Often, discussions of sexism focus on violent examples of misogyny (hostile sexism). Its counterpart, benevolent sexism, however, can be just as damaging.
Many people think of sexism only in its most extreme examples – calling women a variety of gender-based slurs, abusing or raping women, the murder of women by current or former partners. Benevolent sexism often slides under the radar because it is seen as less damaging and less violent, but it is the existence of benevolent sexism that helps create the foundation for hostile sexism to be expressed and acted upon.
What is Benevolent Sexism?
One article from the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology defines benevolent sexism like this:
A set of interrelated attitudes toward women that are sexist in terms of viewing women stereotypically and in restricted roles but that are subjectively positive in feeling tone (for the perceiver) and also tend to elicit behaviors typically categorized as prosocial (e.g., helping) or intimacy-seeking (e.g., self-disclosure). ….Benevolent sexism is not necessarily experienced as benevolent by the receiver.
That is, benevolent sexism is a term used to describe a specific set of attitudes an individual holds about women that they regard as positive but that end up still applying stereotypes to women, and to which women may react negatively.
To understand the simple difference between hostile sexism and benevolent sexism, consider the following. A hostile sexist statement is when a woman is told to “get back in the kitchen and make me a sandwich.” A benevolent sexist statement is when a woman is told, “You can handle the cooking and cleaning; women are naturally better caregivers.” The language that shapes each statement is wildly different, but the end result is the same: women are positioned as subservient.
Benevolent sexism is the type of sexism that insists women fare less well in tech environments because they are more suited to empathetic and nurturing work – while it casts women positively, as excelling in offering emotional support, for example, it positions men as superior logical thinkers and better suited to, almost universally, challenging and high-paying roles. Women are prosocial and so are perennially cast in supporting roles. Women are good at empathy and so cannot be logical or engage in complex mathematics. Everyone from a random argumentative man on Twitter to the president of Harvard might be found to harbor these ideas about women and think nothing of them.
Many aspects of benevolent sexism are presented as a type of female privilege. Women are seen as more caring, better communicators, in touch with their feelings, and capable of facilitating intimacy and progress. (Men, in contrast, are presented as logical, unemotional, and incapable of being in touch with their feelings – this kind of toxicity was addressed in another article). People who hold benevolently sexist attitudes often feel that they are treating women like queens or goddesses and see their beliefs as positive. The positioning of women as treasure, however, is itself limiting; only certain women are seen as worthy of being made idols, and they are usually thin, white, straight, cisgender, and conventionally attractive.
Benevolent sexism is also deeply connected to certain attitudes about paternalism and chivalry, such as the idea that women shouldn’t carry things, open doors, or engage in manual labor. These tasks are often positioned as a “man’s duty,” and women experience everything from being scolded for doing them to having things physically removed from their hands so that a man can step in. Picture the internet stereotype of a fedora-clad man greeting a woman as “M’lady.” Women are reduced to being seen as physically weak and incompetent under the guise of performing traditional masculine and feminine roles.
So What’s the Problem?
Note that none of the attitudes about women – nurturing, empathetic, etc. – are themselves bad, and many women are amazing facilitators, carers, and the like. The issue, however, is that seeing these traits as monolithic and gender-based creates impossible standards for people of all genders and places unfair limitations on those who don’t meet them, as well as those who do. Being nurturing is not an inherently womanly trait, but it has been cast as one because it benefits patriarchal expectations of women to do so.
Benevolent sexism, at first glance, may seem harmless. Positive beliefs about women’s roles, after all, represent that the person holding those beliefs has a tendency to think they think well of women. That in itself is not the problem – the problem is what limitations those beliefs place on women and how benevolent sexism responds to being challenged. When that happens, hostile sexist beliefs about women are often raised immediately.
Take, for example, the idea that women are good nurturers and better at child-rearing than men. For women who do not have any desire to raise children and are not good nurturers, the stereotype is inapplicable – instead of shifting the perception of women to include a variety of personalities, however, benevolent sexism would insist that there is something “wrong” with that individual woman. Women are nurturing; she is not nurturing; therefore, she is incorrect.
This poor logic then leads to things like the stigma associated with women who wish to remain child-free and anger at women who do not properly fill the expected nurturing role in a variety of social situations. Additionally, these beliefs about women result in women taking on a disproportionate amount of the childcare labor while stereotyping men as incompetent parents. Women’s role as “nurturers” is intended to keep women tied to domestic labor and used as a cudgel against those who believe that such labor is unequally applied and should be compensated.
Benevolent sexist stereotypes are also used to limit women’s opportunities personally, professionally, and romantically by prescribing a set of idealized but narrow roles women are expected to meet. If women are seen as quiet and unassuming, a brash and assertive woman is an anomaly who is often treated as hostile or abrasive rather than forthright. If benevolent sexism sees women as facilitators and helpers, a woman who wants to take on a leadership position will be seen as a “ball-buster” or overstepping her proper role.
The true core of benevolent sexist beliefs rests on a dichotomy: “good” women meet the standards of benevolent sexism, and “bad” women do not. Women who try to conform to the precepts of benevolent sexism receive limited rewards and protection from the effects of hostile sexism – but if they choose to step outside those limitations, they will quickly discover that the pedestal they were placed on was standing in quicksand.
The problem with benevolent sexism is its insistence that a woman’s worth to society is externally applied, usually by men. Benevolent sexism requires women to take on subservient positions, often in ways that are directly beneficial to maintaining injustices in the form of unequal access to rights and resources while also keeping men in positions of power. The standards of benevolent sexism are used as both a reward and a stick – the attitudes inherent in benevolent sexism quickly become hostile to women who challenge those stereotypes.
Using Benevolent Sexism to Control Women
Benevolent sexism is not usually seen as sexist by those who hold those attitudes, but that does not make them any less controlling or harmful. Often, men who exhibit benevolent sexist beliefs also hold a variety of hostile sexist beliefs, which they are more likely to employ in the face of challenges to their idealized beliefs about women.
The combination of hostile and benevolent sexism is a dangerous combination and one that is used to define many of the limiting beliefs about women we see reflected in media, employment, and everyday conversation. The end goal of each is to maintain existing power structures and keep women in their place. While benevolent sexism has a better foothold in society, it is no less harmful than its hostile counterpart.
