The equation of prejudice with antipathy is challenged by recent research on sexism. Benevolent sexism (a subjectively favorable, chivalrous ideology that offers protection and affection to women who embrace conventional roles) coexists with hostile sexism (antipathy toward women who are viewed as usurping men’s power). The Ambivalent Sexism Inventory, first validated in U.S. samples, has been administered to over 15,000 men and women in 19 nations. Hostile and benevolent sexism are complementary, cross-culturally prevalent ideologies, both of which predict gender inequality. Women, as compared with men, consistently reject hostile sexism but often endorse benevolent sexism (especially in the most sexist cultures). By rewarding women for conforming to a patriarchal status quo, benevolent sexism inhibits gender equality. More generally, affect toward minority groups is often ambivalent, but subjectively positive stereotypes are not necessarily benign.

If woman had no existence save in the fiction written by men, one would imagine her a person … very various; heroic and mean; splendid and sordid; infinitely beautiful and hideous in the extreme.

—Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

What Woolf saw as “astonishing extremes” in men’s images of women date back to ancient texts. Pomeroy (1975), a social historian, suggested that classical representations of women fit into the polarized categories of goddesses, whores, wives, and slaves. Feminists who analyze contemporary society (e.g., Faludi, 1992) argue that similarly extreme characterizations of women are alive and well in popular culture, such as film depictions that divide women into faithful wives and murderous seductresses. Although what Tavris and Wade (1984) termed the pedestal–gutter syndrome (or the Madonna–whore dichotomy) has long been recognized by psychologists, historians, and feminists, most empirical researchers have identified sexism only with hostility toward women, ignoring the corresponding tendency to place (at least some) women on a pedestal.

This article reviews recent theory and empirical research on hostile and benevolent sexism. Hostile sexism is an adversarial...