ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Reference Points in Men’s and Women’s Judgmentsof Progress Toward Gender Equality

Richard Paul Eibach & Joyce Ehrlinger

# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010

Abstract Men rate progress toward gender equality morefavorably than do women. Across two studies with U.S.undergraduate samples, we explore whether this differencein perceived progress stems from a gender difference inchosen reference points. Using ANOVA and regression, wedemonstrate that men (n=33) assess progress relative to thepast more than to the goal of full equality. In contrast,women (n=46) assess progress relative to full equality asmuch as to the past. As a result, current progress seemsmore substantial to men than to women. Experimentalmanipulation of reference points led men (n=60) andwomen (n=60) to adopt the same reference point and,consequently, to offer similar assessments of progress.

Keywords Reference points . Framing . Social judgment .

Gender progress . Equality

Introduction

The history of progress toward gender equality in theUnited States has been a mixture of dramatic gains,important setbacks, and persistent falling short of fullequality (Blau et al. 2006; Valian 1998). Given thisimperfect history of progress, there seems to be muchroom for disagreement when people evaluate the level of

overall progress toward gender equality. Indeed, nationallyrepresentative opinion surveys in the United States find thatAmericans often disagree when rating gender progress and,in particular, men tend to report seeing more progresstoward gender equality than women report seeing (Kluegeland Smith 1986). Across two studies, the current investi-gation explores a novel approach to understanding thisgender difference in assessments of progress. In order tojudge progress toward a goal such as gender equality, aperson needs to compare the present to some referencepoint, which is usually either some moment in the past orsome representation of the end goal. Importantly, thereference point that is chosen as a comparison standardcan profoundly affect assessments of progress toward thatgoal (Eibach and Ehrlinger 2006). Relative to conditions ofinequality decades ago, for example, there has beensubstantial progress toward gender equality. Relative tothe end goal of full gender equality, however, progresstoward equality has been inadequate. We argue that menand women differ in their assessments of progress becausethe goal of full gender equality is represented differently formen than for women in a way that influences its salienceand the likelihood that it will be used as a comparisonstandard for assessing progress. We test this argument inStudy 1 by asking men and women to assess progresstoward gender equality and to report the reference pointsthey used to make that assessment. In Study 2 weexperimentally manipulated the reference points men andwomen used as comparison standards for judging progressin order to test the causal influence of reference points onmen’s and women’s judgments of gender progress.

This explanation of gender differences in judgments ofprogress toward equality is based on the constructivistapproach to social judgment which suggests that judgmentsof a social object or event require a comparison between

R. P. Eibach (*)Psychology Department, University of Waterloo,200 University Avenue West,Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1e-mail: reibach@uwaterloo.ca

J. EhrlingerFlorida State University,Tallahassee, FL, USA

Sex RolesDOI 10.1007/s11199-010-9846-7

that object or event and some relevant standard (Asch 1940;Schwarz and Bless 1992). Often more than one standard ispossible. For example, a person could compare the value ofa salary offer to the salary necessary for her to avoid theneed for public assistance, to the average salary attained byothers with her qualifications, or to a particularly highsalary that a colleague has attained. The comparisonstandard that is used for a given judgment can have aprofound effect on the outcome of that judgment. The samesocial object or event can often look favorable whencompared to one standard but decidedly unfavorable whencompared to another. The comparison standard used tomake judgments tends to be based on what is mostcognitively accessible, be that because of the immediatesituation, recent events, or qualities of the individualmaking the judgment.

We propose that the chronically accessible standardsthat men use to judge gender progress differ from thechronically accessible standards that women use and,consequently, men’s and women’s overall judgments ofgender progress tend to diverge. The primary goal of thisinvestigation is to illuminate why men and women differin their assessments of progress toward equality. How-ever, an implication of this hypothesis is that men andwomen might be contextually influenced to adopt acommon standard to judge gender progress and, if so,their judgments should converge. We test this predictiondirectly in our second study by manipulating the salienceof potential comparison standards for judging progresstoward gender equality. If men’s and women’s perspec-tives on gender progress are bridgeable when they arefocused on the same comparison standard, this construc-tivist approach suggests reason to be optimistic about thepossibility of finding common ground on questions ofgender inequality.

Perceptions of Progress Toward Gender Equalityin the Workplace

Any analysis of progress toward gender equality mustfirst specify the domain of equality under consideration.We chose to focus on gender equality in the workplacefor several reasons. First, as with progress toward genderequality in general, there has been a mixed history ofsuccess in improving gender equality in the workplace(Blau et al. 2006; Valian 1998). For example, the 1963Equal Pay Act established the principle that men andwomen should receive equal pay for equal work (Skrentny2002) and the gap in men’s and women’s wages narrowedsubstantially in the 1980s and early 1990s in the U.S.(Blau and Kahn 2006). However, since then, progress innarrowing the gap has slowed considerably (Blau andKahn 2006) and the gap between highly educated men and

women has actually grown (Dey and Hill 2007; Lips2003).

