This is an ABC podcast.

Imagine you're a man.

For some of you, that might not be stretching your imagination much, but stay with me.

You're a man and you're approaching set of doors, and just behind you is a woman who's also heading towards the doors.

You both arrive and what do you do?

Well, if you're a nice guy, maybe you hold the doors open for her.

Maybe you let her through first.

But wait, is that sexist?

Well, would you do the same for a man?

But hang on, either way, does it even matter all that much? It's really easy to trivialize the notion of benevolent sexism.

Like, I'm not supposed to hold a door open and I'm a terrible person if I do that.

We're not saying that. It's really these other things at work.

Benevolent sexism is a term coined by psychology researchers Susan Fisk and Peter Glick,

and it's part of their ambivalent sexism theory. The idea that sexism has these two forms,

hostile and benevolent, and you can't really understand it and its impact without considering

both types. And while holding doors is an admittedly

simplistic example, professors Fisk and Glick say benevolent sexism plays out in all sorts of

harmful ways, in the home, at work, and beyond. So the problem that Peter and I were trying

to solve when we invented the ambivalent sexism idea was how do you have two groups of unequal status?

And there are lots of groups of unequal status in society, but who live together.

So you think about it, it's very complicated to keep the system going where women have lower status in society, but men and women marry each other.

You're listening to All in the Mind. I'm Sana Khadar. Today, sexism with the side of benevolence.

...