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Are sisters doing it for themselves? Feminists’ concern for issues that affect women and menDeclarations
• The authors did not receive support from any organization for the submitted work.
The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.
Abstract
When marginalised groups such as women organise to demand better conditions, social psychological representations of collective action can paint different pictures of their motivations, with some emphasising ingroup-focus and competition and others suggesting a more universalistic, justice-led approach. With this in mind, across two studies, we compared feminists’ and non-feminists’ concern for men and women, their views of gender relations, and meta-perceptions of these attitudes. In both Study 1 (n = 348) and Study 2 (n = 283), feminists’ concerns for the social issues that they thought faced men and women were positively related, consistent with positive-sum beliefs about the interests of men and women. Feminists rated the issues facing men as no less important (Study 1), or more important (Study 2), than non-feminist participants did. Analyses of participants’ metaperceptions (beliefs about feminists’ attitudes) revealed that in both studies, participants underestimated feminists’ concern for men, and also tacitly underestimated the positive-sum relationship between attitudes to men and women. The findings of findings of Study 2 indicated that these errors were especially pronounced among participants high in hostile sexism and social dominance orientation. Overall, feminists express genuine concern for men and reject zero-sum thinking, but these attitudes are generally underestimated in meta-perceptions. These findings paint a multi-faceted picture of feminists’ real and perceived attitudes towards men, contributing to our social psychological understanding of intergroup relations and suggesting that minority groups need not always be motivated by zero-sum thinking.
KEY WORDS:
Feminism
men
zero-sum
gender relations
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Introduction
While it is clear that feminists are invested in improving outcomes for women and girls, it is much less clear how feminists relate to the dominant group (i.e., men). While plenty of feminist activists have spoken out on issues concerning boys and men, and advocated for feminist solutions to those issues (e.g., hooks, 2000), there still appears to be a widespread perception that feminists are antagonistic towards men and boys (Hopkins-Doyle et al., 2024). This perception may be related to the common conception that when a group engages in “identity politics” – that is, advocating on behalf of a specific group based on identity characteristics – this is divisive, and they are looking to focus on their own gains only rather than advocating for universal change and improvement (Bernstein, 2005). With this in mind, the present research seeks to examine different models of how feminists relate to men, and how they are perceived to relate to men.
Competitive, Zero-Sum Thinking
Popular discourse regularly portrays feminists as competitive and antagonistic towards men and boys, seeking to forcefully take things from them. Indeed, when members of any marginalised social group come together to demand better conditions, a common reaction is to assume that the gains they are seeking must come at the expense of others: this is known as zero-sum thinking (Rozycka-Tran et al., 2015). The term zero-sum refers to a game-theory situation in which each gain made by one party must coincide with a loss by another party (von Neumann & Morgenstern, 1944). Within psychology, this concept has been broadened to describe the psychological tendency to view goods and resources as limited and to assume that if something benefits one person or group it must necessarily cost another (Rozycka-Tran et al., 2015; Fearon & Götz, 2024).
Zero-sum thinking shares many features with other psychological constructs which emphasise competitive thinking. For example, according to Social Dominance Theory (Pratto et al., 1994), individuals high in social dominance orientation (SDO) have a preference for maintaining rigid intergroup hierarchies, and dominance of some groups over others. SDO has been shown to be robustly associated with zero-sum perceptions of intergroup relations (Ho et al., 2012; Ruthig et al., 2017). It is also associated with various other legitimizing myths –beliefs that justify inequality and discrimination. One such myth is sexism: higher levels of SDO relate to greater endorsement of sexist beliefs (Sibley et al., 2007).
Indeed, competitive, zero-sum thinking is central to psychological theories of sexism, and some of the most prolific theories of sexism within psychology describe a version of sexism that is essentially a form of opposition to feminism. Modern Sexism (Swim et al., 1995) is characterised by the denial of continuing discrimination towards women; antagonism towards women’s political and economic demands; and, perhaps most relevant, a lack of support for policies designed to help women succeed (perceived by sexists as undeserved special favours). Ambivalent Sexism (Glick & Fiske, 1996) is composed of two evaluatively opposite components: overtly negative hostile sexism and subjectively positive benevolent sexism. These work together to maintain male dominance over women. While benevolent sexism does not explicitly promote intersex competition, competitive gender differentiation is one of the main themes of hostile sexism, based on the idea that gender differences justify the status differences between men and women (Glick & Fiske, 1999). Hostile sexism portrays women as seeking to usurp men using either feminine wiles (trapping them in relationships and taking their resources), or feminist ideology (accusing them of discrimination and demanding favours; Glick & Fiske, 1997).
Given that feminists tend to be low in SDO (e.g., Heaven, 1999; Belanger et al., 2022) as well as – of course – sexism (e.g., van Breen et al., 2017; Weis et al., 2018), there may be reason to believe these competitive, zero-sum portrayals of feminists are inaccurate. Nevertheless, these narratives about feminists can clearly be seen in the wider culture, particularly in online spaces such as those populated by men’s rights activists (MRAs). According to Bujalka et al. (2022), there is ongoing discussion in men’s spaces about how the world has become disordered and incomprehensible to many men, and that there is a sense that the futures that once seemed promised to them (e.g., being the family breadwinner) are no longer within their reach. Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs) claim that it is women – and specifically feminists – who are to blame for this, as their advocacy for women has led to men’s diminishing status in society (Ging, 2019).
Interdependence of Outcomes
While it is clear that feminism is often portrayed as competitive and zero-sum, it is not clear whether feminist themselves view gender relations in these terms. Collective action involves advocating on behalf of a particular ingroup in order to make progress for that group (in this case, women; Dixon et al., 2016), but it is not always clear how this corresponds to attitudes towards the outgroup. Some accounts of collective action and intergroup relations espouse the importance of antagonism and competition (e.g., Pratto et al., 1993). For example, there is evidence that feeling positively towards the majority group can dull minority group members’ motivation for collective action (Sobol-Sarag et al., 2022). However, other accounts suggest that social progress is a more universalist project where benefits for one party can also benefit other parties (e.g., Kant, 1991; Leach et al., 2023), and that it is possible to widen one’s moral circle in order to care about more distant groups (Pinker, 2011).