There is also evidence that men’s and women’sassessments of progress in the workplace divergesomewhat more than their assessments of progress inother domains. A June 2000 Wall Street Journal pollasked respondents to judge progress for women over thepast 20 years at work, at home, in the marketplace, andin media portrayals (cited in Bostrom 2000). Forty-ninepercent of men saw a lot of progress for women at work,compared to only 36% of women. This divergencebetween men’s and women’s assessments of progress isonly somewhat larger than the comparable divergence forequality in media portrayals and the marketplace butsubstantially larger than that in assessments of progress inthe home. Thirty-five percent of men saw a lot of progressin media portrayals of women, compared to 26% ofwomen. Forty-four percent of men saw a lot of progress inhow women were treated as customers, compared to 33%of women. Finally, men and women agreed most in theirjudgments of women’s progress at home, with 33% ofmen and 30% of women agreeing that there had been a lotof real progress.

American men’s and women’s perceptions of genderprogress diverge even when they are questioned aboutsomething more specific, such as progress narrowing thegender gap in wages. For example, the 1998/1999 Multi-investigator Study (Sniderman et al. 1999), asked aboutprogress narrowing the wage gap between men and womenover the previous decade in the United States. Seventy-fivepercent of male respondents compared to 63% of femalerespondents judged that the wage gap had decreased“somewhat” or “a lot,” 13% of male respondents and 16%of female respondents judged that the wage gap hadremained the same, and 12% of male respondents comparedto 21% of female respondents judged that the wage gap hadincreased “somewhat” or “a lot.”

The differences in men’s and women’s judgments ofprogress toward gender equality could be due to multipleunderlying causes. One plausible reason that men’s assess-ments of progress toward equality might be more favorablethan women’s assessments has to do with gender differ-ences in the availability of evidence for inequality. Womenmight experience discrimination first-hand in a way thatmen do not and, as such, be more aware of persistinginequalities. We do not address how this factor mightinfluence perceptions of progress in the current investiga-tion. Instead, we suggest a less intuitive, yet potentiallyequally powerful cause of the tendency for men to judgeprogress toward gender equality more favorably thanwomen do. Specifically, we suggest that men and womenmight adopt different reference points when evaluatingprogress toward equality.

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A Reference Point Model to Explain Group Differencesin Perceptions of Progress Toward Equality

Applying the constructivist approach to perceptions ofprogress would suggest that judgments of progress toward agoal requires a comparison between conditions in thepresent and some reference point, such as a starting pointin the past or a representation of the end goal. In the case ofprogress toward gender equality the reference point that ischosen to evaluate progress will be a critical determinant ofthe favorability of those evaluations. Jackson (2006)explains how reference points can affect judgments ofgender progress, writing,

Compared to the restrictions that faced women twocenturies ago, the degree to which gender inequalityhas declined seems remarkable. When weighedagainst an imagined state of full and unimpededequality, the continued shortcomings in women’sstatus seem inexplicable and remarkably frustrating.These visions are complementary, not inconsistent.The degree of current gender inequality can only beassessed by means of comparison, to the past or to animagined future. Therefore, before asking if, how, orto what degree the significance of gender inequalitywill continue to decline, we need to choose aperspective from which we will make our assess-ments. (p. 216).

We hypothesize that men and women differ in theirjudgments of progress toward gender equality because theychoose different perspectives from which to make thosejudgments. Specifically, men tend to judge gender progressby comparing present conditions to the past while womentend to judge gender progress by comparing presentconditions to a future ideal of full equality.

We argue that there are at least two reasons that men andwomen might use different reference points to judgeprogress toward equality. First, a gender difference in thereference point chosen to assess progress toward genderequality might stem from an influence of group dominancemotives (Sidanius and Pratto 1999). In a society that valuesfairness and equality, the open acknowledgement of groupinequalities, such as the persisting inequalities between menand women, threatens to delegitimize power arrangementsthat unfairly advantage dominant groups at the expense ofsubordinate groups (Sidanius and Pratto 1999; Kahn et al.2009). In order to defend the moral legitimacy of present-day conditions that advantage their group, members ofdominant groups (e.g., men) should be motivated to judgepresent-day conditions against the more unequal standardsof the past. Members of dominant groups should beattracted to making these palliative comparisons becausetheir group’s present-day advantages seem more legitimate

compared to the inequalities of the past. By contrast,members of subordinate groups (e.g., women) should bemotivated to judge present-day conditions against the idealof full equality because this comparison highlights howpresent-day conditions fall short of the ideal of full equalityand thus challenges the moral legitimacy of the existingpower arrangements that continue to disadvantage women.

