The not so subtle and status quo maintaining nature of everyday sexism

Within and across cultures, sexism derives from cultural beliefs about the superiority of one sex and predicts gender inequity. Given the persistent and striking gender inequalities across nations, the goal of this chapter is to elaborate the relation among blatant and subtle sexism, ideology, sexual violence, men's dominance over women, and patriarchal inequities. Toward that end, we review social psychological theory and research on gender and sexism; within this context, we discuss forms of sexism and gendered ideologies at the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and intergroup level. We also focus on the important aspects of construing gender as a social identity. We then compare and contrast psychological perspectives to feminist theories, which emphasize how the gender binary defines hegemonic masculinity in contrast to women; we focus particularly attention to how women negotiate gendered roles and relations given awareness of the frequency, prevalence, and possibility of gendered and/or sexual violence. After integrating social psychological and enduring principles of radical feminist perspectives, we conclude by discussing the implications of cross-cultural perspectives and potential interventions that may combat sexism that reinforces gender inequities.