Abstract
This study uses machine learning techniques to explore the relationships between contemporary sexist attitudes and demographic and socioeconomic factors. A total of 1110 Greek adults participated in the study from November 2021 to February 2022, recruited online through undergraduate psychology students using network sampling. The sample comprised 67.48% women and 32.52% men aged 18–80 (M = 29.58, SD = 13.53). Demographic and socioeconomic factors such as age, marital status, whether or not children are present, education, occupation, and income were collected. Nine linear, nonlinear, and nonparametric machine learning models examined the impact of demographics and socioeconomic factors on modern sexism. After data-splitting (train dataset 50%, test dataset 50%), the nine machine learning models were trained to classify the top 33% scorers in the modern sexism scale. The model input variables were only demographics to avoid overlapping of inputs–outputs. A tenfold cross-validation method was then implemented in the training session to select the optimal machine learning model among the nine tested. The ctree algorithm was an optimal classification (Train-accuracy = 0.69, Test-accuracy = 0.71). The analysis revealed that gender, occupation, and having children significantly shaped contemporary sexist attitudes. The study highlights the need for targeted interventions and policies to promote gender equality and challenge harmful stereotypes.
Similar content being viewed by others
Data availability
The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Code availability
The software code and algorithms used in this study are not publicly available. Further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.
References
Agadullina E, Lovakov A, Balezina M, Gulevich OA (2022) Ambivalent sexism and violence toward women: a meta-analysis. Eur J Soc Psychol 52(5–6):819–859
Ajzen I (2014) Attitude structure and behavior. In: Attitude structure and function. Psychology Press, pp 241–274
Alavi M, Visentin DC, Thapa DK, Hunt GE, Watson R, Cleary M (2020) Chi-square for model fit in confirmatory factor analysis. J Adv Nurs 76(9):2209–2211
Allouche O, Tsoar A, Kadmon R (2006) Assessing the Accuracy of species distribution models: prevalence, kappa and the true skill statistic (TSS). J Appl Ecol 43(6):1223–1232
Avula N, Veesam S, Behera S, Balasubramanian S (2022) Building robust machine learning models for small chemical science data: the case of shear viscosity of fluids. Mach Learn Sci Technol. https://doi.org/10.1088/2632-2153/acac01
Beauregard K (2021) Sexism and the Australian voter: how sexist attitudes influenced vote choice in the 2019 federal election. Aust J Polit Sci 56:298–317. https://doi.org/10.1080/10361146.2021.1971834
Bräm D, Nahum U, Atkinson A, Koch G, Pfister M (2022) Evaluation of machine learning methods for covariate data imputation in pharmacometrics. CPT Pharmacomet Syst Pharmacol 11:1638–1648. https://doi.org/10.1002/psp4.12874
Brandt M (2011) Sexism and gender inequality across 57 societies. Psychol Sci 22:1413–1418. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797611420445
Brown TA (2015) Confirmatory factor analysis for applied research (2nd edn). Guilford publications
Cassese E, Barnes T (2019) Reconciling sexism and women’s support for republican candidates: a look at gender, class, and whiteness in the 2012 and 2016 presidential races. Political Behav. https://doi.org/10.1007/S11109-018-9468-2
Cervantes J, Garcia-Lamont F, Rodríguez-Mazahua L, Lopez A (2020) A comprehensive survey on support vector machine classification: applications, challenges and trends. Neurocomputing 408:189–215
Cunningham GB, Melton N (2012) Prejudice against lesbian, gay, and bisexual coaches: the influence of race, religious fundamentalism, modern sexism, and contact with sexual minorities. Sociol Sport J 29(3):283–305
Daniya T, Geetha M, Kumar K (2020) Classification and regression trees with gini index. Adv Math Sci J 9(10):8237–8247. https://doi.org/10.37418/AMSJ.9.10.53
Eloudi H, Hssaisoune M, Reddad H, Namous M, Ismaili M, Krimissa S, Bouchaou L (2023) Robustness of optimized decision tree-based machine learning models to map gully erosion vulnerability. Soil Syst 7(2):50
Fokkema M, Iliescu D, Greiff S, Ziegler M (2022) Machine learning and prediction in psychological assessment. Eur J Psychol Assess. https://doi.org/10.1027/1015-5759/a000714
Gholizadeh M, Jamei M, Ahmadianfar I, Pourrajab R (2020) Prediction of nanofluids viscosity using random forest (RF) approach. Chemom Intell Lab Syst 201:104010
Glick P, Fiske ST (1996) The ambivalent sexism inventory: differentiating hostile and benevolent sexism. J Pers Soc Psychol 70(3):491–512. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.70.3.491