A second reason that American men and women maytend to focus on different reference points when evaluatingprogress toward gender equality stems from differences inwhat the goal of gender equality may mean to men andwomen. Specifically, women may tend to view genderequality as being necessary for their long-term well-beingbecause their opportunities in life are constrained by genderinequalities. By contrast men may tend to view genderequality less as a necessity and more as an optional goal.Research comparing people’s assessments of progress whenthey pursue goals that they consider necessary (e.g.,financial security) versus goals that that they consideroptional (e.g., financing a life’s dream) shows that peopleevaluate outcomes differently when they pursue each typeof goal (Brodscholl 2006). Specifically, when peoplepursue necessary goals they are vigilant for discrepanciesbetween the outcome and their end goal. By contrast whenpeople pursue optional goals they tend to focus on thediscrepancy between the outcome and their starting point. Ifgender equality represents more of a necessary goal forwomen than it does for men, then women should focus onthe end goal of full equality when judging gender progresswhereas men should focus on conditions of the past whenjudging gender progress.

The idea that men and women differ in assessments ofprogress toward gender equality because they use differentreference points to make those judgments fits with researchon a similar pattern of divergence in White and ethnicminority Americans’ judgments of progress toward racialequality. Just as American men rate progress toward genderequality more favorably than American women do, so doWhite Americans rate progress toward racial equality morefavorably than ethnic minority Americans do (Brodish et al.2008; Eibach and Ehrlinger 2006; Eibach and Keegan2006; Eibach and Purdie-Vaughns 2009; Kluegel and Smith1986). Moreover, evidence suggests that this divergence inWhite and ethnic minority Americans’ judgments of racialprogress is partly explained by the different reference pointseach group uses to assess progress (Brodish et al. 2008;Eibach and Ehrlinger 2006). When judging racial progressWhite Americans tend to focus on comparisons between thepresent and the past while ethnic minority Americans tendto focus on comparing the present to the ideal of full racialequality. This difference in chosen reference points explainswhy White Americans tend to have more favorableimpressions of racial progress than ethnic minority Amer-

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icans do because progress looks more favorable whencompared to the past than when compared to the end goalof full equality.

It is important to empirically test whether the samereference point model that explains group differences inperceptions of racial progress can also explain differencesin men’s and women’s perceptions of gender progressbecause racial and gender inequality differ in importantways and we cannot just assume that a model that wasoriginally developed to explain differences in White andethnic minority Americans’ perceptions of racial progresswill also explain differences in men’s and women’sperceptions of gender progress. For example, while racialstratification involves spatial segregation, with White andethnic minority Americans living apart from each other indifferent neighborhoods, attending different schools, andsocializing in different networks, gender stratificationinvolves spatial integration, with many men and womencohabitating in the same homes and sharing overlappingsocial networks (Jackman 1994; Massey 2007; Tilly 1998).The separateness of White and ethnic minority Americans’lives likely gives each group access to different informationrelevant to forming impressions of racial progress. Bycontrast, the interconnectedness of American men’s andwomen’s lives likely leads to more shared informationrelevant to forming impressions of gender progress. Thereare also many important differences between the Women’sRights and Civil Rights movements that may be relevantfor judging gender progress and racial progress respective-ly. These movements have followed different trajectories,with different movement dynamics, different patterns oftriumphs and setbacks, and different cultural salience oftheir historical achievements (e.g., Mansbridge 1986,McAdam 1995, 1999; Skrentny 2002; Taylor 1989). Recentresearch suggests that the salience of historical achieve-ments in particular may influence judgments of progresstoward equality (Kaiser et al. 2009). Thus, differences inthe salience of historical achievements associated with theWomen’s Rights movement and the Civil Rights movementcould influence how people judge gender progress andracial progress in ways that make judgments in each ofthese domains less comparable.

Given that gender inequality differs from racial inequal-ity in important ways that may be relevant to judgingprogress, it is not a forgone conclusion that the samereference point model that accounts for differences inperceptions of racial progress will also explain differencesin perceptions of gender progress. However, if empiricaltests show that the same reference point model does indeedapply to such different systems of inequality, then it wouldsuggest that this model is quite general in its implicationsand is not tied to unique features of America’s system ofracial stratification.

