Perceived Sexist Events and Feminist Identity Development Attitudes: Links to Women's Psychological Distress

Data from 104 undergraduate and 83 faculty/staff women indicated that perceived sexist events, measured by the Schedule of Sexist Events Scale (SSE), along with Passive Acceptance (PA), Revelation (R), and Embeddedness-Emanation (EE) attitudes, measured by the Feminist Identity Development Scale (FIDS), each related positively to women's psychological distress, measured by the General Severity Index (GSI) of the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI). When social desirability, age, and socioeconomic status (SES) were entered as covariates in a multiple regression analysis, however, only recent perceived sexist events and PA accounted for unique variance in distress. In addition, PA tentatively was supported as a moderator of the relation between recent perceived sexist events and distress. Finally, PA scores related negatively, and R, EE, and Active Commitment scores related positively to perceived sexist events; beyond covariates, only PA and R scores accounted for unique variance in lifetime perceived sexist events, and only R scores accounted for unique variance in recent perceived sexist events.