Raising Awareness of Male Privilege

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Raising Awareness of Male Privilege Reducing
Sexism

• An Assessment of
• Course Effectiveness
• Kim A. Case, Ph.D.
• University of Houston Clear Lake

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Psychology of Women/Gender

• Feminist pedagogy values learning experiences
  that encourage critical thinking about ones own
  prejudices (hooks, 1994 Lewis, 1990).
• Instructors often design course curriculum with
  goals of
• maximizing student understanding of group
  inequality (sexism)
• decreasing students stereotypical beliefs and
  prejudiced attitudes

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Psychology of Women/Gender

• Course curriculum often includes information on
  the social construction of gender, gender roles,
  various forms of sexism
• May introduce concept of male privilege to
  educate about systematic institutional nature
  of sexism
• Instructors assume pedagogical effectiveness
  without empirical evidence

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Previous Research

• Limited pedagogical research in this area tends
  to rely on anecdotal evidence of course
  effectiveness (Sinacore Boatwright, 2005)
• record random student comments
• ask students to report their perception of how a
  class activity contributed to their learning
• Battle, 2004 Kowalski Lakey, 2004 Lawrence
  Bunch, 1996 Moradi, 2004 Tatum, 1992

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Previous Research

• Battle (2004)-
• experiential technique- students wore rainbow
  flag pin, for example, for three days to
  experience the reactions of others
• Data consisted of student comments during class
  discussion about the assignment
• Student reports of what they learned, though
  informative, included no measure of their
  understanding of group inequalities or prejudice.

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Previous Research

• Few empirical studies
• Indicate that completion of a Womens Studies
  course reduces prejudice against women
• (Bargad Hyde, 1991 Unger, 1983)
• Womens Studies students exhibit greater
  understanding of discrimination against women
  increased egalitarian beliefs than students in
  courses outside the discipline
• (Stake Hoffmann, 2001)

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Present StudyPsychology of Race Gender

• Unique course (3 sections)
• Pedagogy framework
• critical race feminism
• Course curriculum examines the social
  construction of gender, gender roles,
  institutional sexism such as media images of
  women male privilege
• Students also wrote a paper on privilege as part
  of the course requirements.

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Assessment

• This study empirically assessed the effects of
  the course on students'
• Modern Sexism
• Ambivalent Sexism
• Hostile Benevolent
• awareness of male privilege
• attitudes toward for affirmative action policies

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Hypotheses

• We predicted that completion of the course would
  result in
• increased awareness of male privilege
• a reduction in various forms of sexism
• increased support for affirmative action for
  women

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Method

• Data were collected at a state university of
  roughly 16,000 students in rural Kentucky.
• Participants
• 77 participants (female60 male17)
• 5 African American 88 White
• Students enrolled in Psychology of Race Gender
  as part of their general education requirements.

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Instruments

• All instruments consisted of 7-point Likert items
  with responses ranging from
• strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (7).
• Male Privilege Awareness
• 7-item scale
• developed from White Privilege Awareness Scale
  (Case, 2001)
• Men have privileges that women do not have in
  the U.S.
• Women are disadvantaged in society men are at
  an advantage.

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Instruments

• Affirmative Action Support
• 4-item scale
• developed from Swim and Miller (1999)
• Affirmative action causes men to lose jobs that
  should be theirs. (reverse scored)
• Modern Sexism
• 7-item scale
• (Swim, Aiken, Hall, Hunter, 1995)
• Discrimination against women is no longer a
  problem in the United States.

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Instruments

• Ambivalent Sexism
• 10 Benevolent Sexism items 12 Hostile Sexism
  items (Glick Fiske, 2001)
• Benevolent Sexism
• Women should be cherished and protected by men.
  
• Hostile Sexism
• Women seek to gain power by getting control over
  men.

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Procedure

• Surveys completed during week 1 and week 15 in
  three course sections
• T-tests repeated measures ANOVAs were used to
  assess changes in participant levels of
• Male Privilege Awareness
• Affirmative Action Support
• Modern Sexism
• Benevolent Sexism
• Hostile Sexism

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Results

• Correlations (time 1)
• Women were more aware of male privilege compared
  with men (r .23, p lt .05)
• Women reported lower levels of
• Modern Sexism (r -.31, p lt .01)
• Hostile Sexism (r -.30, p lt .01)

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Results

• Correlations (time 1)
• Male Privilege Awareness (MPA) was negatively
  correlated with
• Modern Sexism (r -.76, p lt .01)
• Hostile Sexism (r -.38, p lt .01)
• Benevolent Sexism- no correlation
• Male Privilege Awareness was positively
  correlated with support of affirmative action
  programs (r .51, p lt .01).

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Table 1 Variable Correlations (time 1)
p lt .05 p lt .01
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Course Effectiveness

• Student levels of Male Privilege Awareness
  increased significantly over the course of the
  semester from 4.7 to 5.3
• t (76) -6.70, p lt.01
• male MPA at time 2 lt female MPA at time 1
• Modern Sexism scores were significantly lower at
  the end of the course dropping from 3.0 to 2.7
• t (76) 3.97, p lt.01

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Course Effectiveness

• Support for affirmative action policies to
  benefit women increased from 5.1 to 5.4
• t (76) -2.45, p lt.05
• Hostile Sexism scores decreased from 3.6 to 3.4
  during the semester, but only approached
  significance
• t (74) 1.78, p .07
• Benevolent sexism remained consistently low and
  appeared to be unaffected by the course.

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Conclusions

• The Psychology of Race and Gender course studied
  here appears to
• increase awareness of male privilege
• reduce modern sexism and possibly hostile sexism
• increase support for affirmative action
• The findings tentatively support pedagogical
  efforts to reduce gender bias, although teaching
  methods vary tremendously across courses.

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Future Directions

• Future research should include
• data from courses that do not address gender or
  sexism for comparison
• inclusion of one course section that does not
  write a privilege paper would allow assessment of
  the impact of the paper itself
• assessment of courses impact on other forms of
  privilege (white/heterosexual)
• experimental design to measure beyond self-report
  of MPA and prejudice

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Questions??
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Contact Information

• Kim Case, Ph.D.
• Psychology Womens Studies
• caseki_at_uhcl.edu
• Office 281-283-3338
• University of Houston Clear Lake
• 2700 Bay Area Blvd, Box 35
• Houston, TX 77058

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References

• Bargad, A., Hyde, J.S. (1991). Womens studies
  A study of feminist identity development in
  women. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 15,
  181-201.
• Battle, C. L. (2004). Promoting increased
  understanding of sexual diversity through
  experiential learning. Teaching of Psychology,
  31, 118-120.
• Case, K.A. (2001, August). White privilege
  awareness, prejudice, and discrimination against
  African Americans. Poster session presented at
  the 109th annual meeting of the American
  Psychological Association, San Francisco, CA.
• Glick, P., Fiske, S.T. (2001). An ambivalent
  alliance Hostile and benevolent sexism as
  complementary justification for gender
  inequality. American Psychologist, 56, 109-118.

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• hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress
  Education as the practice of freedom. New York
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• Kowalski, R.M., Lakey, C.E. (2004). Teaching
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• Lawrence, S.M., Bunche, T. (1996). Feeling and
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• Lewis, M.G. (1990). Interrupting patriarchy
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• Moradi, B. (2004). Teaching about diversities
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• Sinacore, A.L. Boatwright, K.J. (2005). The
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• Swim, J.K., Miller, D.L. (1999). White guilt
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• Tatum, B.D. (1992). Talking about race, learning
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