TY - JOUR
T1 - Excuse Me - What Did You Just Say?!
T2 - Women's Public and Private Responses to Sexist Remarks
AU - Swim, Janet K.
AU - Hyers, Lauri L.
N1 - Funding Information:
Support for this study came, in part, from an internal grant from the College of Liberal Arts, Pennsylvania State University. We thank Laurie Cohen for her comments on an earlier version of this paper and the following individuals for their help in conducting the studies and coding materials: Robert Alt, Jennifer Aynardi, Carolann Conforti, John Dimakopoulos, Stephen Dolan, Susan Dvorkin, Candice Graef, Michell Hall, Cindy Horn, Susan Horvath, Gregory Kelch, Amy Klein, Lisa Levinson, Debbie Miller, Carla McCulty, Kathleen Murphy, Dania Pazakis, Chris Price, and Kari Shaeffer. Portions of the research were presented at the Joint European Association for Experimental Social Psychology and Society for Experimental Social Psychology conference in Washington, DC and at the Empire State Social Psychology conference in New York and the American Psychological Society conference in Washington, DC.
Copyright:
Copyright 2017 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 1999/1
Y1 - 1999/1
N2 - Two studies illustrate women's struggle between their desire to challenge sexism and the social pressures and costs that lead to not publicly responding. In Study 1, 45% of the women confronted a man who made a sexist remark and only 15% did so directly. Confronting was most likely to be chosen by women actively committed to fighting sexism in their daily lives. Private responses illustrate that a lack of responding was not necessarily indicative of complacency about the remarks or a lack of thoughts about confronting. The results from Studies 1 and 2 reveal that diffusion of responsibility, normative pressures to not respond, social pressures to be polite, and concern about retaliation likely suppressed responding.
AB - Two studies illustrate women's struggle between their desire to challenge sexism and the social pressures and costs that lead to not publicly responding. In Study 1, 45% of the women confronted a man who made a sexist remark and only 15% did so directly. Confronting was most likely to be chosen by women actively committed to fighting sexism in their daily lives. Private responses illustrate that a lack of responding was not necessarily indicative of complacency about the remarks or a lack of thoughts about confronting. The results from Studies 1 and 2 reveal that diffusion of responsibility, normative pressures to not respond, social pressures to be polite, and concern about retaliation likely suppressed responding.
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U2 - 10.1006/jesp.1998.1370
DO - 10.1006/jesp.1998.1370
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0033475912
SN - 0022-1031
VL - 35
SP - 68
EP - 88
JO - Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
JF - Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
IS - 1
ER -