Ambivalent Sexism in the State of Qatar: Gender Roles and Patriarchal Attitudes

Abstract

The State of Qatar has undertaken considerable initiatives that prioritize strategies for female empowerment and promote gender equality. This paper investigates whether the effects of these equality initiatives are reflected in national attitudes toward women through the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (ASI). While prior research has focused almost exclusively on the role of social implications, less attention has been paid to the public sentiments underlying traditional gender roles and patriarchal attitudes in a rapidly modernizing society. How and to what extent do various individual differences contribute to ASI scores in Qatar? And how does public opinion respond to benevolent sexism, which promotes ideologies that are slightly more progressive than those espoused by hostile sexism? This paper examines these questions by using national public opinion data from a 2019 survey conducted by the Social and Economic Survey Research Institute (SESRI) at Qatar University. Given the high levels of gender inequality in Qatar, the results suggest that measures of hostility and benevolence correlate with Qatari national social attitudes. They scored slightly high on benevolent sexism. We explore these findings in light of ASI theoretical expectations, moving the discussion beyond the case study of Qatar to explore the different implications of the ASI in other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries.