happens outside of homes, within friend groups, in school, and other similar spaces.

In another pragmatic aspect, gender stereotypes are learned socially i.e., through

interaction with others, advertisements, and social media wherein linguistic, contextual, and

sexual gender stereotypes are demonstrated.

The stereotype content model suggests that group stereotypes and interpersonal

impressions trickle down to two dimensions, warmth and competence and tend to take two

forms, paternalistic and envious stereotypes. Paternalistic stereotypes portray subgroups as warm

but not competent whereas envious stereotypes portray its converse (Eckes, 2002). Fiske (2010

as cited in Blaine and Brenchley, 2018) stated that in paternalistic stereotypes, women are liked

but not respected, and in envious stereotypes, women are respected but not liked. Thus, by

correlating Eckes and Fiske, likeness is anchored with warmth and respect is anchored with

competence.

Gender stereotyping becomes problematic, if it is not already is, when gender bias is

associated therewith. Gender bias simply is, “the tendency to value men and masculine traits

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over women and feminine traits” (Blaine & Brenchley, 2018). The reason why gender bias does

not swing to valuing women and feminine traits over their counterparts is, as stated by Blaine

and Brenchley, maleness is more positively valued than the other i.e., it is brought by culture that

independence is valued over dependence, logic over intuition and emotionality, and assertiveness

over interpersonal sensitivity among others. This is where the concept of glass ceiling comes in─

the barrier that presents the female demographic (as applied typically) to rise beyond a particular

hierarchy in society. To expound, Cabeza, Johnson, & Tyner (2011 as cited in Özgümüs,

Trautmann, Rau, & König-Kersting, 2020) the side-issue of maternity leaves, being an

underlying reason of glass ceiling effects, is an example of an important contributor to career

breaks and glass ceiling effects. It can be inferred that this phenomenon, among others, is a

residue of alpha bias which was prevalent when societies were very patriarchal as evidenced by

past centuries, and consequently, the same influenced Freud’s theories (Harper, 2019). While it

is true that females are held to higher competence standards when they are in gender stereotype-

inconsistent jobs, Tabassum & Nayak (2021) claim, nevertheless, that gender stereotypes

promote gender prejudice and discrimination even at the advent of provision of equal

opportunities in workplaces. Tabassum & Nayak also cited Gardiner & Tiggemann (1999) who

state that “women continue to experience high levels of pressure from their jobs, and they have

been found to experience high levels of mental ill-health when they utilize an interpersonally

oriented leadership style in male-dominated industries.”

Sexism, as being birthed by ambivalent attitude toward women (e.g., viewing them either

as warm but not competent or as competent but not warm) or to be more distinct, ambivalent

sexism as developed by Peter Glick and Susan Fiske in the late 1990s, has two components:

benevolent sexism and hostile sexism. Benevolent sexism is a set of paternal and caring attitudes

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while hostile sexism is a set of aggressive and mistrusting attitudes towards women. To elaborate

these components, benevolent sexism is best thought as a set of beliefs that categorize women as

fair, innocent, caring, pure, and fragile. Even if benevolent sexism is not overtly misogynistic

and seemingly positive, the attitudes that constitute the same can be dangerous and damaging for

women i.e., their rights and their safety. On the other hand, hostile sexism, as implied, more

openly misogynistic than the other i.e., it is a set of beliefs that categorize women as

manipulative, angry, and seeking to control men through seduction. This component represents

significant and overtly danger to women due to its characteristics e.g., perceiving gender equality

as an attack to the male gender and suppressing the movement of feminism among others (Glick

& Fiske, 1996). Thus, ambivalent sexism, as the term and its discussion imply, is a set of

attitudes towards women that are seemingly both positive and negative.

Under the discussion of gender differences, it is implied that because of gender

stereotypes, people can acknowledge perceived differences and actual differences which both

shape people’s general assumptions about men and women. Ridgeway & Smith-Lovin (1996)

affirm that gender differences can arise out of social interaction through cognitive sex

categorization of interaction partners wherein people automatically sex categorize any person

they interact with. This categorization diffuse gender stereotypes as people shape their behavior

towards their interaction partners. Eagly & Wood (2016) state that the social role theory, which

“pertains to sex differences and similarities in social behavior,” suggests that gender similarities

and differences arise out of social roles, primarily from the distribution of men and women into

their roles in their society.

A great deal of research has shown the negative impacts of gender stereotypes and sexism

towards women especially when ambivalent stereotypes and sexism are not easily recognized as

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discriminatory i.e., because they are seemed as positive. Harms include the exposure of the same

to women in the workplace which can prevent them from being offered high-status opportunities

among others and to combat them, the origins, factors, and effects of them must be recognized.

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References

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