As such, proponents of a social cause may seek to make gains at the expense of majority group members, may be indifferent towards majority group members’ interests, or they may care about and take action to improve their welfare. For example, during the American Civil Rights Movement which sought to end racial segregation and discrimination, leader Martin Luther King Jr. emphasised the concept of interrelatedness and the “beloved community”, and stressed that abolishing poverty for Black people was bound up with abolishing poverty for all groups because justice transcended racial boundaries (Kolozi & Freeman, 2017). In fact, King argued that the oppression of Black people was spiritually bad for White people as it forced them to “repress the sense of decency and justice that resides in the human spirit … [they] isolate[] [themselves] from genuine relationships with others and doom[] [themselves] to a spiritual imprisonment.”(1967, p.70). As a result, eradicating racism could be perceived as conferring shared benefits to the majority and the minority.
The unique level of causal dependency that women have on men – and vice versa – may particularly lend itself to these kinds of interdependent outcomes, where benefits (or costs) are shared, and may make it less likely for feminists to view gender relations as zero-sum. Glick and Fiske (1999) noted that, while men have structural power over women in much the same way that, for example, white people have structural power over black people, men are also dependent on women for reproduction and emotional intimacy: a phenomenon they labeled “heterosexual interdependence”. Therefore, gender prejudice can be thought of as a uniquely complex situation where the desire for intergroup competition conflicts with the desire for interpersonal cooperation (Cross et al., 2019), and where intergroup dynamics cannot be understood separately from interpersonal ones (Glick & Fiske, 1996). For example, women may wish to help men engage in more communal roles (e.g., being more involved fathers) because of the emotional and relational benefits that this will offer men, but this may also confer indirect benefits onto women by lessening their care work burden (Mikolajczak & Becker, 2022). Along these lines, Mikolajczak and Becker (2022) found that women were willing to engage in what they called “progressive” collective action on behalf of men, which included advocating for aims such as extending paid paternity leave and providing mental health support for men.
Feminism and Men
In this spirit of gender-inclusive activism, many feminists have long advocated for improving circumstances for men, suggesting a more inclusive and universal project. Acclaimed feminist scholar and activist bell hooks, in her book Feminism is for Everybody (2000), emphasised that men were also victims of sexist oppression, and that feminists should also be concerned with the ways that patriarchal masculine expectations harm men. For example, endorsing proscriptive male norms such as status, toughness and anti-femininity (Thompson & Pleck, 1986) has been associated with negative outcomes for men such as less willingness to seek help for psychological problems (Riley, 1991) and lower levels of same-sex intimacy (Stark, 1991). Other examinations of the role of masculine norms in men’s lives has found that adhering to these norms is linked to poorer health (Mahalik et al., 2007), suicidal thoughts (Coleman, 2015) and worse educational outcomes (Hadjar, 2015), suggesting that men are negatively affected in a variety of domains by the expectation to adhere to strict gendered expectations.
Not only have feminists acknowledged how men are harmed by gendered expectations, many past actions aimed at improving men’s circumstances have been spearheaded by feminists. For example, feminists have advocated for greater resources and attention for male victims of rape (Cohen, 2014; Javaid, 2016), and claimed that dangerous front-line combat roles in state militaries should be open to women and not just borne by men (Soules, 2020). Feminists have also overturned drinking laws in the US that were discriminatory towards men (Von Drehle, 1993), and attempted to make prisons a safer place for male inmates (Rothstein & Stannow, 2009). This spirit of inclusive feminism which extends to men’s needs has gained popularity amongst certain male figures as well, who have helped to perpetuate it on their own terms. British comedian Robert Webb, in his book How Not to be a Boy, claims that “Feminism has had some success in challenging the restrictive stereotypes of what a girl or woman is supposed to be like. What I’m after is extending that awareness to the half of the population who might still be under the impression that gender conditioning didn’t happen to them because they’ve got a Y chromosome” (2017, p. 139).
Possibilities for Feminism
Taking these theories, stereotypes, and past actions into account, there are a few distinct possibilities for how feminists might actually relate to men, and how they might be perceived to. While it is clear that feminists are invested in improving outcomes for women and girls, it has generally been less clear how this extends to their relationship with the dominant group. One possibility is that feminists are competitive and antagonistic toward men and boys, taking on a zero-sum perspective of gender relations whereby attention and resources must be directly wrested from their hands (Rozycka-Tran et al., 2015; Fearon & Götz, 2024). Alternatively, feminists may adhere to classic definitions of collective action (e.g., Dixon et al., 2016) and be narrowly focused on their stated principles – that is, improving circumstances for women as a group – while maintaining relative indifference to how this affects men and boys. Feminists could also be actively invested in helping men and boys in addition to women and girls, and could perceive gains for men and women as positive-sum rather than zero-sum (hooks, 2000).
While previous research is lacking on whether feminists care about men and issues that affect them, Hopkins-Doyle et al. (2024) conducted related research on feminists’ attitudes towards men, testing the accuracy of the stereotype that feminists are “man-haters” who possess objectively negative attitudes towards men (Marwick & Caplan, 2018). These authors found that feminists possessed strongly positive attitudes towards men across a number of measures and a variety of different national contexts. However, participants underestimated feminists’ warmth towards men and viewed them as misandrists in both relative (i.e., compared to non-feminists) and absolute (i.e., compared to a neutral midpoint) terms. Hopkins-Doyle et al. labeled this misconception “the misandry myth” and suggested it may be linked to the tendency to view collective action movements based on identity characteristics as inherently divisive and competitive rather than rooted in a more general desire for universal progress (Bernstein, 2005). We sought to extend Hopkins-Doyle et al.’s (2024) research by moving beyond the question of whether or not feminists like men, and instead examining whether or not they care about issues that affect them, and how this relates to their concern for issues that affect women.