Gök E, Aydın B, Weidman J (2019) The impact of higher education on unemployed Turkish people’s attitudes toward gender: a multilevel analysis. Int J Educ Dev. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.IJEDUDEV.2018.10.004
Guo C, Chang K (2022) A novel algorithm to estimate the significance level of a feature interaction using the extreme gradient boosting machine. Int J Environ Res Public Health. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19042338
Hair J, Black W, Babin B, Anderson R (2010) Multivariate data analysis, 7th edn. Prentice-Hall Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ
Hammond M, Sibley C, Overall N (2014) The allure of sexism. Soc Psychol Pers Sci 5:422–429. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550613506124
Hideg I, Ferris D (2016) The compassionate sexist? How benevolent sexism promotes and undermines gender equality in the workplace. J Pers Soc Psychol 111(5):706–727. https://doi.org/10.1037/PSPI0000072
Hoo ZH, Candlish J, Teare D (2017) What is a ROC curve? Emerg Med J 34(6):357–359
Hothorn T, Hornik K, & Zeileis A (2015) Ctree: conditional inference trees. The comprehensive R archive network, 8
Hu LT, Bentler PM (1999) Cutoff criteria for fit indexes in covariance structure analysis: conventional criteria versus new alternatives. Struct Equ Model 6(1):1–55
Kågesten A, Gibbs S, Blum R, Moreau C, Chandra-Mouli V, Herbert A, Amin A (2016) Understanding factors that shape gender attitudes in early adolescence globally: a mixed-methods systematic review. PLoS ONE. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0157805
Kyriazos T, & Poga M (2023) Quantum mechanics and psychological phenomena: a metaphorical exploration. Self-published. ISBN-13: 979-8863404592
León-Ramírez B, Ferrando P (2013) Assessing sexism in a sample of Mexican students: a validity analysis based on the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory. Anuario De Psicología 43:335–347
Lewis JA (2018) From modern sexism to gender microaggressions: understanding contemporary forms of sexism and their influence on diverse women. In: Travis CB, White JW, Rutherford A, Williams WS, Cook SL, Wyche KF (eds) APA handbook of the psychology of women: History, theory, and battlegrounds pp. 381–397. American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000059-019
Mair P (2018) Modern psychometrics with R. Springer International Publishing, Cham
McDonald RP (1999) Test theory: a unified treatment. Erlbaum
Mckitrick J (2015) A dispositional account of gender. Philos Stud 172:2575–2589. https://doi.org/10.1007/S11098-014-0425-6
Menaker TA, Miller AK (2012) Culpability attributions towards juvenile female prostitutes. Child Abuse Rev 22(3):169–181. https://doi.org/10.1002/car.2204
Miller A, Panneerselvam J, Liu L (2022) A review of regression and classification techniques for analysis of common and rare variants and gene-environmental factors. Neurocomputing 489:466–485
Morrison MA, Morrison TG, Pope GA, Zumbo BD (1999) An investigation of measures of modern and old-fashioned sexism. Soc Indic Res 48(1):39–50
Mullinix KJ, Leeper TJ, Druckman JN, Freese J (2015) The generalizability of survey experiments. J Exp Political Sci 2(2):109–138
Oreski D (2023) Application of machine learning methods for data analytics in social sciences. WSEAS Trans Syst. https://doi.org/10.37394/23202.2023.22.8
Osborne JW, Costello AB (2004) Sample size and subject to item ratio in principal components analysis. Pract Assess, Res, Eval 9(1):11. https://doi.org/10.7275/ktzq-jq66
Owen A, Wei A (2021) Sexism, household decisions, and the gender wage gap. Labour Econ. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.labeco.2021.102062
Penny KI (1996) Appropriate critical values when testing for a single multivariate outlier by using the Mahalanobis distance. J R Stat Soc: Ser C (appl Stat) 45(1):73–81
Reichl A, Ali J, Uyeda K (2018) Latent sexism in print ads increases acceptance of sexual assault. SAGE Open. https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244018769755
Roets A, Hiel A, Dhont K (2012) Is sexism a gender issue? A motivated social cognition perspective on men’s and women’s sexist attitudes toward own and other gender. Eur J Pers 26:350–359. https://doi.org/10.1002/per.843
Roseboom T (2019) Why achieving gender equality is of fundamental importance to improve the health and well-being of future generations: a DOHaD perspective. J Dev Orig Health Dis 11:101–104. https://doi.org/10.1017/S2040174419000734
Rosenthal L, Levy S, Militano M (2014) Polyculturalism and sexist attitudes. Psychol Women Q 38:519–534. https://doi.org/10.1177/0361684313510152
Russell S (2016) Global gender discourses in education: evidence from post-genocide Rwanda. Comp Educ 52:492–515. https://doi.org/10.1080/03050068.2016.1233727
Ryo M, Rillig M (2017) Statistically reinforced machine learning for non-linear patterns and variable interactions. Ecosphere. https://doi.org/10.1002/ECS2.1976
