Overt, covert, and subtle sexism: A comparison between the attitudes toward women and modern sexism scales

The Attitudes Toward Women Scale (AWS) is routinely used as a general measure of sexism. In this article, it is argued that the AWS (Spence, Helmreich, & Stapp, 1973) actually measures overt or blatant sexism (harmful and unequal treatment of women that is intentional, visible, and unambiguous), whereas the Modern Sexism Scale (MS) measures covert or subtle forms of sexism (sexism that is either hidden and clan-destine or unnoticed because it is built into cultural and societal norms). Support for this distinction is shown by way of (a) confirmatory factor analyses, (b) correlations with affective reactions to different categories of women and men (i.e., women and men in general, traditional women and men, feminists, and chauvinists), and (c) correlations with perceptions of sexual harassment. These analyses indicate that the AWS and MS scales measure distinct but related constructs.