ORIGINAL ARTICLE The Relationships between Ambivalent Sexism and Religiosity among Turkish University Students Nagihan Taşdemir & Nuray Sakallı-Uğurlu Published online: 18 August 2009 # Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2009 Abstract This study explored the relationships among hostile sexism (HS), benevolent sexism (BS), and religios- ity for men and women in Turkey, where Islam is the predominant religion. 73 male and 93 female university students completed measures of ambivalent sexism and religiosity. Replicating previous work with Christians, religiosity was a significant correlate of BS when HS was controlled, for both men and women. As predicted, and in contrast to previous research with Christians, partial correlations indicated that Muslim religiosity was a signif- icant correlate of HS for men, when BS was controlled, but not for women. Women but not men showed a significant difference between religiosity’ s partial correlations with HS and BS. The results were discussed in the light of relevant literature. Keywords Hostile sexism . Benevolent sexism . Religiosity . Islam . Muslim sample . Turkish sample Introduction Ambivalent sexism (Glick and Fiske 1996) has been an important and popular topic of social psychologists since it covers both negative and subjectively positive attitudes toward women. Researchers have examined the links between ambivalent sexism and other social issues, one of which was religiosity among Christian samples (Burn and Busso 2005; Glick et al. 2002). The researchers specifically found that religiosity was a significant predictor of benevolent sexism rather than hostile sexism in predominantly Christian Western countries. However, there is no empirical study demonstrating the patterns of relationships between ambiva- lent sexism and religiosity in Islamic non-Western cultures. Therefore, the goal of the present article is to explore religiosity as a correlate of ambivalent sexism among Turkish male and female university students to demonstrate how the negative and subjectively positive sides of sexism are associated with religion in a Muslim sample. Sexism refers to the approval of traditional gender status quo in which women should be subordinated by men. With a new conceptualization, Glick and Fiske (1996, 2001) define sexism as reflecting a deep ambiva- lence rather than a uniform antipathy toward women. These researchers define the two facets of ambivalent sexism as Hostile Sexism (HS) and Benevolent Sexism (BS), which exist in a complementary manner across cultures (Glick et al. 2000). The first facet of ambivalent sexism, HS, includes negative and aggressive sexist attitudes toward women who are perceived as competing with men through sexuality or feminism. HS covers the beliefs that women are striving for gaining power over men. Researchers showed that people who are high on HS are likely to evaluate non-traditional women negatively (Glick et al. 1997). The second facet of ambivalent sexism, BS, is “a set of interrelated attitudes toward women that are sexist in terms of viewing women stereotypically and in restricted roles but that are subjec- tively positive in feeling tone and also tend to elicit behaviors typically categorized as pro-social or intimacy- N. Sakallı-Uğurlu Department of Psychology, The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey-TÜBİTAK scholar, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey e-mail: nurays@metu.edu.tr N. Taşdemir (*) Department of Psychology, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey e-mail: nagihan@metu.edu.tr Sex Roles (2010) 62:420–426 DOI 10.1007/s11199-009-9693-6