Current Research
Our research investigates feminists’ actual and perceived concern for men and support for collective action on their behalf, as well their motivations for doing so. Across two studies, I investigate a) how much feminists care about issues that affect men, and how much they are perceived to, and b) how much feminists conceive of men’s issues and women’s issues as zero-sum (i.e., gains by one party results in losses for the other) and how much they are perceived to.
Study 1 examines the actual and perceived relationship between caring about men’s issues and caring about women’s issues, by having participants name and rank the importance of various men’s and women’s issues and examining whether there is a zero-sum relationship between concern for issues that affect one gender and issues that affect the other, and whether this is associated with feminism. Study 2 serves as a replication of Study 1 while also investigating how ideologies such as ambivalent sexism and social dominance orientation (Pratto et al., 1994) are related to the actual and perceived association between men’s issues and women’s issues, given their salience in intergroup relations.
Study 1
This study examined actual and perceived zero-sum relationships between concern for issues that affect one gender and issues that affect the other, such that caring about women’s issues makes one less likely to care about men’s issues (and vice versa), and whether this is associated with participants’ feminist identification. This was addressed by asking participants to list issues that predominantly affect women and predominantly affect men, then asking them to rate the importance of these same issues before indicating how much importance they believed feminists and non-feminists would give to these issues and indicating their own feminist identification (or lack thereof).
If feminists are engaged in zero-sum competition with men, this entails that feminists would score lower than non-feminists on the importance of men’s issues (H1); the importance placed on issues that affect men would be negatively correlated with the importance placed on issues that affect women for feminists (H2); and this correlation between men’s and women’s issues would be significantly more negative for feminists than for non-feminists (H3). We also tested the hypothesis that meta-perceptions of feminists’ attitudes on the above issues would be largely incorrect, such that participants endorsed exaggerated views of what feminists believed and underestimated how much feminists cared about men’s issues (H4). These exaggerated views may resemble the competitive view of feminists depicted in hostile sexism (Glick & Fiske, 1996), and would align with Bernstein’s (2005) claim that identity politics are viewed as inherently divisive. They would also align with the exaggerated meta-perceptions of feminists found by Hopkins-Doyle et al. (2024), as well as metaperceptions of various hostile outgroups and their ill intentions toward the ingroup examined in previous research (e.g., Kteily et al., 2016; Moore-Berg et al., 2020).
Method
Participants.
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Participants were 348 British individuals over the age of 18 recruited through the online platform Prolific (Peer et al., 2017); 173 were male, 172 were female, and 3 participants did not provide their gender. The mean age was 31.26 years old (SD = 10.57), 77.9% of participants were white British, and 49.7% of participants identified as feminists (173 feminists; 175 non-feminists). The survey took 6 minutes in total, and participants were paid £0.80 for their time.Procedure.
In an online survey participants first provided examples of issues that predominantly affect men and predominantly affect women, and then rated the importance of each of these issues. Participants next answered meta questions where they indicated how much importance they believed feminists would give to men’s and women’s issues, respectively. Lastly, participants completed demographic measures. They indicated whether they considered themselves a feminist on a simple yes/no item, then indicated to what extent they considered themselves feminists on a 6-point Likert scale from 1 = Not at all to 6 = Very much. They also provided their age, gender, and ethnicity.
Measures.
Men’s and Women’s Issues. Participants were presented with the following “There are certain aspects of life in which men and boys [women and girls] may be at a disadvantage compared to women and girls [men and boys], or at least do not fare as well. In any order, can you list up to five of these that you think are important?” They were then provided with five empty form fields in which they could answer the question as they saw fit. In random order, participants saw both the male and female versions of this question. Participants generated a wide variety of issues for both men (e.g., “custody of children”; “discussing mental health”; “expectation to be breadwinner in family”) and women (e.g., “sexual harassment/assault”; “gender pay gap”; “period poverty”).
Importance of Men’s and Women’s Issues. Participants were shown a list of the issues they had personally provided previously in the survey, and asked to rate the importance of each issue on a 10-point sliding scale from 0 = Not at all important to 10 = Extremely important. Male and female issues were shown separately in a randomized order.
Meta Questions. Participants were asked “On average, how much importance do you think feminists would give to these issues, on a scale of 0 = not at all important to 10 = extremely important?” and then presented with the following on a sliding scale: a) “Issues that affect women and girls” and b) “Issues that affect men and boys”. The same question was then repeated with “non-feminists” replacing “feminists”. Thus, these meta questions did not refer to the specific issues that the participants themselves selected.
Results
A 2 (feminist identification: feminist or non-feminist) x 2 (gender of interest: men’s issues or women’s issues) mixed ANOVA was first carried out to compare feminists’ and non-feminists’ actual concern for men’s and women’s issues. A second 2 x 2 ANOVA was carried out to compare perceptions of feminists’ and non-feminists’ concern for men’s and women’s issues (see Table 1 for means and standard deviations).
