WOMENS ATTITUDES TOWARD AFFIRMATIVE-ACTION - PUTTING ACTIONS IN CONTEXT

Although women typically favor affirmative action, they do exhibit a r ange of reactions to affirmative action programs. To understand the di versity of reactions, the present study proposed an examination of var ious forms of affirmative action in the context of the discrimination problem such actions were designed to address. In Study 1, 60 female u niversity students were presented with one of six scenarios describing a situation of discrimination against women, followed by a series of potential affirmative action response options which participants rated in terms of their level of endorsement. Analyses of variance showed t hat, despite the range of discrimination scenarios, some of which pres ented extreme cases of discrimination against women, respondents consi stently endorsed nondiscrimination measures, and opposed affirmative a ction strategies involving preferential treatment. Study 2, which pres elected 43 women who valued social equality, replicated this finding a nd found that these results were not due to women not perceiving the p resence of collective discrimination. Study 3 examined the attitudes o f women in a law and security police training stream (n = 19), whose v ulnerability to employment discrimination, both as a group and persona lly, would be salient. The women in this study endorsed all forms of a ffirmative action, including explicit preferential treatment in the hi ring of women police officers. The implications of these results for t he consideration and implementation of affirmative action programs are discussed.