Peter Belmi, a professor at UVA’s graduate business school, begins his recently published article with the story of a woman who sued Walmart, because she felt her boss was sexist.
“Her supervisor abused her and several other women in her department on a daily basis and called women ‘good for nothing,'” he recalls.
But a federal judge ruled against her, because he argued the guy was a jerk to men as well.
“When men are sexist to women and also rude to other men, it creates this perception of gender blindness – the idea that somebody treats everybody equally the same regardless of whether they’re a man or a woman,” Belmi explains.
And that, he says, is a problem.
“A crucial step in combating sexism is people recognizing when it happens in the first place.”
He and colleagues Sora Jun and Gabrielle Adams presented nearly 5,000 people with tweets about women from Donald Trump. Most agreed he was sexist. Then, they were shown tweets in which the former president insulted men.
“Liberals, no matter what they saw, they said that Donald Trump was sexist, but the conservative-leaning participants showed the effects -- the more they saw Donald Trump berating other men on Twitter, the less they thought he was sexist.”
In a second study, subjects were shown an article about a boss who demonstrated gender discrimination.
“The article was actually adapted from a real article on what it’s like to work at Amazon.”
Here again, the perception that this man was rude to everyone tended to afford protection from a charge of sexism.
Next, the researchers plan to study whether a similar dynamic is at work for people who are racist.
"You definitely see this a lot in comedy, for example. A lot of comedians make incredibly offensive, racist remarks, but people dismiss them as racist, because those comedians also make fun of other groups," Belmi says.
He and his colleagues hope to learn more about how women react to sexist bosses who are also rude – whether that takes a toll on their self-esteem and makes them less likely to report abuse.