The Present Investigation

We designed two experiments to explore whether men offermore optimistic assessments of progress toward genderequality than do women because of a gender difference inthe reference points adopted to assess progress. In eachstudy, we asked male and female participants to assessprogress toward equality. We also explored the relationshipbetween reference point selection and assessments ofgender progress by asking participants about the degree towhich they relied on particular reference points (Study 1)and by manipulating which reference point was most salient(Study 2).

In both studies, we explored how the use of differentreference points might influence assessments of progresstoward gender equality in samples of undergraduatestudents at a public southeastern University (Study 1) anda private northeastern University (Study 2). We exploredthis phenomenon with undergraduate samples, in part,because they represent a sample of convenience. The logicthat led us to predict that men, generally, might rely moreon a past reference point for judging progress towardequality than women, generally, leads us to make the sameprediction for undergraduate men and women, specifically.That said, we suspect that undergraduates might also makean ideal sample in which to explore how the selection ofdifferent reference points influences assessments of prog-ress toward gender equality because, typically, samples ofundergraduates are younger than nationally representativesamples.

As discussed above, gender differences in perceptions ofgender progress are likely multiply caused. Because therehas been progress toward gender equality over time,younger women might be less likely than women who areolder to have had substantial direct experience with genderdiscrimination. Consequently, a gender difference in assess-ments of progress toward gender equality in an undergrad-uate sample might be less influenced by factors such asgender differences in experience. Using a younger samplethus offers us an opportunity to isolate and betterunderstand the role of reference points in assessing levelsof progress in a way that might be more complicated in asample of older participants.

Study 1

While past opinion polls show a reliable difference in men’sand women’s perceptions of progress toward genderequality, these polls do not offer insight into the factorsthat respondents consider when making these evaluations.Study 1 was designed to explore whether, as predicted,women more often judge progress toward gender equality

Sex Roles

in comparison to the end goal of full equality while menmore often judge progress in comparison to past conditions.We asked male and female participants to offer assessmentsof progress toward gender equality and to rate the degree towhich they compared current conditions to both the endgoal of gender equality and to past conditions.

We predicted that women would offer less positiveassessments of progress toward equality than would men(Hypothesis 1). We expected that both women and menmight cite both the end goal of equality and past conditionsas reference points. However, we predicted that womenwould be more likely than men to report comparing currentconditions to the end goal of full gender equality and thatmen would report comparing current conditions to pastconditions more than they would report comparing currentconditions to the end goal of full equality (Hypothesis 2).Finally, we predicted that this gender difference in thereference points selected as comparison standards wouldmediate the gender difference in perceptions of progresstoward gender equality (Hypothesis 3).

Method

Participants

Seventy-nine undergraduates at a large, public, southeasternU.S. university (58.2% female) completed the study as partof a larger study in exchange for experimental creditapplied to their psychology courses. The sample wasrecruited from students enrolled in Psychology courses.The sample was 68.4% Caucasian, 12.7% Black, 10.1%Hispanic, and 5.1% Asian. An additional 3.9% of partic-ipants did not provide information about their ethnicity.

Procedure

Participants were recruited for an experiment described asone studying “social trends.” Upon arrival in the laboratory,participants were met by a trained undergraduate experi-menter who explained what tasks they would be asked tocomplete and explained that participants’ responses wouldremain confidential and anonymous and that they coulddiscontinue their participation at any time. They signed aconsent form and then completed the experimental ques-tionnaire as part of a larger set of questionnaire-basedmeasures of their beliefs. The experiment was completed onthe computer, minimizing the potential impact of theexperimenter on responses. However, an experimenterremained just outside of the laboratory room in caseparticipants had any questions.

Within the experimental questionnaire, participants wereasked to offer an assessment of the amount of progress madetoward gender equality “in terms of wages and opportunities

for career advancement in the United States” on a scale from 0(no real progress) to 7 (a great deal of progress). Thissingle-item measure of perceived progress toward equalitywas based upon a similar measure used successfully tomeasure assessments of racial progress in past research(Eibach and Ehrlinger 2006; Eibach and Keegan 2006).Next, participants read a brief statement explaining that thereare multiple ways in which one might make a judgmentabout progress toward equality but people sometimesevaluate current levels of progress through comparisons withpast conditions or with the end goal of full gender equality.Participants were asked to reflect upon the factors theyconsidered when offering the earlier assessment of progresstoward equality. They were asked to rate the degree to whichthey thought about how current levels of gender equalitycompared to gender equality in the past on a scale from 0(not at all) to 7 (it was the main thing I considered).Separately, participants rated the degree to which theythought about how current levels of gender equalitycompared to the goal of true gender equality, using anidentical 0–7 scale. After completion of this and companionquestionnaires unrelated to the current investigation, partic-ipants were fully debriefed before leaving the laboratory.

