Personal Experience, Ideology and Support for Feminism

Abstract
Previous research has come to conflicting conclusions about the relative importance of personal experience versus ideology, and within the latter about the relative significance of secular and religious beliefs and values, in creating support for feminism. This paper reports a test of the relative significance of these variables for women and for men. The study used data collected in 1988 from a random sample of the “Middletown” population (N = 400). Feminist support was related to social class, race, three indicators of personal dissatisfaction, economic liberalism, and moral-religious variables. As suggested by Klein (1984), personal experience variables were more important for women. This was also true for moral-religious factors. In comparison with women, the feminist attitudes of men were more strongly influenced by class factors.

This publication has 8 references indexed in Scilit: