Sex Roles最新文献

This study explores the workplace experiences of Muslim women in two STEM sectors in Canada: computer sciences and engineering sciences. Through qualitative semi-structured interviews with 17 Muslim women and drawing on theories of inequality regimes and intersectionality, this paper investigates the barriers that Muslim women face to fit into the organizational cultures within the computer and engineering fields due to their intersectional identities and how they respond to perceived barriers. Results revealed that most participants felt excluded from both formal and informal interactions. Their technical abilities were often questioned by non-Muslim, white male colleagues, leading to feelings of alienation and difficulty establishing trust and deeper connections. The visibility of their religious identity, particularly through the wearing of headscarves, intensified these challenges due to intersectional stereotypes. Additionally, balancing work and home responsibilities emerged as a significant barrier, as extended work hours and traditional religious gender roles, which prioritize childcare and household duties, hindered career progression. In response, participants employed strategies of confrontation and negotiation to navigate these workplace barriers. This research contributes to the gender and organizational literature by highlighting the specific challenges Muslim women face in STEM fields in Canada and underscores the need for inclusive policies that address these intersectional obstacles.

Women are still underrepresented at the top levels of organizations across Europe and the United States. Scholars have identified obstacles that hinder women’s climb to the top but have overlooked women’s perceptions of job advertisements for top-level positions as a potential barrier to top-level positions. The present study investigated the effects of meta-stereotyped person requirements (positive vs. negative) and their wording (dispositional vs. behavioral) in job ads for top-level executive positions on female candidates’ application intention, as well as the mediating effect of job attractiveness. An experimental field study in a large, Western European governmental organization (N_{main study} = 432 female officers), preceded by a pilot study (verbal protocol analysis; N_pilot = 19 female executives) showed that compared to positively meta-stereotyped person requirements, negatively meta-stereotyped person requirements reduced female candidates’ attraction to a job and, in turn, their intention to apply for top-level executive positions. The way person requirements were worded in job ads (i.e., in a behavioral versus dispositional way) also affected women’s perceived job attractiveness, yet this depended on the type of requirement. Implications are considered for drafting job ads to encourage more qualified female candidates to apply.

Gender inequalities are pervasive across various life domains, yet research has often overlooked how people perceive that women are treated differently than men. To fill this gap, we developed and validated the 16-item multidimensional Social Treatment and Experiences of Women (STEW) scale across different samples of women and different cultural contexts, namely Italy and the UK N = 1,195). Using exploratory (Study 1, N = 703) and confirmatory (Study 2, N = 550; Study 3a, N = 132; Study 4, N = 201; Study 5, N = 233) factor analysis, we identified four dimensions: workplace inequalities, domestic imbalance, harassment towards women, and social expectations. Studies 3a and 3b (N = 96) demonstrated convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity of the STEW, linking the STEW’s subscales to group-based emotions, reported experiences of sexism, attitudes towards affirmative action, and attitudes towards women’s sexual freedom. Replicating the factor structure in the UK, Study 4 found the STEW explained unique variance in group-based emotions and intergroup attitudes beyond personal experiences of sexism. Last, Study 5 showed that the STEW explains unique variance in collective action intentions and feminist identification beyond people’s attitudes towards gender equality. Highlighting the importance of conceiving gender inequalities as a multifaceted issue, the STEW provides a robust tool for assessing perceptions of differential treatment of women across domains and can inform more comprehensive interventions promoting gender equality.

Process-based consent conceives of sexual consent as a process whereby individuals are continuously considering and have concern for their sexual partner’s willingness to continue engaging in sexual behavior without coercion. The current study used cross-sectional survey data and hierarchical linear regression to examine the independent and interactive effects of sex-related alcohol use attitudes, hostility toward women, and peer support for abuse on college men’s process-based consent (N = 463; M age = 19; 93% heterosexual; 64% White, non-Hispanic). Findings revealed significant main effects of all three primary study variables on process-based consent beliefs and behaviors while controlling for fraternity membership, relationship status, and sexual history. A significant three-way interaction indicated that permissive sex-related alcohol use attitudes may inhibit process-based consent among college men with higher levels of hostility toward women who also believe their peers hold rape-supportive attitudes. These findings indicate that education around consent is necessary but may not be sufficient for preventing sexual violence. Interventions developed with and delivered by peer leaders that challenge harmful peer group norms about sex-related alcohol use and the mistreatment of women may create a social environment with more favorable conditions for changing individual college men’s beliefs and behaviors.

The current study tests the implications of men’s and women’s gender-related attitudes for relationship quality and wellbeing. We apply ambivalent sexism theory to differentiate between attitudes that should have detrimental versus beneficial effects for relationships by promoting antagonism (hostile sexism) versus complimentary relational roles (benevolent sexism) between men and women. Actor-partner interdependence analyses of heterosexual couples participating in a nationally representative panel study (N = 755) revealed that men’s hostile sexism predicted greater relationship conflict and lower relationship satisfaction, which in turn were associated with greater psychological distress and lower wellbeing for both men and their women partners. In contrast, men’s benevolent sexism predicted lower relationship conflict and greater satisfaction, which in turn was associated with lower distress and greater wellbeing for men but not women partners. Women’s sexist attitudes had differential effects. Women’s hostile sexism predicted lower relationship conflict and greater satisfaction, which was associated with higher wellbeing for men partners. In contrast, women’s benevolent sexism predicted greater relationship conflict, which related to greater distress and lower wellbeing for women and men partners. These results highlight the importance of gender-related attitudes on relationship quality, which has important implications for wellbeing.

