Anti-Egalitarianism and Female Privilege Awareness

Previous studies have suggested that those who benefit from privilege may deny the existence of their privilege for ego-protective reasons (Knowles et al., 2014; Phillips & Lowery, 2015, 2020). As benefitting from privilege suggests that one is less responsible for their achievements and more responsible for their failures, it makes sense that men would deny male privilege, white people would deny white privilege, etc. It also makes sense that men might be motivated to deny the existence of male privilege to preserve it, motivated by self or collective group-interest. Both of these explanations for denial of male privilege suggest that possession of a privileged identity (being a man) should predict denial of male privilege. We previously sought to show that denial of male privilege is not unique to men, and that it is motivated more by a psychological tendency to support inequity by opposing egalitarianism. This was done using the facets of right-wing authoritarianism (RWA, Altemeyer, 1981) and social dominance orientation (SDO, Sidanius & Pratto, 1999), both of which are established predictors of attitudes towards group-based inequality (Duckitt & Sibley, 2009). Both RWA (a preference for traditional values and collective security) and SDO (a preference for hierarchy and inequality) have been found to be multi-faceted (Duckitt et al., 2010; Ho et al., 2015). RWA contains authoritarianism, conservatism, and traditionalism (Duckitt et al., 2010) and SDO contains dominance and anti-egalitarianism (Ho et al., 2015). Anti-egalitarianism is an approach to hierarchy maintenance that avoids overt dominance in favour of more subtle undermining of equality and equity by opposing egalitarian policies. In our previous study, we found that when controlling for the facets of RWA and SDO male gender identity was not a strong predictor of denial of male privilege. Instead, the strongest predictor of male privilege denial, was indeed, the anti-egalitarianism facet of SDO, which accounted for 47% of the explanatory power of the model, which itself, accounted for 59% of the variability in reported male privilege awareness. Our finding shows that although managing a privileged identity and self-interest may influence men’s reported male privilege awareness, anti- egalitarianism has a greater effect. We have identified two competing explanations for the relationship between anti-egalitarianism and denial of male privilege awareness. Those who oppose egalitarianism may deny that (male) privilege exists in order to preserve privilege by claiming that there is no problem to be addressed, or they may oppose egalitarianism because they do not see privilege, male or otherwise. If we find that anti-egalitarianism not only predicts denial of male privilege, but also belief in female privilege, this would support the former, but not the latter hypothesis. In an attempt to rule out the possibility that even non-male participants are denying the existence of male privilege as an attempt to preserve privilege itself (for managing a privileged identity or self-interest reasons) we will, in a separate analysis, control for other identities privileged in Australia, such as cisgender, heterosexual, white, and Christian. Altemeyer, B. (1981). Right-wing authoritarianism. University of Manitoba press. Duckitt, J., Bizumic, B., Krauss, S. W., & Heled, E. (2010). A tripartite approach to right-wing authoritarianism: The authoritarianism-conservatism-traditionalism model. Political Psychology, 31(5), 685–715. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2010.00781.x Duckitt, J., & Sibley, C. G. (2009). A dual-process motivational model of ideology, politics, and prejudice. Psychological Inquiry, 20(2–3), 98–109. https://doi.org/10.1080/10478400903028540 Ho, A. K., Sidanius, J., Kteily, N., Sheehy-Skeffington, J., Pratto, F., Henkel, K. E., Foels, R., & Stewart, A. L. (2015). The nature of social dominance orientation: Theorizing and measuring preferences for intergroup inequality using the new SDO₇ scale. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 109(6), 1003–1028. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000033 Knowles, E. D., Lowery, B. S., Chow, R. M., & Unzueta, M. M. (2014). Deny, distance, or dismantle? How white Americans manage a privileged identity. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 9(6), 594–609. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691614554658 Phillips, L. T., & Lowery, B. S. (2015). The hard-knock life? Whites claim hardships in response to racial inequity. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 61, 12–18. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2015.06.008 Phillips, L. T., & Lowery, B. S. (2020). I ain’t no fortunate one: On the motivated denial of class privilege. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000240 Sidanius, J., & Pratto, F. (1999). Social dominance: An intergroup theory of social hierarchy and oppression. Cambridge University Press.

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