Feminists | Non-Feminists | Perceptions of Feminists | Perceptions of Non-Feminists | ||||||||
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M | SD | M | SD | M | SD | M | SD | ||||
Women’s Issues Importance | 8.40 | 1.56 | 7.69 | 1.85 | 9.45 | 1.01 | 5.67 | 2.79 | |||
Men’s Issues Importance | 7.24 | 1.99 | 7.37 | 2.05 | 5.31 | 3.00 | 6.23 | 2.47 | |||
| Note. N = 348 (feminists = 173; non-feminists = 175).*p < .05.**p < .01.***p < .001 | |||||||||||
For actual concern, the ANOVA revealed a significant feminist identification x gender of interest interaction, F(1, 346) = 14.90, p < .001, ηp2 = .041. Post hoc tests conducted using the Holm correction indicated that feminist participants attached greater importance to women’s issues than non-feminist participants did, t(346) = 3.89, p < .001. Critically, however, they did not attach significantly less importance to men’s issues, t(346) = -0.60, p = .548. Thus, the first hypothesis, informed by the notion that feminists’ greater concern for women’s issues would correspond to relatively lower concern for men’s issues, was not supported. In this ANOVA there was no significant main effect of feminist identification (regardless of gender of interest), F(1, 346) = 3.01, p = .083, ηp2 = .009, but there was a main effect of gender of interest, F(1, 346) = 45.60, p < .001, ηp2 = .117, in which participants perceived women’s issues were perceived as more important than men’s issues (see Fig. 1, A). For perceived concern, there was also was also a significant feminist identification x gender of interest interaction, F(1, 328) = 444.00, p < .001, ηp2 = .575. Post hoc tests conducted using the Holm correction indicated that feminists were perceived to place more importance on women’s issues than non-feminists, t(328) = 23.62, p < .001, but in contrast, to place less importance on men’s issues than non-feminists, t(328) = -4.89, p < .001.
This time, there was a main effect of feminist identification, F(1, 328) = 104.00, p < .001, ηp2 = .241, such that feminists were perceived to place more importance on issues overall than non-feminists. There was also a main effect of gender of interest, F(1, 328) = 172.00, p < .001, ηp2 = .344, such that more importance was placed on women’s issues than men’s issues (see Fig. 1, B).
Fig. 1
Men’s and Women’s Issue Importance for Feminists and Non-Feminists, Study 1. A. Actual Importance, B. Perceived Importance
Bivariate correlations between the importance of men’s issues and the importance of women’s issues were then calculated to examine the actual and perceived relationships between these issues for feminists (Table 2). For feminists, the importance of men’s issues and the importance of women’s issues were positively correlated, contrary to the hypothesis that this correlation would be negative (H2). This was not significantly different from the corresponding correlation among non-feminists, Z = 0.11, p = .911, contrary to our hypothesis (H3).
Feminists’ Actual Attitudinal Correlations | Non-Feminists’ Attitudinal Correlations | Perceptions of Feminists’ Attitudinal Correlations | |
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Men’s and Women’s Issues Importance | .42*** | .41*** | .05 |
| Note. N = 348 (feminists = 173; non-feminists = 175).*p < .05.**p < .01.***p < .00 | |||
Analysis of the meta-perception questions revealed that participants in general tacitly perceived no correlation between the importance feminists attached to men’s and women’s issues; testing the difference between these correlations indicated that feminists’ actual correlation was significantly higher than the perceived correlation, Z = 4.54, p < .001, One-sample t-tests comparing feminists’ actual and perceived beliefs also showed that feminists scored significantly lower on the importance of women’s issues, t(342) = 19.29, p < .001, d = 1.04, and significantly higher on the importance of men’s issues, t(337) = -11.84, p < .001, d = 0.64 than participants predicted they would. As a result, the hypothesis that participants would hold exaggerated stereotypes of feminists’ negative feelings towards men (H4) was supported.
Discussion
My results did not support the idea that feminists are engaged in zero-sum competition with men, and in fact refuted the assumption that men’s and women’s issues are zero-sum such that caring about one comes at the expense of the other. Contrary to predictions, feminists did not place any less importance on men’s issues than non-feminists did. In addition, there was a positive sum relationship between concern for issues that affect one gender and issues that affect the other for feminists, such that the importance of women’s issues was positively associated with the importance of men’s issues, and this correlation was not meaningfully different from the correlation for non-feminists.
It was also the case that, as predicted, meta-perceptions of feminists’ attitudes on the above issues were largely incorrect, such that participants underestimated how much feminists care about men’s issues, and also underestimated the correlations between men’s and women’s issues for feminists. The results of 2x2 ANOVAs conducted on feminists’ and non-feminists’ actual and perceived beliefs also indicated that the perceived importance of men’s issues was lower for feminists than for non-feminists, but in reality, the importance of men’s issues was not significantly different for feminists and non-feminists. However, this study did not explore how additional factors known to be associated with intergroup relations, zero-sum beliefs, and views of men and women (e.g., hostile sexism; Glick & Fiske, 1996) may be playing a role in the relationship between caring about men’s issues and caring about women’s issues.
Study 2
In this study, we once again examined whether feminists are engaged in zero-sum competition with men in that by aiming to replicate Study 1 while also investigating the impact of certain relevant ideological variables. In addition to the questions about the (real and perceived) importance of men’s and women’s issues from Study 1, this study also included measures of Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA; Altemeyer, 1981), Ambivalent Sexism (ASI; Glick & Fiske, 1996), Religiosity (Sullivan, 2001), and Social Dominance Orientation (SDO; Pratto et al., 1994) in order to control for these factors in our analyses. While hostile sexism, as previously mentioned, is typified by perceived intersex competition and contempt for women (particularly feminists), benevolent sexism may not necessarily lend itself to a competitive view of men’s and women’s issues. Religiosity and RWA have been associated with benevolent sexism (Burn & Busso, 2005; Sibley et al., 2007), while SDO, with its focus on intergroup competition, is more closely linked with hostile sexism (Sibley et al., 2007). As such, hostile sexism and SDO are likely to be associated with zero-sum metaperceptions of feminists’ beliefs, while the associations with benevolent sexism, religiosity and RWA remain to be seen.
