In the office or at the gym: The impact of confronting sexism in specific contexts on support for confrontation and perceptions of others

ABSTRACT

The current research investigated support for confronting a sexist comment and how responses in a work or social setting by a target or witness can influence actor perceptions. Across three studies, we demonstrated that although most people supported confrontation by a female target, she was evaluated less positively when confronting than passive, especially in a social versus professional context. In contrast, a male witness was evaluated more positively when confronting than passive, regardless of context. Notably, perceptions of the perpetrator of the comment were only influenced by the target’s response: with less positive evaluations when the target was confronting than passive, especially in the office. These findings contribute to understanding which responses and environments foster confrontation and reduce backlash.

KEYWORDS:

• Confronting
• sexism
• intergroup relations
• social perception

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Notes

1. Information about participant exclusions for each experiment are described in the supplementary material.

2. For exploratory purposes, participants in all studies were also asked what they expected the actors to say and why.

3. The only effect of gender in Study 1 was a main effect on expectations for confrontation by the target. Women (93%) compared to men (84%) expected the target to confront more often, B(1, N = 242) = 0.95, W = 4.69, p =.030, 95% CI [1.10, 6.15].

4. In Studies 2 and 3, perceptions of the offensiveness and typicality of each actor’s behavior were also examined. Due to word limitations, analyses related to these items were included in the supplemental materials.

5. In initial analyses, a main effect of gender was found on evaluations of the actors, F(1, 207) = 12.38, p =.001, η² = 0.06, with women (M = 3.95, SD = 1.02) evaluating the actors less positively than men (M = 4.38, SD = 1.06). A main effect of gender was found for support for both target and witness confrontation. In particular, women (80%) indicated that a female target should confront more than men (68%), B(1, N = 215) = −0.97, W = 7.61, p =.006, 95% CI [0.19, 0.76]. Similarly, women (78%) indicated that a male witness should confront more than men (46%), B(1, N = 215) = −1.50, W = 23.37, p <.001, 95% CI [0.12, 0.41].

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada; an Ontario Graduate Scholarship to Elysia Vaccarino; and Canada Foundation for Innovation.