OVERT, COVERT, AND SUBTLE SEXISM - A COMPARISON BETWEEN THE ATTITUDESTOWARD 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, a nd unambiguous), whereas the Modern Sexism Scale (MS) measures covert or subtle forms of sexism (sexism that is either hidden and clandestin e or unnoticed because it is built into cultural and societal norms). Support for this distinction is shown by way of (a) confirmatory facto r analyses, (b) correlations with affective reactions to different cat egories 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.