Once again, if feminists are engaged in zero-sum competition with men, this entails that feminists would score lower than non-feminists on the importance of men’s issues (H1); the importance placed on issues that affect men would be negatively correlated with the importance placed on issues that affect women for feminists (H2); and this correlation between men’s and women’s issue would be significantly more negative for feminists than for non-feminists (H3). I also tested the hypothesis that meta-perceptions of feminists’ attitudes on the above issues would be largely incorrect, such that participants endorsed exaggerated views of what feminists believed and underestimated how much feminists cared about men’s issues (H4). I also tested the hypothesis that there would be a tendency to see feminists’ tacit appreciation of gender relations as more zero-sum than they are in reality (i.e., perceive a more negative correlation among feminists between the importance of men’s issues and women’s issues than feminists themselves display; H5). These hypotheses were preregistered on OSF (https://osf.io/md5qf/?view_only=a29263c1ea8742c6ad4861ee82b6c73f). Without making directional hypotheses, I also examined the associations between the real and perceived importance of men’s and women’s issues and RWA, hostile sexism, benevolent sexism, SDO, and religiosity.
Method
Participants.
Participants were 283 undergraduate psychology students at the University of Kent; 229 were female, 48 were male, and 6 indicated their gender as “other”. The mean age was 19.51 years old (SD = 2.89), 45.5% of participants were white British, and 72.4% of participants identified as feminists (205 feminists; 78 non-feminists).
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They were recruited online through the University of Kent’s Research Participation Scheme (RPS).Procedure.
This study initially followed the same procedure as Study 1. However, before completing demographic measures, participants completed exploratory measures of religiosity (Sullivan, 2001), right-wing authoritarianism (RWA; Altemeyer 1981), ambivalent sexism (Glick & Fiske, 1996), and social dominance orientation (SDO; Pratto et al., 1994). Participants also completed the same demographic measures of feminist identification, age, gender, and ethnicity as in Study 2, while also indicating their political persuasion (i.e., the extent to which they described themselves as liberal, conservative, and libertarian on seven-point scales ranging from 0 = Not at all to 6 = Very much).
Measures.
Participants completed the same measures of men’s and women’s issues, importance of men’s and women’s issues, and meta questions as in Study 1, along with the following measures:
Religiosity. A four-item scale was used measuring three key elements of religiosity – ritual, consequence, and experience – as well as an overall measure asking, “In general, would you say you are a religious person?” (Sullivan, 2001). Participants answered these questions on a five-point Likert scale containing ranging from 1 = Not at all to 5 = A great deal (α = .92).
Right-Wing Authoritarianism. To assess right-wing authoritarianism, a shortened form of the Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA; Altemeyer, 1981) scale was used.
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Participants indicated their level of agreement with eight statements (e.g., “What our country really needs, instead of more “civil rights” is a good stiff dose of law and order”) on a scale from 1 = Strongly disagree to 6 = Strongly agree (α = .77).Ambivalent Sexism. Participants completed two subscales from The Ambivalent Sexism Inventory created by Glick and Fiske (1996) to measure benevolent and hostile sexism. The shortened version of the scale used here comprised six items for benevolent sexism (α = .81) such as “Many women have a quality of purity that few men possess,” and six for hostile sexism (α = .88), for example “When women lose to men in a fair competition, they typically complain about being discriminated against.” Participants rated their agreement with the statements on a six-point scale ranging from 1 = Disagree strongly to 6 = Agree strongly.
Social Dominance Orientation. The 16-item Social Dominance Orientation (SDO; Pratto et al., 1994) scale was used. Participants indicated their level of agreement with statements such as “Some groups of people are just more worthy than others” on a six-point scale ranging from 1 = Disagree strongly to 6 = Agree strongly; half of the items were reverse coded (α = .92).
Results
As in Study 1, a 2 (feminist identification: feminists or non-feminists) x 2 (gender of interest: men’s issues or women’s issues) mixed ANOVA was first carried out to compare feminists’ and non-feminists’ actual concern for men’s and women’s issues, and a second 2 x 2 ANOVA was carried out to compare perceptions of feminists’ and non-feminists’ concern for men’s and women’s issues (see Table 3 for means and standard deviations).
Feminists | Non-Feminists | Perceptions of Feminists | Perceptions of Non-Feminists | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
M | SD | M | SD | M | SD | M | SD | ||||
Women's Issues Importance | 8.42 | 1.27 | 7.57 | 1.72 | 9.37 | 1.26 | 5.67 | 2.54 | |||
Men’s Issues Importance | 7.63 | 1.81 | 6.94 | 2.31 | 6.27 | 2.76 | 6.25 | 2.39 | |||
| Note. N = 283 (feminists = 205; non-feminists = 78). | |||||||||||
| *p < .05.**p < .01.***p < .001 | |||||||||||
For actual concern, there was a main effect of feminist identification, F(1, 281) = 14.80, p < .001, ηp2 = .050, such that feminists placed more importance on both types of issues than non-feminists (see Fig. 2, A). There was also a main effect of gender of interest, F(1, 281) = 44.07, p < .001, ηp2 = .136, such that more importance was placed on women’s issues than men’s issues. However, there was no significant feminist identification x gender of interest interaction, F(1, 281) = 0.49, p = .484, ηp2 = .002, suggesting that there is no difference in the relative priority that feminists and non-feminists give to men’s and women’s issues. As a result, our hypothesis that feminists would score lower than non-feminists on the importance of men’s issues (H1) was not supported.
For perceived concern, there was a main effect of feminist identification, F(1, 282) = 183.80, p < .001, ηp2 = .395, such that feminists were perceived to place more importance on issues overall than non-feminists (see Fig. 2, B). There was also a main effect of gender of interest, F(1, 282) = 86.70, p < .001, ηp2 = .235, such that more importance was placed on women’s issues than men’s issues. In addition, there was a significant feminist identification x gender of interest interaction, F(1, 282) = 314.10, p < .001, ηp2 = .527. Post hoc tests conducted using the Holm correction indicated that feminists were perceived to place more importance on women’s issues than men’s issues, t(282) = 18.74, p < .001, while non-feminists were perceived to place more importance on men’s issues than women’s issues, t(282) = -3.56, p = .001, suggesting that participants mistakenly perceive a difference in the relative priority that feminists and non-feminists give to men’s and women’s issues.
