Sexism remains an issue in society. For instance, men who endorse traditional/sexist views of women tend to earn more money (Judge & Livingston, 2008). The goal of the current study was to examine what factors predict the endorsement of traditional gender roles. One likely important factor is feminism; however, most studies examining feminism focused on how individuals felt about feminism (Spence, Helmreich, & Stapp, 1973), leaving the definition of what it means to be a feminist ambiguous. Further, there is no clear definition of what is considered a traditional gender role (TGR). This led us to develop measures of feminism and TGRs; we then examined what factors, along with feminism, best predict endorsement of TGRs. 400 participants (144 males, 256 females) completed several self-report measures, including measures of sexism, attitudes toward women, and gender roles. Exploratory factor analyses revealed four components of characteristics of feminism (positive stereotypes, family/relationship characteristics, negative stereotypes, and feminist goals) and three components of TGRs (endorsement of traditional marriage, dating, and submissive roles). Regression analyses revealed that different factors were predictive of each of the TGRs. For example, endorsement of traditional dating roles was predicted by self-identification as a feminist (β=-0.122, p=0.018), age (β=-0.102, p=0.015), the goals of feminism subscale (β=0.104, p=0.036), attitudes toward women who work (β=-.0253, p=0.000), and benevolent sexism (β=0.386, p=0.000). Future studies will validate the developed scales and further explore their relationship to gender attitudes and gendered behavior.
↧