Gender, authoritarianism, and attitudes toward feminism

In a 2 × 3 design, 69 men and 59 women who were high, medium, or low in authoritarianism responded to a Likert-type scale measuring attitudes toward feminism. For both gender groups, high-authoritarian respondents exhibited more antifeminist tendencies than did low-authoritarian respondents; and for each level of authoritarianism, males were less profeminist than females. When controlled for age, education, and religion, the relationship of gender and authoritarianism to attitudes toward feminism tended to persist substantially. In examining the psychosocial bases of racism and antifeminism, the paper interprets the relative contributions of gender and authoritarianism in terms of Hood and Sherif’s model of interrelating sociocultural and personality factors in the dynamics of attitudes.