Fig. 2
Men’s and Women’s Issue Importance for Feminists and Non-Feminists, Study 2. A. Actual Importance, B. Perceived Importance
Bivariate correlations between the importance of men’s issues and the importance of women’s issues were then calculated to examine the actual and perceived relationships between these issues for feminists (Table 4; for analyses of these relationships controlling for SDO, hostile sexism, benevolent sexism, RWA, and religiosity,
A
see Supplementary Materials, https://osf.io/vthxk/?view_only=f5ca67da53f648dda2281050a1efac83). For feminist participants, the importance of men’s issues and the importance of women’s issues were positively correlated; contrary to the hypothesis (H2) that these variables would be negatively correlated. However, unlike in Study 1, this correlation was significantly lower than the correlation between men’s issues and women’s issue for non-feminists, Z = -2.01, p = .04, supporting the hypothesis that the correlation between men’s and women’s issue would be significantly more negative for feminists than for non-feminists (H3).Feminists’ Actual Attitudinal Correlations | Non-Feminists’ Attitudinal Correlations | Perceptions of Feminists’ Attitudinal Correlations | |
|---|---|---|---|
Men’s and Women’s Issues Importance | .52*** | .69*** | .21*** |
| Note. N = 283 (feminists = 205; non-feminists = 78).*p < .05.**p < .01.***p < .001. | |||
Also unlike in Study 1, the importance of men’s and women’s issues was correctly perceived to be positively correlated for feminists, but testing the difference between the two correlations indicated that feminists’ actual correlations were significantly higher than the perceived correlations, Z = 3.93, p < .001. One-sample t-tests comparing feminists’ actual and perceived beliefs also showed that feminists scored significantly lower on the importance of women’s issues, t(287) = 12.85, p < .001, d = 0.76, and significantly higher on the importance of men’s issues, t(287) = -8.33, p < .001, d = 0.49, than participants predicted they would. As a result, the hypothesis that participants would endorse exaggerated views of what feminists believed and underestimate how much feminists cared about men’s issues (H4) was supported.
Bivariate correlations were next calculated to examine the interrelations between variables (Table 5). The importance of women’s issues was positively associated with feminist identification and negatively associated with RWA, hostile sexism, and SDO, but not significantly associated with religiosity or benevolent sexism. The importance of men’s issues was similarly positively associated with feminist identification and negatively associated with RWA and SDO, but not associated with hostile or benevolent sexism. For the metaperception variables, the perceived importance feminists place on women’s issues was positively associated with feminist identification, but negatively associated with RWA, HS, and SDO. The perceived importance feminists place on men’s issues was also positively associated with feminist identification, but negatively associated with RWA, BS, HS, and SDO.
Variable | Feminist Identification | Religiosity | RWA | BS | HS | SDO |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Women’s Issues Importance | .28*** | .08 | − .13* | − .01 | − .14* | − .20*** |
Men’s Issues Importance | .16** | .10 | − .13* | .01 | − .03 | − .22*** |
Perceived Women’s Issues Importance for Feminists | .19** | .04 | − .17** | − .01 | − .13* | − .31*** |
Perceived Men’s Issues Importance for Feminists | .45*** | − .09 | − .33*** | − .24*** | − .39*** | − .29*** |
| Note. N = 283. RWA = Right-Wing Authoritarianism; BS = Benevolent Sexism; HS = Hostile Sexism; SDO = Social Dominance Orientation. | ||||||
*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.
In order to examine the effect of the individual difference variables on the underestimation of feminists’ concern for men, we subtracted the actual importance placed on men’s issues from the perceived importance placed on men’s issues in order to create difference scores for feminists and non-feminists and examined its association with SDO and hostile sexism. A linear regression revealed a significant negative association between SDO and this difference score for feminists, β = –.29, t(281) = − 5.05, p < .001, 95% CI [–1.30, − 0.57], such that participants higher in SDO tended to overestimate the difference between feminists’ perceived concern for men and their actual concern (see Fig. 3, A). In contrast, SDO was not significantly associated with the difference score for non-feminists, β = − .01, t(281) = -0.13, p = .90, 95% CI [–0.35, 0.30] (see Fig. 3, B). The interaction between SDO and target group (feminist vs. non-feminist) was significant, β = –.44, t(562) = 3.68, p < .001, 95% CI [0.42, 1.40], indicating the relationship between SDO and difference scores was stronger for feminists than for non-feminists.
Fig. 3
SDO and Difference between Men’s Actual and Perceived Issue Importance, Study 2. A. Feminists, B. Non-Feminists.
The same regression analysis also revealed a significant negative association between hostile sexism and the difference score for feminists, β = –.39, t(281) = − 7.01, p < .001, 95% CI [–1.24, − 0.69], such that participants higher in hostile sexism tended to overestimate the difference between feminists’ perceived concern for men and their actual concern (see Fig. 4, A). In contrast, hostile sexism was not significantly associated with the difference score for non-feminists, β = .03, t(281) = 0.44, p = .66, 95% CI [–0.19, 0.31] (see Fig. 4, B). The interaction between hostile sexism and target group (feminist vs. non-feminist) was significant, β = .60, t(562) = 5.44, p < .001, 95% CI [0.65, 1.39], indicating the relationship between hostile sexism and difference scores was stronger for feminists than for non-feminists (for associations with benevolent sexism, religiosity, and RWA, see Supplementary Materials, https://osf.io/vthxk/?view_only=f5ca67da53f648dda2281050a1efac83).
