Evan Blaine's 'Understanding The Psychology Of Diversity'

I read chapter 6 of B. Evan Blaine's book Understanding the Psychology of Diversity, named "Understanding Gender Stereotypes and Sexism". The most intriguing aspect of these chapter to me are the distinguished types of sexism because before reading, I did not even know they existed. Blaine explains that hostile sexism are prejudices that label women as inferior to men and limit them to subordinate roles. Benevolent sexism is not expressed by negative attitudes rather, it is shown in describing women as objects to be protected and cared for. The underlying problem with this type of sexism is that it continues to regard women as weaker than men. Both types of sexism reveal a power dynamic in gender, where there is an explicit patriarchal system

For instance, she would tell my brother "You can't hit girls" but never told me "You can't hit boys" - granted, she never encouraged me to hit anyone but it is interesting she specifically mentioned gender when it came to my brother. This is a common line most people encourage and while it is not a negative idea, it does carry a connotation that women are weaker than men and that it is the man's duty to protect the fragile woman. Even at work this benevolent is prevalent in both of my managers, regardless of their gender. They have both said to me that I could not take the trash out at night because they don't want a girl to walk alone. Although I appreciate the sentiment greatly because their interest was my own protection, I can understand from a societal perspective that this is still portraying a female to be delicate, defenseless and weak. This also highlights male privilege because most males could take out the trash at night without the fear that they will be stalked, harassed or possibly even raped. Moreover, although less common than benevolent sexism, I have also experienced some hostile

I was always given the arts, media/culture, and literacy questions instead of the questions about STEM. This was confusing to me as I was better at STEM than the aforementioned subjects, yet I realized our teacher would deliberately save these questions for the males even though she too was a female. There was only one other female on the team and she too would experience this. At competitions, it was almost surprising to my teammates if a got a STEM question right yet there was no reaction to other correct answers. It was difficult then too, to not internalize these attitudes and only limit myself to certain subjects - I even convinced myself I did not excel at math yet, I have never received less than an A in a mathematics course even in college! I fell victim to a stereotype threat which in this case refers to conforming to negative stereotypes about my gender, specifically not doing well in math. In scholastic bowl competitions, I would silence myself from answering mathematics questions or doubt that I was correct because I confirmed to myself that I just wasn't that great at math. It is truly eye opening now to view how much hostile sexism affected my self-efficacy in