American Men's and Women's Beliefs about Gender Discrimination: For Men, It's Not Quite a ZeroSum Game

Open Access

Abstract

We surveyed Americans regarding their beliefs about gender discrimination over the past several decades. Men and women agreed that women faced much more discrimination than men in the past, and they agreed that the discrimination gap between men and women has narrowed in recent years. However, men perceived the gap as narrower than women did at all time periods, and reported that there is little difference today in the amount of gender discrimination women and men face. Political ideology moderated these beliefs such that conservative men were most likely to report that anti-Man bias now equals or exceeds anti-Woman bias. Similar to recent research on beliefs about racism, these findings suggest that groups which differ historically in status and power exhibit perceptual differences regarding the changing nature of discrimination.