Salman Saeed M, Mustafa MW, Sheikh UU, Jumani TA, Khan I, Atawneh S, Hamadneh NN (2020) An efficient boosted C5.0 decision-tree-based classification approach for detecting non-technical losses in power utilities. Energies 13(12):3242
Samory M, Sen I, Kohne J, Floeck F, & Wagner C (2021) "call me sexist, but...": revisiting sexism detection using psychological scales and adversarial samples. In: proceedings of the international AAAI conference on web and social media, 15, 573-584. https://doi.org/10.1609/icwsm.v15i1.18085
Sayers R (2012) The cost of being female: critical comment on block. J Bus Ethics 106:519–524. https://doi.org/10.1007/S10551-011-1017-4
Schivinski B (2021) Eliciting brand-related social media engagement: a conditional inference tree framework. J Bus Res 130:594–602
Shnabel N, Bar-Anan Y, Kende A, Bareket O, Lazar Y (2016) Help to perpetuate traditional gender roles: benevolent sexism increases engagement in dependency-oriented cross-gender helping. J Pers Soc Psychol 110(1):55–75. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000037
Silván-Ferrero M, López A (2007) Benevolent sexism toward men and women: justification of the traditional system and conventional gender roles in spain. Sex Roles 57:607–614. https://doi.org/10.1007/S11199-007-9271-8
Sinta D, Wijayanto H, Sartono B (2014) Ensemble K-nearest neighbors method to predict rice price in Indonesia. Appl Math Sci 8:7993–8005. https://doi.org/10.12988/AMS.2014.49721
Swim J, Mallett R, Russo-Devosa Y, Stangor C (2005) Judgments of sexism: a comparison of the subtlety of sexism measures and sources of variability in judgments of sexism1. Psychol Women Q 29:406–411. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-6402.2005.00240.x
Tabachnick BG, & Fidell LS (2013) Using multivariate statistics: international edition. Pearson2012
Tinklin T, Croxford L, Ducklin A, Frame B (2005) Gender and attitudes to work and family roles: the views of young people at the millennium. Gend Educ 17:129–142. https://doi.org/10.1080/0954025042000301429
Tresh F, Steeden B, Moura G, Leite A, Swift H, Player A (2019) Endorsing and reinforcing gender and age stereotypes: the negative effect on self-rated leadership potential for women and older workers. Front Psychol. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00688
Wang F, Wang Q, Nie F, Li Z, Yu W, Wang R (2019) Unsupervised linear discriminant analysis for jointly clustering and subspace learning. IEEE Trans Knowl Data Eng 33:1276–1290. https://doi.org/10.1109/TKDE.2019.2939524
World Medical Association (1975) Declaration of Helsinki: Ethical principles for medical research involving human subjects. https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki-ethical-principles-for-medical-research-involving-human-subjects/
Yeom S, Giacomelli I, Fredrikson M, & Jha S (2018, July) Privacy risk in machine learning: analyzing the connection to overfitting. In: 2018 IEEE 31st computer security foundations symposium (CSF), IEEE, pp 268–282
Zhang Z, Lai Z, Xu Y, Shao L, Wu J, Xie G (2017) Discriminative elastic-net regularized linear regression. IEEE Trans Image Process 26:1466–1481. https://doi.org/10.1109/TIP.2017.2651396
Zhang Y, Tang T, Tang K (2019) Cooking frequency and hypertension with gender as a modifier. Nutr J. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12937-019-0509-4
Zhou Z, Hooker G (2021) Unbiased measurement of feature importance in tree-based methods. ACM Trans Knowl Discov Data (TKDD) 15(2):1–21
Zohair L (2019) Prediction of student’s performance by modelling small dataset size. Int J Educ Technol High Educ 16:1–18. https://doi.org/10.1186/S41239-019-0160-3
Funding
No funding was received for conducting this study.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
All authors, whose names appear on the submission, made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; or the creation of new software used in the work. All authors drafted the work or revised it critically for important intellectual content. All authors approved the version to be published. All authors agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.
Ethical approval
Approval was obtained from the ethics committee of the University of Western Macedonia. The procedures used in this study adhere to the tenets of the Declaration of Helsinki.
Human or animal rights
No generative AI was utilized without human oversight in the drafting of this manuscript.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary Information
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Kyriazos, T., Poga, M. Association of modern sexism with demographic and socioeconomic factors: a machine learning approach. Soc. Netw. Anal. Min. 13, 154 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13278-023-01164-y
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13278-023-01164-y