Women’s Experiences of Benevolent Sexism in Intimate Relationships With Men Are Associated With Costs and Benefits for Personal and Relationship Wellbeing

Abstract

Women’s everyday experiences of benevolent sexism include being praised for loving men (heterosexual intimacy), praised for caregiving (complementary gender differentiation), and being overhelped (protective paternalism). We investigated women’s perceptions of partners and their wellbeing in the context of self-reported experiences of benevolent sexism in their relationships with men. Integrated data analysis on three community samples of women in Australia (total N = 724) indicated that women’s experiences of protective paternalism were associated with greater psychological distress, lower relationship satisfaction, and perceiving partners as less reliable and more patronizing and undermining. By contrast, experiencing heterosexual intimacy was associated with perceiving partners as more reliable, less patronizing and undermining, and with greater relationship satisfaction. Mixed associations emerged for experiencing complementary gender differentiation, including lower psychological distress and also lower relationship wellbeing. These findings advance understanding of the specific costs and benefits of benevolent sexism in relationships between women and men.