Results

Although we had no prediction regarding interactionsbetween participant ethnicity and gender, we wanted toexplore whether our assumption that ethnicity would notinfluence results was supported. Sixty-eight percent of oursample was Caucasian, leaving insufficient power toexplore how ethnic minority samples might differ fromeach other. Instead, we classified participants as eitherCaucasian or Ethnic Minority and entered this variable as afactor in data analyses.

Hypothesis 1

We conducted a 2 (male vs. female) × 2 (Caucasian vs.Ethnic minority) ANOVA to explore the influence ofgender and ethnicity on assessments of progress towardgender equality in wages and opportunities for careeradvancement. As predicted, this ANOVA revealed a maineffect of gender, indicating that women offered less positiveevaluations of progress toward gender equality (M=5.28,SD=1.10) than did men (M=5.85, SD=1.28), F(1,75)=4.48, p<.05, h2p ¼ :06. This analysis also supported ourexpectation that the phenomenon would be unrelated toparticipant ethnicity. There was not a significant main effectof ethnicity on assessments of progress toward genderequality, F<1. The interaction between ethnicity andgender on assessments of progress was also not significant,F<1.

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Hypothesis 2

Next, we conducted a 2 (gender: male vs. female) × 2(ethnicity: Caucasian vs. Ethnic minority) × 2 (referencepoint considered: end goal vs. past) repeated-measuresANOVA to explore whether men and women differed in thedegree to which they reported comparing current conditionsto past conditions and to the end goal of full equality. Aspredicted, this analysis revealed a significant gender byreference point interaction, F(1,75)=13.55, p<.001,h2p ¼ :15. Again, there was no main effect of ethnicity onparticipants’ reported reference points, F<1, nor was therea significant interaction between ethnicity and gender onreported reference points, F(1,75)=2.10, p=.15, h2p ¼ :03.Post hoc analyses revealed that men offered significantlylower ratings (M=3.96, SD=1.43) of the degree to whichthey used the goal of full gender equality as a referencepoint for judging progress than did women (M=5.34, SD=1.50), F(1,77)=14.60, p<.001, h2p ¼ :16. Men (M=5.88,SD=1.49) and women (M=5.39, SD=1.19) did not differ inthe degree to which they reported using levels of equality inthe past as a reference point for judging progress, F(1,75)=2.33, p=.13, h2p ¼ :03. Comparing within gender, men’sratings indicated a tendency to compare current conditionsto the past more than to the end goal, F(1,31)=31.36, p<.001, h2p ¼ :50, while women’s ratings indicated equalconsideration of the two reference points, F<1.

We computed a difference score between participants’ratings of the degree to which they considered pastconditions and their ratings of the degree to which theyconsidered the end goal to create a single compositemeasure of the degree to which participants consulted pastconditions more than the end goal as a reference point. Aspredicted, a 2 (male vs. female) × 2 (Caucasian vs. Ethnicminority) ANOVA exploring gender differences in thiscomposite measure revealed that men relied on the pastover the end goal as a reference point for judging progressmore than women did, F(1,75)=12.89, p<.001, h2p ¼ :15.

Hypothesis 3

Lastly, we conducted a series of regression analyses toexplore whether the observed gender difference inperceptions of progress was mediated by a tendency formen and women to differ in the reference points used tomake that judgment. Following Baron and Kenny’s(1986) steps to test for mediation, we conducted aregression predicting assessments of progress from genderand ethnicity. This analysis confirmed that women offeredless favorable assessments of progress toward equalitythan men, β=−.25, t(76)=−2.24, p<.05. A parallelregression confirmed that men relied on the past over theend goal as a reference point for judging progress more

than women did, β=−.36, t(76)=−3.34, p<.001. Also, aspredicted, a final regression revealed that reliance on thepast over the end goal as a reference point for judgingprogress predicted lower assessments of progress whencontrolling for gender, β=.32, t(75)=2.79, p<.01. Thisregression also revealed that gender failed to predictassessments of progress toward equality once the effectof relying on the past over the end goal as a referencepoint was controlled, β=−.14, t(75)=−1.20, p=.24. ASobel test confirmed that including this mediator in theregression led to a significant reduction in the effect ofgender on assessments of progress, z=2.14, p<.05.