Fig. 4
Hostile Sexism and Difference between Men’s Actual and Perceived Issue Importance, Study 2. A. Feminists, B. Non-Feminists.
Discussion
Results largely replicated those of Study 1, once again refuting the idea of the competitive feminist who views gender relations as a zero-sum situation. Once again, feminists scored higher than non-feminists on the importance of women’s issues, and this time, they also scored higher than non-feminists on the importance of men’s issues. Interestingly, in this study, there was no difference between feminists and non-feminists in the relative importance they placed on men’s versus women’s issues, unlike in Study 1 where feminists prioritised women more than non-feminists did. Much like in Study 1, there was also positive sum relationship between concern for issues that affect one gender and issues that affect the other, such that the importance of women's issues was positively associated with the importance of men's issues; however, unlike in Study 1, this was significantly lower for feminists than for non-feminists. It was also once again the case that meta-perceptions of feminists’ attitudes on the above issues were largely incorrect, such that participants underestimated how much feminists care about men's issues, while overestimating how much they care about women’s issues. Unlike in Study 1, caring about men’s issues and caring about women’s issues were perceived to be positively correlated for feminists; however, the actual correlation was still significantly higher than the perceived correlation. The results of 2x2 ANOVAs conducted on feminists’ and non-feminists’ actual and perceived beliefs also indicated the perceived importance of men’s issues was not significantly different for feminists and non-feminists, but in reality, the importance of both men’s issues and women’s issues higher for feminists than non-feminists.
When it came to the exploratory individual difference variables, at zero-order, RWA, benevolent sexism, hostile sexism, and SDO were all negatively associated with the perceived importance feminists place on men’s issues; regression analyses also showed that the higher participants were in hostile sexism and SDO, the more underestimated feminists’ concern for men’s issues, whereas there was no relationship between these variables and perceptions of non-feminists. This aligns with previous research by Ruthig et al. (2017) on the positive association between hostile sexism and zero-sum perceptions of gender, as well as the association between SDO and zero-sum thinking shown in previous research (Sibley et al., 2007).
General Discussion
In this research, I examined feminists’ real and perceived concern for men and the issues that affect them. Overall, my findings suggest that feminists care about men and the issues that affect them. My findings also suggest that feminists reject zero-sum thinking, instead viewing outcomes for men and women in a positive-sum manner. However, our participants consistently underestimated feminists’ concern for men and the positive-sum nature of how they view gender relations.
In this research, feminists rated the importance of self-selected issues that affect men and women, feminists expressed concern about self-selected issues that affect men as much as (Study 1), or more than (Study 2), non-feminists did, and they perceived caring about men’s and women’s issues to be positive-sum rather than zero-sum. However, in both of these studies, participants viewed as more competitive and zero-sum than they actually are, underestimating feminists’ concern for issues that affect men and underestimating the positive connection between caring about women and caring about men for feminists; Study 2 showed that this was especially true for participants high in factors like SDO and hostile sexism.
Possible Versions of Feminism
When considering the various possibilities for how feminists might relate to men, these findings disconfirm the notion that feminists are engaged in an antagonistic zero-sum competition with men whereby their own gains must come at men’s expense (Rozycka-Tran et al., 2015; Fearon & Götz, 2024). These findings also appear to conflict with the possibility that feminists adhere strictly to classic definitions of collective action (e.g., Dixon et al., 2016) and remain narrowly focused on achieving positive outcomes for women. In our research, feminists’ concern for issues that affect men was as high or higher than non-feminists, and they also consistently exhibited a positive association between concern for men’s issues and concern for women’s issues for feminists. This perception that caring about issues that affect men is positively related to caring about issues that affect women suggests that feminists hold a positive-sum view of gender relations, and perceive that there is positive interdependency between men and women.
Instead, our findings seem to point to the notion that feminists are actively invested in helping men and boys in addition to women and girls, and that they view progress for men and women as positively associated rather than in a zero-sum fashion. This aligns with the many actions taken by feminists to explicitly improve men’s lives such as by changing discriminatory sexual assault laws (e.g., Cohen, 2014), as well as with Mikolajczak and Becker’s (2022) research showing that women were willing to engage in “progressive” collective action on behalf of men.
When it came to the version of feminism that participants perceived to exist, much like in previous research by Hopkins-Doyle et al. (2024), participants displayed overly negative misconceptions about feminists’ true feelings. Across both studies, feminists consistently underestimated how much feminists cared about issues that affect men. They also underestimated the degree to which feminists viewed concern for men’s issues and women’s issues as positively associated, thus perceiving this relationship as less positive-sum than it really is. This suggests that participants hold a more competitive, zero-sum stereotype of feminists than exists in reality, aligning with the first possibility for feminism articulated above.
Benevolent vs. Strategic Concern for Men
While this research provides evidence for the fact that feminists are concerned with issues that affect men, it does not delve into the reasons that feminists have for this concern. Theoretically, “strategic” feminists could believe that helping men also provides benefits to women, in that helping men to adopt less strict gender roles also grants additional flexibility to women (Mikolajczak & Becker, 2022). Alternatively, “benevolent” feminists could be interested in helping men out of an altruistic concern for their well-being, as evidenced by scholars such as hooks (2000) who claimed that men were fellow victims of sexist oppression.
Drawing on the concept of causal interdependency between the ingroup and outgroup during the American Civil Rights era, Bell (1980) coined the term “interest convergence”: that is, the idea that positive social change is more likely to happen for disadvantaged groups when that change will also somehow benefit the advantaged group. While it initially described a racial phenomenon, the concept of interest convergence can also be applied to relations between men and women. For example, women gained expanded employment opportunities and economic independence during World War II when they were actively encouraged by government and businesses to enter the workforce (Goldin, 1991). Even though this encouragement was not borne out of a desire to help women, but rather because their labour was required in order to sustain the economy while male workers were fighting overseas (Milkman, 1987), it led to a gradual but permanent increase in women’s labour force participation over time (Goldin, 2006).