Male victimhood ideology, the belief that men are the primary targets of gender discrimination, has gained traction among young men in recent years, but the underlying sources of these sentiments remain understudied. Utilizing four different datasets, collected in 2015, 2018, 2020, and 2023 from representative samples of Korean men, this study investigates whether identification with male victimhood ideology is explained by objective economic hardships faced by men or by their perceptions of a status loss. The economic hardship perspective finds little support, as men who were less educated, had lower incomes, were unemployed, or had non-regular employment were no more likely to identify with male victimhood than their more economically stable counterparts. Instead, a perceived decline in socioeconomic status relative to one’s parents emerged as a significant predictor of male victimhood ideology, particularly among men from middle to upper class backgrounds. Additional analyses show that this pattern is not observed among Korean women of the same age group. Overall, the analysis of the four datasets consistently shows that male victimhood discourse is embraced most by those who perceive a loss of privilege, rather than by those who are marginalized.

Use of highly visual social media has been shown to be detrimental to body image when containing idealized and unrealistic images, such as “fitspiration” content portraying thin and toned bodies. More recently, social media content that is labelled “body positive” portrays more diverse body shapes and preaches body acceptance and has been shown to improve women’s body image. To date, little is known about the comparative effects of this content on body image when delivered in written versus image form, or how body positive content may influence body image in men. The present study examined the relative effects of body positive and fitspiration quotes and images on body image among women and men, with images selected to target the respective beauty ideals ascribed to women (e.g., thin, toned, small bodies) and men (e.g., hypermuscular bodies). A total of 509 women and 489 men, aged 18–25, were recruited for an online study where they viewed one of five sets of images that targeted the respective beauty ideals for their gender: (1) fitspiration images, (2) fitspiration quotes, (3) body positive images, (4) body positive quotes, or (5) travel images; and completed pre- and post-exposure measures of state appearance satisfaction, body appreciation, appearance comparison, and appearance aspirations. Findings revealed more negative effects of fitspiration images on appearance satisfaction and body appreciation compared to all other conditions, which was true for both women and men. Further, appearance comparison did not emerge as a mediator of these effects, but partial support emerged for the role of appearance aspirations. Discussion centers on the potentially stronger effects of body positive images compared to written content and potential reasons why this was the case for both women and men. The need for more research on the promotion of positive body image in men is considered.

Ambivalent homoprejudice theory posits that homoprejudice manifests as hostile and benevolent beliefs that negatively impact LGBTQIA + -identifying individuals. Extensive research has been conducted on the adverse impact of homoprejudice on gay men, both in general and in workplace contexts. However, there has been minimal research on how ambivalent homoprejudice affects lesbian women in the workplace. A significant challenge in this line of research is the absence of a validated scale to measure ambivalent homoprejudice attitudes towards lesbian women. Therefore, in this series of two studies, we developed and provided psychometric support for the Ambivalent Homoprejudice Toward Lesbian Women at Work Scale (AHW-L). Study 1 (N = 266) established the dimensionality of the scale and provided initial evidence of both reliability and validity. Study 2 was conducted to confirm the structure found in Study 1 in a new sample (N = 204) and provided further evidence of reliability and validity. The final validated scale can be used by organizations to identify prejudice in their organization and support the development of targeted interventions. The aim of this scale is to promote and facilitate rigorous research on the workplace experiences of lesbian women.

Black women in the United States experience sexual harassment and violence at rates much higher than do White women, suffering greater psychological and physical harm. We examined how White Racial Identity, race of the female victim, and characteristics of the perpetrator combine to influence White Americans’ willingness to respond in a supportive way toward the sexual harassment complainant (i.e., allyship). White US participants (N = 419) completed a racial identity measure and read about a White male supervisor’s alleged workplace sexual harassment (with violence) of a Black or White female subordinate. The supervisor was portrayed with characteristics to elicit perceptions of high or low supervisor benevolence. As hypothesized and consistent with the aversive racism framework, for the Black complainant only, in the high (but not low) supervisor benevolence condition, stronger White racial identity predicted markedly lower intervention intentions and less supervisor-directed punishment. The effects were mediated by lower perceived complainant suffering. These findings offer insights into the complex dynamics influencing allyship, making White Americans more aware of the factors that may subtly shape their willingness to intervene and offer support for Black women who are victims of interracial sexual harassment, as well informing the development of interventions to produce more equitable treatment of Black women in the workplace.

Sexual consent communication can be ambiguous when people rely on nonverbal, implicit cues. This ambiguity can lead to the reliance of contextual information to assess whether a sexual encounter was consensual, both in the moment and retrospectively. The current study examined how level of alcohol consumption, relationship type, and evaluator gender influenced the extent to which various sexual encounters were seen as consensual. Participants read a series of vignettes in which sexual consent was verbally granted, verbally rejected, or inferred using nonverbal cues. The vignettes also manipulated the amount of alcohol consumed by the target of the sexual advances (i.e., sober, tipsy, or intoxicated) as well as the relationship between the dyads (i.e., dating or strangers). Generally, male participants were more likely to interpret all encounters as more consensual. Encounters in which the target was intoxicated were more likely to be interpreted as nonconsensual, but instances when targets were described as tipsy (i.e., she consumed two or less alcoholic beverages) were seen as more consensual than sober encounters. The relationship between the dyads also influenced these perceptions. This work can inform educational efforts geared toward alcohol and sexual consent.