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The Attitudes towards Women Scale (AWS‐B): A comparison of women in engineering and traditional occupations with male engineers
Author(s) -
Haworth Geoffrey,
Povey Robert,
Clift Stephen
Publication year - 1986
Publication title -
british journal of social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.855
H-Index - 98
eISSN - 2044-8309
pISSN - 0144-6665
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-8309.1986.tb00745.x
Subject(s) - parry , scale (ratio) , psychology , class (philosophy) , social psychology , gender studies , politics , sociology , political science , law , computer science , physics , quantum mechanics , artificial intelligence
Parry (1983) presents a British version of the Attitudes towards Women Scale (Spence et al. , 1973) and reports data for middle‐class and working‐class women. In the study described here the AWS‐B was administered to four groups of males and females aged between 16 and 21 years. The groups comprised 39 male and 27 female trainee engineers, 59 females pursuing careers in traditional occupations and 14 secondary school girls following an engineering link course. No significant differences in overall attitude emerged between female groups, but males were significantly more traditional in their attitudes towards women compared with the females. On 16 of the 21 items in the scale women were significantly more liberal, with strong differences on items concerned with women's position in politics, business and industry. Men were significantly more liberal on one item concerned with women's freedom to propose marriage, and more liberal, but not significantly so, on a further four items. Further research is needed into the determinants and consequences of individuals' attitudes towards women, and the AWS‐B provides a valuable instrument for this purpose.