Mikolajczak and Becker (2022)’s research on collective action for men provides some insight into these different potential motivations for helping men. These authors distinguish between reactionary collective action (i.e., in defense of men’s privileged position in society), which included items such as “protecting men from sexual harassment allegations”, and progressive collective action (i.e., aiming to help men adopt more egalitarian roles and advance gender equality), which included items such as “extending paid paternity leave”. These authors found that, not only did women support progressive collective action for men, these women believe that supporting men in adopting more egalitarian roles also indirectly helps women – highlighting the substantial perceived level of interdependence between men and women (Glick & Fiske, 1996). With this in mind, future research would do well to investigate the degree to which feminists’ support for collective action for men is rooted in an altruistic desire to help men versus a more self-interested desire to indirectly help women.
Limitations and Future Research
This research has several important limitations. First of all, my studies only sampled from Western Educated, Industrialised, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) cultures, resulting in a lack of generalisability to other cultural contexts. However, it is worth noting that Hopkins-Doyle et al. (2024) conducted similar research on feminists from five WEIRD countries (Italy, Poland, the US, and the UK) and five non-WEIRD countries (China, India, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan), and found that their findings replicated in both contexts. While my research differs from Hopkins-Doyle et al. (2024) in several ways, the fact that these authors were able to replicate their findings about feminists in non-WEIRD countries gives some credence to the idea that my findings could generalise across different cultural contexts as well; however, future research should text this explicitly.
Another limitation of this research is that it relied solely on feminist self-identification rather than incorporating any other measures of feminism. Ashmore et al. (2004) claim that identity features are multidimensional, and that self-categorisation in one group or another is not always obvious to the person. With that being said, self-identification is commonly used in many areas of social psychology, and Miller (1994) claims that identity terms like “feminist” are merely social constructs whose relation to specific policies changes over time and across contexts.
Finally, an important limitation to mention is the potential for social desirability to have shaped feminists’ answers given the self-reported nature of the questions being asked. There are strategic reasons why feminists may wish to convey the perception that they care about men more than they do; indeed, the man-hating feminist stereotype has long been used to delegitimise feminists and their goals (Anderson et al., 2009). With this in mind, future research would benefit from using more concrete, quantifiable measures of feminists’ attitudes towards men rather than relying solely on self-report. For example, Górska et al. (2022), conducted a quantitative analysis of Twitter data in order to compare the content of feminists’ tweets with those from proponents of the misogynistic “men going their own way” (MGTOW) movement.
Practical Implications
These findings have important implications for feminist advocacy, particularly when it comes to how to frame policies and resources directed at helping women without sending the message that this is coming at the expense of men. Making gender groups salient can lead to perceptions of an us-vs.-them dynamic even if feminists’ goal is to enact universal positive change (Bernstein, 2005). However, failing to make gender groups salient at all may risk reproducing the same inequalities between men and women that currently exist.
One way in which feminist groups may avoid the perception that helping women is coming at the expense of men is by changing the way they frame policies. For example, Davidai and Ongis (2019) altered the framing of policies with people on different sides of the political spectrum, and found that conservatives were more likely to view situations that challenged the current status quo as zero-sum, while liberals tended to view situations that maintained the current status quo as zero-sum. Since many policies involve preserving the status quo in some respects while challenging it in others, these authors contend that framing policies in different ways for different parties can elicit (or dampen) zero- sum thinking.
In addition, emphasising that feminists care about men and view gender relations as positive-sum could go some ways towards moderating the heated culture war debate when it comes to gender issues, in which one in six men aged 16–29 think feminism has done more harm than good (Skinner & Gottfried, 2024). Given that previous research has shown that women who are exposed to these kinds of negative stereotypes about feminists are less likely to self-identify as feminist than those exposed to more positive stereotypes (Roy et al., 2007), these findings could also have important implications for encouraging women (and men) to freely identify as feminists and advocate for issues that affect them.
Conclusion
When marginalised groups come together to demand better conditions, it is common to think of them as engaging in zero-sum competition with other groups, whereby they are looking to make gains for themselves by wresting limited resources from the hands of others (Rozycka-Tran et al., 2015; Fearon & Götz, 2024). However, not all accounts of intergroup relations emphasise antagonism and competition (Kant, 1991; Bloom, 2010; Pinker, 2018; Leach et al., 2023), and many feminists have suggested that the movement seeks to make positive changes for everyone, including men (hooks, 2000). The present studies showed that feminists care about men and issues that affect them, and see outcomes for men and women as positively associated with each other. Participants also consistently underestimated the degree to which feminists cared about men and saw men’s and women’s issues as positively related. These findings paint a multi-faceted picture of feminists’ real and perceived attitudes towards men, adding to previous research by Hopkins-Doyle et al. (2024) on feminists’ perceived misandry.
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Author Contribution
Conception and design: Jocelyn Chalmers, Robbie M. Sutton. Data collection: Jocelyn Chalmers. Data analysis and interpretation: Jocelyn Chalmers. Manuscript drafting and revising: Jocelyn Chalmers, Robbie M. Sutton. Approval of final version for submission: Jocelyn Chalmers, Robbie M. Sutton.
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Data Availability
The data that support the findings of this study are openly available at the Open Science Framework (OSF) at https://osf.io/vthxk/?view_only=f5ca67da53f648dda2281050a1efac83 along with additional supplementary materials.
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Ethical Approval
This research involved human participants, and all three studies were conducted with the approval of the Psychology Research Ethics Committee at the University of Kent. Ethics committee approval code: 202116299071767266 (Study 1); 202216684640258014 (Study 2).
Informed Consent
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Informed consent was obtained from all participants prior to completing each survey.Conflict of Interest
The authors do not have any potential conflicts of interest to disclose.