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FB Kolloq SoSe2026/27: Prof. Dr. Melanie Steffens

„Underestimating sexism?”

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Prof. Dr. Melanie Steffens, Universität Landau
„Underestimating sexism?”

 Laws such as the AGG forbid discrimination. In line with this law, many people are motivated to respond without prejudice. Still, inequality is pervasive. Shedding further light on the roots of discrimination could help diminish inequality. Gender, age, and race/ethnicity are theorized to play major roles as social categories giving rise to discrimination (i.e., sexism, ageism, and racism). A defining feature of modern isms is people’s belief that discrimination is a thing of the past. Conversely, we posit that awareness of continuing discrimination is critical for combatting discrimination, and that recognizing concrete instances of discrimination is a crucial ability for the ultimate aim of reducing discrimination.
Our research targets the underestimation of sexism, compared to other forms of discrimination (as reference categories). We developed a scenario scale that uses the same situations (e.g., excluding co-workers of one social category from an informal meeting) in a sexism versus racism version (counterbalanced across participants; e.g., excluding female vs. Black co-workers). We consistently found that on average, sexism scenarios were judged as less discriminatory than racism scenarios. The racism-sexism difference was related more to other sexism than racism-related constructs (especially to endorsement of categorization vs. blindness). In ongoing studies, we (a) investigate the effect in other cultures, (b) compare sexism with ageism, (c) examine relations with downstream consequences (e.g., rape myth acceptance), and (d) validate the scale.