We have argued that a gender difference in perceptionsof progress stems from tendencies to rely on a particularreference point (e.g., past or end goal) over thealternative reference point. However, one might wonderwhether one reference point is driving the effect more thanthe other. To explore this possibility, we conducted parallelsets of mediational analyses exploring whether the use ofgender equality in the past or, separately, use of the endgoal as a reference point mediates the observed genderdifference in assessments of progress. A regressionpredicting reported use of the past reference point fromgender and ethnicity confirmed that men and women didnot differ significantly in the degree to which theyevaluated progress by considering past conditions,β= −.15, t(75)= −1.35, p=.18. As such, reliance uponthis reference point alone does not mediate the genderdifference in assessments of progress toward equality. Aregression predicting reported use of the end goal as areference point from gender and ethnicity revealed thatwomen used the end goal as a reference point more thanmen, β=.39, t(75)=3.55, p<.001. However, a regressionpredicting assessments of progress from gender, ethnicity,and use of the end goal as a reference point revealed thatreported use of the end goal did not predict assessments ofprogress when controlling for gender, β=−.04, t(75)=−.35,p=.73. Therefore, the effect of gender on selection ofreference points mediates differences in men’s and women’sassessments of progress toward equality only when lookingat participants’ relative use of these two reference points.

Discussion

Undergraduate participants in Study 1 replicated a patternseen in large, nationally representative surveys wherebymen offer more favorable assessments of progress towardgender equality than do women. We argue that one reasonfor this gender difference in assessments of progress is thatmen and women might compare current conditions todifferent reference points when judging progress. Specifi-cally, we predicted that men would compare currentconditions to past conditions more than to the end goal of

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full equality while women would be more likely than mento compare current conditions to the end goal. When askedto describe the degree to which they considered eachpotential reference point when assessing progress towardequality, participants in Study 1 confirmed these hypothe-ses. Furthermore, mediational analyses revealed that thegender difference in the tendency to rely on the past overthe end goal as a reference point for judging progresstoward equality mediated the tendency of men to offer morefavorable assessments of progress than women. Study 2was designed to explore the effect of chosen referencepoints on assessments of progress more systematically. Tothis end, we asked male and female participants to evaluateprogress toward gender equality after assigning them toconditions in which either past states of gender inequalityor the end goal of full equality was experimentally mademore salient.

Study 2

Study 2 was designed to experimentally manipulate therelative accessibility of the past versus the end goal asreference points for judging gender progress. We manipu-lated reference point accessibility by varying the content ofa question that preceded the question eliciting participants’ratings of the magnitude of gender progress. Previousresearch on survey order effects has established that thecontent of preceding questions can influence interpretationsof subsequent questions (Schwarz 1996). We used thiswell-established phenomenon to prompt participants to usedifferent reference points to judge progress toward genderequality. In one condition we made the past a salientreference point for judging progress by asking in thepreceding question whether participants agreed that womenwere better off in the present than they were in the pastbefore we asked participants to rate the magnitude ofgender progress. In another condition we made the end goalof full equality a salient reference point by asking in thepreceding question whether participants agreed that fullequality had not yet been achieved before we askedparticipants to rate the magnitude of gender progress. In acontrol condition we asked participants to rate the magni-tude of gender progress without a preceding question toestablish a salient reference point.

If the gap in men’s and women’s ratings of genderprogress stems from their use of different reference pointsto assess progress then we would expect participant genderto interact with reference point condition to predict ratingsof the magnitude of progress toward gender equality.Specifically, we expect men’s and women’s gender progressratings to differ in the usual way when no reference point ismade salient in the control condition, but, when the

preceding question makes either the past or the end goal asalient reference point we expect the usual gap in men’s andwomen’s gender progress ratings to be eliminated (Hypoth-esis 1). Because we expect that for men gender inequality inthe past will be a more accessible reference point than theend goal of full equality, we predict that male participantsin the control condition will offer ratings of gender progressthat match the ratings provided by their peers in the pastreference point condition. Because the end goal referencepoint condition makes salient what we argue is a lessaccessible reference point for men, we predict that theratings provided by male participants in this condition willbe significantly lower than those offered by their male peersin both the control and past reference point conditions(Hypothesis 2). In contrast, we expect that the end goal ofgender equality is a more accessible reference point forwomen than for men. As a result, we expect that ratings ofgender progress offered by female participants in thecontrol condition will match the ratings offered by theirfemale peers in the end goal reference point condition.Because we argue that women typically have both the endgoal and past inequality as accessible reference points, weexpect that the increased salience of past inequality in thepast reference point condition will lead female participantsin that condition to offer more favorable assessments ofprogress than their female peers in the control and end goalreference point conditions (Hypothesis 3).

Method

Participants

We recruited 120 undergraduates (50% female; Mage=19.42 years, SDage=1.01) taking classes in psychology orhuman development at a large university in the northeasternUnited States. The majority of participants (61.67%)reported that they were majoring in either psychology orhuman development. We did not collect ethnicity informa-tion for this sample. However, the sample was recruitedfrom a larger pool of students enrolled in Psychology andHuman Development courses (N=336) who were 64.6%Caucasian, 3.9% Black, 16.7% Hispanic, 7.5% Asian, and6.7% of multiple ethnicities or of a less frequent ethnicitycategory. An additional 1.2% of members of this participantpool did not provide information about their ethnicity.

