‘Congratulations for your day’: benevolent attitudes during March 8 in Mexico

ABSTRACT

Sexist attitudes reinforce gender inequality, but, are they absent on Women’s Day? This research examines the extent to which, in some contexts, Women’s Day can activate sexist attitudes that reinforce structural inequalities between men and women. Based on ambivalent sexism theory, we propose that people are more likely to agree with benevolent sexist attitudes on Women’s Day than on any other day. In Study 1 (N=190) we measured sexist attitudes on Women’s Day and then one month later. We found that participants asked on Women’s Day reported more benevolent sexism than participants asked a month later. Benevolent sexism was stronger on Women’s Day for men (who scored higher for both hostile and benevolent sexism than women). In order to establish causality, in Study 2 (N=175) we used an experimental paradigm in which we made Women’s Day more salient (against the control condition). Results showed that participants assigned to the Women’s Day experimental condition indicated more support for benevolent sexist attitudes than those assigned to the control condition and again (men scored higher on both dimensions of sexism across both conditions). This research provides evidence of the potential unintended effects of International Women’s Day and the challenges that women still face.

KEYWORDS:

• Ambivalent sexism
• benevolent sexism
• hostile sexism
• gender inequality
• women’s day

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the No funding.

Notes on contributors

Angélica Quiroga-Garza

Angelica Quiroga-Garza, PsyD, is a Licensed Psychologist and Senior Associate Professor in the Psychology School at Universidad de Monterrey, Mexico. She is certified in Human Systems Consulting. Her research interests include personal and psychosocial factors associated with psychological wellbeing in order to design intervention programmes with social impacts; personal and social resources that promote peaceful coexistence having conducted interventions to develop resources for vulnerable populations such as the victims/survivors of child abuse, domestic violence, bullying and gender violence. Quiroga-Garza was the principal investigator of this research, developing the research proposal and the first draft of the manuscript. She was involved in the recruitment of participants and data acquisition.

Eva Moreno-Bella

Eva Moreno Bella is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Social Psychology, University of Granada, Spain. Her research interests include economic inequality; specifically the examination of the effects of economic inequality on stereotyped individuals (agency/communion, masculinity/femininity). Additionally, she is interested in economic threats and social class (SES) and in collective behaviour and political psychology. She was involved in this study in data analysis, developing the results section and critically revising the manuscript.

Juan A. Matamoros-Lima

Juan Antonio Matamoros is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Social Psychology, University of Granada, Spain. He graduated in Psychology from the University of Jaén, Spain, with academic stays at the Adolfo Ibáñez University in Chile and the University of Granada. He has a Master’s in Social Problems: direction and management of social programs from the University of Granada with a research stay at Universidad de Monterrey, Mexico. He was involved in the recruitment of subjects here and data acquisition as well as in critically revising the manuscript.

Guillermo B. Willis

Dr. Guillermo Byrd Willis Sánchez, PhD. is a Professor in the Department of Social Psychology at the University of Granada, the university where he obtained his doctorate in 2009. In his research, he examines the psychosocial causes and consequences of inequality is a scientific staff member at Granada University. He developed the research proposal here and critically revised the manuscript.