Methods that make us feel safer? Challenging the effect of sexism confrontation and holding measures of violence against women up to scrutiny

This thesis critically evaluates key claims in sexism and violence against women research, addressing the question: ‘Are past research methods and measures painting a distorted picture of sexism and its manifestations that uphold violence against women?’ This is timely, considering the need for a more robust evidence base post-replication crisis and rising backlash against gender equality, particularly among younger men. We explore three potentially misleading claims: that challenging sexism mitigates its negative outcomes; that women’s fear of crime is generally unfounded; that rape myth acceptance is declining. In Chapter 2, in three experimental studies, we examine whether challenging sexism mitigates its negative outcomes. By correcting methodological flaws in previous studies, such as the lack of a non-sexist control and failure to control for baseline sexism, we found that the supposed benefits of challenging sexism disappear. Chapter 3 examines the gender-fear ‘paradox’, which suggests that women's fears of victimisation are disproportionate to their risk, demonstrated in crime statistics. The study reveals that women significantly restrict behaviours more than men to avoid victimisation, indicating that crime statistics do not represent the true extent of the risks women face. Moreover, both men and women show low trust in police to report crimes. Chapter 4 challenges the narrative of declining rape myth acceptance. We argue that in using the term ‘rape’, these measures evoke archetypal rape scripts not representative of most cases. In two experimental studies, we replaced the word ‘rape’ with behaviour-specific descriptions, finding higher scores of rape myth acceptance and stronger correlations with victim-blaming and perpetrator exoneration, compared with the original scale. These findings suggest that societal attitudes may not be improving as previously thought, highlighting the need for more accurate measurement tools. This thesis underscores the necessity of refining research methodologies to inform effective policies and counteract the illusion that sexist and rape cultures are diminishing.