Procedure

All participants had signed up to take part in other studiesbeing run in the psychology department. A trainedundergraduate experimenter approached students who wereseated in the waiting room lounge and asked whether theymight like to hear about a quick survey that they could

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complete while they waited for their appointment to begin.If the student agreed, the experimenter explained that thestudy was one assessing social trends and assured partic-ipants that their responses would be confidential andanonymous and that they could discontinue participationat any time. The experimenter gave them the experimentalquestionnaire before stepping several feet away to allowparticipants to complete the questionnaire privately. Partic-ipants were instructed to complete the questionnaire alonewithout discussing their responses with others.

Participants received one of three versions of the “SocialTrends” questionnaire. Male and female participants weredistributed equally across the three versions of thequestionnaire (i.e., there were 20 male and 20 femaleparticipants per condition). The question that immediatelypreceded the main dependent measure was varied betweenparticipants to manipulate the reference points that partic-ipants would be likely to use to judge gender progress. Thecontent of this preceding question was intentionally wordedin a way that would elicit agreement from most participants.In the control condition, there was no preceding question.In the past condition participants were asked, “Do youagree or disagree that these days women are paid fairerwages and have better opportunities for career advancementthan in the past?” In the end goal condition participantswere asked, “Do you agree or disagree that we have not yetachieved the ideal of full equality between men and womenin their wages and opportunities for career advancement?”In the end goal and past conditions participants recordedtheir answer by circling either “agree” or “disagree”.

All participants then answered a question about progresstoward equality for women that constituted the maindependent measure. Participants were asked, “How muchprogress has there been toward equality between men andwomen in terms of wages and opportunities for careeradvancement in the United States?” Participants reportedtheir judgments of progress on an 8-point scale that rangedfrom 0 (“no real progress”) to 7 (“a great deal of progress”).

Results

As expected, both male and female participants responded“yes” to the questions designed to highlight a specificreference point in the experimental conditions. In the pastcondition, 85% of men and 85% of women agreed thatconditions for women were better in the present than theywere in the past. In the end goal condition, 70% of men and80% of women agreed that full gender equality had not yetbeen achieved. In both reference point priming conditionswomen and men did not significantly differ in their tendencyto agree with the initial question, Fisher’s exact p>.7.

To test our hypotheses we submitted participants’ judg-ments of gender progress to a 2 (participant gender: male

vs. female) × 3 (reference point condition: control vs. pastvs. end goal) ANOVA (see Table 1). There was asignificant main effect of the reference point manipulation,F(2, 114)=7.45, p<.01, h2p ¼ :12. There was also asignificant interaction between gender of participant andthe reference point manipulation, F(2, 114)=3.15, p<.05,h2p ¼ :05.

Simple effects tests revealed that the results wereconsistent with Hypothesis 1. Specifically, male and femaleparticipants’ judgments of gender progress differed signif-icantly in the control condition, F(1, 114)=8.04, p<.01, butmale and female participants’ judgments of gender progressdid not differ when they were focused on a commonreference point in the past condition, F<1, and the end goalcondition, F<1.

We conducted further simple effects tests to examinehow the reference point salience manipulation affected maleand female participants’ judgments of progress towardgender equality. Male participants’ judgments of progresswere significantly affected by the reference point saliencemanipulation, F(2, 114)=7.31, p<.01, and the conditionmeans followed a pattern consistent with Hypothesis 2.Specifically, male participants’ judgments of progress in thecontrol and past conditions did not significantly differ, F<1. However, male participants’ judgments of progress in theend goal condition were significantly lower than theirjudgments of progress in both the control condition, F(1,114)=12.56, p<.01, and the past condition, F(1, 114)=9.07, p<.01.

Female participants’ judgments of progress also weresignificantly affected by the manipulation, F(2, 114)=3.29,p<.05, and the condition means followed a patternconsistent with Hypothesis 3. Specifically, female partic-ipants’ judgments of progress in the control and end goalconditions did not significantly differ, F<1. However,female participants’ judgments of progress in the pastcondition were significantly greater than their judgments ofprogress in both the control condition, F(1, 114)=4.52,p<.05, and the end goal condition, F(1,114)=5.30, p<.05.

