Ambivalent Sexism Revisited

My how tempus fugits! It is close to 20 years since we began the collaboration that led to ambivalent sexism theory and its associated measure, both reviewed in our 1997 Psychology of Women Quarterly article, “Hostile and Benevolent Sexism: Measuring Ambivalent Sexist Attitudes Toward Women” (Glick & Fiske, 1997). Please find the original article at pwq.sagepub.com/content/21/1/119. In 1992, Peter, having recently survived a tenure review, was searching for a place to spend a year-long sabbatical. From his perspective, he had the good fortune (or, with the wisdom of hindsight, perhaps we can call it prescience?) to ask Susan whether it would be possible for him to visit for a year and collaborate. Neither of us can recall whether this initial contact occurred via e- mail (which, hard to fathom, was then a rather new thing!) or the regular post. What Peter does remember was a welcoming answer, which, as a faculty member at a tiny liberal arts college in the hinterland who possessed a then relatively meager publication record, seemed remarkably generous. (Embarrassingly the only prior contact the first author remembers was when Susan, as an action editor, had sent him an article to review. Unaccustomed to receiving such an honor, he breathlessly and profusely thanked her for choosing him as a reviewer. Alas, the thrill of being asked to review has since faded—but the message to fledgling reviewers remains—act like you have done it before!) But Susan recalls another prior contact. She had come across Peter's earlier research on the gender and status dimensions of jobs (Glick, 1991) and occupational discrimination (Glick, Zion, & Nelson, 1988), which she had found extremely useful in expert testimony on gender biases in employment decisions. In those days, one often had to contact the author to obtain a reprint and that request may have constituted our first interaction, along with a subsequent bit of fan mail and gratitude from Susan to Peter for his useful and interesting work. In any event, prior contact had been minimal; little did either of us know that we would soon forge such a productive, long-term collaboration and close friendship. But once Peter's sabbatical had been arranged, the planning for joint research began, and studying sexism was our most obvious link. While brainstorming, we noted that although sexism still seemed somehow more socially acceptable (or at least less politically incorrect) than racism, gender role attitudes had shifted so that the field lacked up-to-date indicators of sexist beliefs. Peter recalls Susan making the pivotal suggestion that we should create a contemporary sexism measure. The focus on ambivalence evolved partly from the insight that perceivers have an easier time justifying prejudices if they can affirm some subjectively positive (not just negative) beliefs about another group. We were also inspired by ambivalent racism work (e.g., Gaertner & Dovidio, 1986; Katz, Wackenhut, & Hass, 1986). But we soon realized that gender relations and, therefore, sexist attitudes, differ from race relations because men and women so often lead intimately intertwined lives, whereas Blacks and Whites typically experience much less contact. Ambivalent sexism theory was incubated during a series of phone conversations, a scouting visit, and some pilot testing before Peter arrived at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (then Susan's home institution) for the 1993–1994 academic year. We had already started work on our new, theory-based measure (a year was too short to start and complete such a project). Had we known that others had already begun constructing contemporary sexism scales (including Janet Swim, with whom Peter had gone to graduate school at the University of Minnesota, and Rupert Brown, whom Susan knew from trips to Europe), we might never have pursued the course we took. In this case, ignorance was an advantage. Noticing the same gap, we veered in a complementary direction to other measures that were simultaneously in development (e.g., Modern Sexism: Swim, Aiken, Hall, & Hunter, 1995; and Neosexism: Tougas, Brown, Beaton, & Joly, 1995). That several teams were working on new measures was no accident—each perceived a need. Psychology of Women Quarterly picked up on this zeitgeist—our article appeared in a special issue, edited by Irene Hanson Frieze and Maureen McHugh, on “measuring beliefs about appropriate roles for men and women” that showcased, compared, and contrasted both established and newer measures of gender- related attitudes (McHugh & Frieze, 1997).