The present study attempted to develop a Korean Ambivalent Sexism Inventory that fitted to Korean culture, as well as to examine whether the hostile and the benevolent sexism affected the evaluation of women differently. Hostile sexism can be describe...
The present study attempted to develop a Korean Ambivalent Sexism Inventory that fitted to Korean culture, as well as to examine whether the hostile and the benevolent sexism affected the evaluation of women differently. Hostile sexism can be described as the typical antipathy toward women that are assumed to characterize sexist attitudes. Benevolent sexism on the other hand refers to the subjectively positive attitudes toward women who are in traditional gender roles, admiring these women's superiority in morality and nurturing ability but at the same time viewing women as weak who need to be protected by men. These two types of attitudes toward women are both sexist attitudes that compensate each other to maintain the existing male-dominating system.
The present study includes five studies, using survey as well as experimental methods. In Study 1, a Korean Ambivalent Sexism Inventory was developed to include 18 items that measured hostile attitudes toward women and 18 items measuring benevolent sexist attitudes. The convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity of K-ASI was confirmed using diverse samples. That is, HS-BS correlations were moderate, and the correlations between HS scores(controlling for the BS scores) with scores from various other sexism scales were moderate while the correlation between BS scores with scores obtained from these existing scales when controlling for the HS scores were low, as expected. The HS scale correlated with negative attitudes toward and stereotypes about women, and the BS scale correlated with positive attitudes toward and stereotypes about women. The results of a nation-wide survey including 1540 respondents demonstrated that males as compared to females, adults than younger students and people in Youngnam area than in other regions showed higher HS and BS scores. In Studies 2 and 3, four subgroups of females were identified using cluster analyses on the rating scores for various female groups in terms of warmth and competence: professional women, housewives, unmarried single mothers, and the volunteers who help people in trouble. The effect of hostile and benevolent sexism on the attitudes toward these female subgroups demonstrated a negative correlation of hostile sexism with negative attitudes toward all these subgroups, while positive relationship was obtained between benevolent sexism and the attitudes toward professional women, housewives and the volunteers. However, the benevolent sexism predicted negative attitudes toward the unmarried single mothers, revealing that benevolent sexism which superficially seemed to be a favorable attitudes towards women was essentially a sexist attitude. In study 4(experiment), we examined the effects of hostile and benevolent sexism on the attitudes for a female leader who was described as behaving in either a democratic or autocratic manner. The results demonstrated that people liked the democratic female leader more than the autocratic leader while they evaluated the former as being less competent than the latter. Also, hostile sexism was negatively related to the evaluation of the competence of the so called "feminine" democratic female leader as well as the overall attitudes toward and the interpersonal relations of the democratic leader. Benevolent sexism on the other hand was positively correlated with the favorable attitudes and evaluations toward the democratic female leader, as expected. Finally, Study 5 examined the perception of discrimination and attitudes toward a fictitious target who was described as behaving in a hostile- sexist manner or benevolent-sexist way. The results showed that male and female college students perceived the hostile-sexist behavior as being prejudiced toward women in a comparable degree, while males liked the hostile target more than the females. However, females perceived the benevolent- sexist behavior more as discriminating and less likable than male students.