Are Sexist Attitudes and Gender Stereotypes Linked? A Critical Feminist Approach With a Spanish Sample

Rubén García-Sánchez; Carmen Almendros; Begoña Aramayona; María Jesús Martín; María Soria-Oliver; Jorge S López; José Manuel Martínez

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02410

Are Sexist Attitudes and Gender Stereotypes Linked? A Critical Feminist Approach With a Spanish Sample

Front Psychol. 2019 Oct 24:10:2410. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02410. eCollection 2019.

Authors

Rubén García-Sánchez¹, Carmen Almendros², Begoña Aramayona¹, María Jesús Martín¹, María Soria-Oliver³, Jorge S López⁴, José Manuel Martínez¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Social Psychology and Methodology, Autonomous University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain.
² Department of Biological and Health Psychology, Autonomous University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain.
³ Faculty of Health Sciences, International University of La Rioja, Logroño, Spain.
⁴ Department of Psychology and Pedagogy, Public University of Navarre, Pamplona, Spain.

Abstract

This study aims to verify the psychometric properties of the Spanish versions of the Social Roles Questionnaire (SRQ; Baber and Tucker, 2006), Modern Sexism Scale (MS), and Old-Fashioned Sexism Scale (OFS; Swim et al., 1995; Swim and Cohen, 1997). Enough support was found to maintain the original factor structure of all instruments in their Spanish version. Differences between men and women in the scores are commented on, mainly because certain sexist attitudes have been overcome with greater success in the current Spanish society, while other issues, such as distribution of power in organizational hierarchies or distribution of tasks in the household, where traditional unequal positions are still maintained. In all cases, it was found that men showed greater support for sexist attitudes. The correlations between the three instruments were as expected in assessing sexist attitudes that tend to relate to each other. Eventually, we found no empirical evidence for the postulated link between sexist attitudes and traditional gender stereotypes. Our results call for the validity and effectiveness of the classic theories of gender psychology, such as gender schema theories (Bem, 1981; Markus et al., 1982) and the notion of a gender belief system (Deaux and Kite, 1987; Kite, 2001).

Keywords: Spanish men and women; gender stereotype; invariance; psychometric properties; sexism.