We may also think that the concepts of gender roles and gender stereotypes are similar. However, the roles are the behaviours that every person adjusts to their characteristics and with which he or she positions himself or herself towards society, whereas gender stereotypes are attitudes towards members of either sex. In relation to gender, the fundamental roles are those of protector-and-provider for men and dependent housewife for women.
From this belief, it seems that if women cover the housewife role, during their childhood girls will be instructed to develop that role. Similarly, boys will be educated to act or play the role of provider. It is very important that these gender roles are not developed from school and that we take this into account not only during their games, but also in the examples or explanations given by the teachers.
In regard to the concept of sexism, it should be noted that while sexism has been conceptualized as a gender hostility towards women, that ignored their positive characteristics, it may also affect men. As they are expected to respond to social patterns that condition their personal development, even having to repress their feelings in order to adjust to these established models.
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Therefore, we can say that sexism refers to a set of beliefs that arise from the unequal social representation of women and men. Sexism is a gendered ideology that not only describes and determines the social roles of women and men, but also the way in which relationships between them should occur. From this perspective, sexism promotes different identities for men and women, conserving a belief system that justifies the patriarchal structure according to which women occupy an inferior position to that of men.
According to the scientific literature on the concept of sexism, there are three main types of sexism which are currently being worked with. However, if we focus on ambivalent sexism, sexism is defined as a discriminatory attitude addressed to people according to their belonging to a particular sex, under which different characteristics and behaviours are assumed. It is considered a multidimensional construct that encompasses two sets of sexist attitudes: hostile sexism and benevolent sexism.
Glick & Hilt (2000) have proposed a model to explain the development of gender bias from the theoretical framework of the Ambivalent Sexism Theory. According to these authors, during childhood hostile sexism manifests itself in a highly accentuated way, but in adulthood, this hostile prejudice evolves into a set of ambivalent attitudes towards women.
The Ambivalent Sexism Theory is based on the theoretical position of ambivalence (Katz & Hass, 1988), defining this ambivalence as the result of holding values that, in some way, are contradictory or conflicting between them. The confrontation between contradictory values produces an attitudinal duality, which generates positive and negative attitudes. On that basis, Glick & Fiske (1996) formulate their proposal of ambivalent sexism, generated by the simultaneous influence of two forms of sexist beliefs which are linked to each other in a subjective way and that lead to confronted feelings towards women, but without any conflict between them, given that ambivalent sexism is capable of finding the balance between hostile and benevolent beliefs (Glick & Fiske, 1997).
This theory displays how men create three different subtypes of women rather than two (Glick & Fiske, 1997). Firstly, they establish the group of traditional women, formed by housewives and wives, mothers and caregivers; secondly, the group of non-traditional women, formed by those women who also develop their professional careers; finally, the group of sexy women.
According to studies developed from this theoretical framework, sexist men fear non-traditional women because they threaten their power and fear sexy women as they understand that their seductive power may cause them to lose their own power. Sexy women, defined as dangerous, tempting and sensual, are the ones who receive the most hostile behaviour from sexist men. In this way, by classifying women into subtypes, men can maintain a consistent attitude, since contempt or love are clearly distributed and assigned towards the different types of women.
Hostile sexism becomes a form of punishment against non-traditional women, as they intend to put an end to traditional roles while threatening men’s power. Similarly, benevolent sexism is used to reward those traditional women who do maintain the traditional role structure, while accepting and preserving the power of men over women. From this theory it is proposed that both benevolent and hostile sexism are based on biological and social variables. This theory is articulated around three variables: paternalism, gender differentiation and heterosexuality.
In addition, sexist manifestations have harmful effects in a variety of complex ways. They usually occur towards relatives in private contexts, such as families or partners, once they accept and acquire traditional gender roles, but they also occur in broader contexts, where social and political sexist norms still remain (Ayres, Friedman, & Leaper, 2009). Because of this, those social norms generally favour and empower men.
According to Carretero (2011), sexism is directly related to violence against women, where patriarchal norms that support men’s dominant position encourage hostility towards women and even other forms of violence, such as bullying. Sexism and our attitudes towards gender roles do not appear solely in relations between men and women, they also occur in regard to other attitudes and variables, such as age, sexual orientation, religion, etc. On the other hand, attitudes form in different contexts, therefore sexism is influenced as well as it being influential towards other contexts, variables and attitudes in which each individual develops. This implies that intervention in sexism requires integration instead of stand-alone work.
