Counting on you: benevolent sexism increases women’s financial risk-taking

ABSTRACT

The present research examined whether and how benevolent sexism, a subjectively positive but sexist ideology, would influence women’s financial risk-taking and we proposed that benevolent sexism would increase women’s financial risk-taking through economic dependency. Three studies converged to support our proposition. Specifically, Studies 1 and 2 (n = 387) showed that benevolent sexism was positively associated with women’s financial risk-taking; such that the more benevolent sexism women endorsed, the more financial risks they tended to take. Using an experimental design, Study 3 (n = 126) established the causal link between benevolent sexism and financial risk-taking for women, and also demonstrated the mediating effect of economic dependency. These findings highlight the role of social ideology in influencing women’s financial risk-taking. Implications were discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Benevolent sexism
• financial dependency
• risk-taking

Data availability statement

The data described in this article are openly available in the Open Science Framework at https://doi.org/doi.org/10.17632/jb9y489nvm.1.

Open scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badges for Open Data and Open Materials through Open Practices Disclosure. The data and materials are openly accessible at https://doi.org/doi.org/10.17632/jb9y489nvm.1.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Data analyses revealed that SES (indexed by participants’ annual income of family in our studies) wasn’t significantly associated with financial risk-taking in Study 1, r = .01, p = .87. In Study 2, we used Modified Kuppuswamy scale to measure SES (Singh et al., 2017) and found that SES was positively associated with financial risk-taking, r = .16, p = .04. However, after controlling for SES, benevolent sexism still positively predicted financial risk-taking, b = .41, SE = .06, t = 7.35, p < .001. Using the same scale as Study 2 to measure SES, Study 3 revealed non-significant correlation between SES and financial risk taking (i.e., rs < .04, ps >.70).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Fei Teng

Fei Teng Fei Teng received a PhD in Psychology from the University of Hong Kong, China. She is now associate professor of Psychology at South China Normal University. Her research interests include sexism, stereotype, objectification, money and materialism.

Yizhen Miao

Yizhen Miao Yizhen Miao received a Master in Psychology from South China Normal University, China. She is now a psychology teacher in Bichong Primary School, Foshan, China

Wanrong Cheng

Wanrong Cheng Wanrong Cheng is now undertaking a Master in Psychology in South China Normal University, China.

Xishan Huang

Xishan Huang Xishan Huang received a PhD in Psychology from South China Normal University, China. She is now associate professor of Psychology at South China Normal University. Her research interests include intimate relationship and parent-child relationship.