General Discussion

Gender differences in perceptions of equality are so reliablethat they can often be taken for granted, as illustrated in thesarcastic wording of a newspaper headline that read,“Surprise! Women and men differ on gender equity”(Siemaszko 1997). Rather than taking these differencesfor granted, we think it is critical to understand why menand women differ in their assessments of gender progress inorder to better understand how to bridge these differencesand possibly generate broader support for combatingremaining inequality. The constructivist approach to judg-

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ment suggests that the differences in men’s and women’sjudgments of gender progress can be relatively easilybridged by simply focusing men and women on a commoncomparison standard.

We hypothesized that men and women adopt differentreference points for assessing progress toward genderequality and that this difference in reference points leadsmen and women to offer divergent assessments of progress.We found supportive evidence for this hypothesis in twostudies. In Study 1 men reported comparing currentconditions to past conditions more than to the end goal offull equality when assessing gender progress. In contrast,women reported comparing current conditions to the endgoal more than men did and to the same degree as womencompared current conditions to past conditions. Mediation-al analyses revealed that men offered more favorableevaluations of progress toward gender equality than didwomen precisely because men were more likely thanwomen were to favor the past over the end goal as areference point for judging progress.

If, as Study 1 suggests, men and women differ in theirassessments of gender progress because they adopt differentreference points as comparison standards, then a manipu-lation that leads men and women to evaluate progressrelative to a common reference point should make theobserved gender difference in perceptions of progressdisappear. We explored this prediction in Study 2 byexperimentally assigning participants to one of threeconditions—one in which the end goal of equality wasmade salient, one in which conditions of equality in the pastwere made salient, and one in which no reference point wasmade salient. As would be expected if the gender differencein assessments of progress stems from a difference in thechosen reference point, men and women offered divergentassessments of progress only in the control condition.When a common reference point was made salient—be itthe end goal of full equality or levels of inequality in thepast—men and women offered virtually the same assess-ments of progress toward gender equality. Further evidencethat a gender difference in assessments of progress stemsfrom a difference in adopted reference points comes from

comparisons between men’s and women’s judgments ofprogress in the control condition relative to the twoexperimental conditions. Men’s ratings of progress in thecontrol condition were significantly higher than theirratings in the end goal condition, but did not differ fromtheir ratings in the past reference point condition. Thispattern suggests that men in the control condition evaluategender progress in the same way as participants for whomthe past reference point was experimentally made accessi-ble. By contrast women’s ratings of progress in the controlcondition were significantly lower than their ratings in thepast reference point condition but did not differ from theirratings in the end goal condition. This pattern suggests thatwomen in the control condition made assessments ofprogress in the same way as participants for whom theend goal was made accessible.

The results of Studies 1 and 2 suggest that it is not thecase that men are unable to see evidence of persistinggender inequalities nor is it the case that women are unableto see evidence of progress relative to the past. Rather, itseems that when men and women are asked to evaluategender progress they tend to use different reference pointsas standards of evaluation. However, when they are led touse the same reference points, there appears to be quite a bitof common ground in men’s and women’s perceptions ofsocial conditions. Indeed, when the reference points thatmen and women use to judge progress are controlled forstatistically, as in the mediational analyses of Study 1, orexperimentally, as in the framing manipulations of Study 2,the difference in their ratings of gender progress vanish.

Paraphrasing Asch’s constructivist point (1940), thedifference in men’s and women’s judgments of genderprogress appears to be a difference in “the object ofjudgment” rather than a difference in “judgment of theobject.” Specifically, when men and women give differentanswers to a question about progress toward genderequality our results suggests that this is not because theyare answering the same question differently. Rather, itseems they are answering two different questions: men areassessing how different conditions are today compared tothe past and women are assessing how close we have come

Table 1 Male and female participants’ mean judgments of progress toward gender equality as a function of reference point condition (Study 2)

Reference point condition

Control Past reference point End goal reference point

Male participants 5.70a (1.13) 5.55a (.76) 4.70b (.86)

Female participants 4.90b (.97) 5.50a (.89) 4.85b (.67)

Participants reported their judgments of progress on an 8-point scale that ranged from 0 (no real progress) to 7 (a great deal of progress).Numbers in parentheses are standard deviations. Within rows and columns means with different subscripts are significantly different, p’s<.05.Each reference point condition included 20 male and 20 female participants

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to the end goal of full gender equality. Because full equalityis a higher standard than improvement on the past, women’sratings of progress tend to be lower than those of men.However, when men and women use the same referencepoint to assess progress their apparent disagreement goesaway.

While the fact that we can eliminate the gender gap inperceptions of progress suggests that this gap in perceptionsmay be something of an illusion, the fact that men andwomen seem to adopt different reference points for judgingprogress when none is clearly provided for them suggeststhat the goal of gender equality may have different meaningto men and women. The goal of full equality appears to bemore chronically accessible for women than it is for mengiven that women appear to use this goal as a comparisonstandard more than men when they are not prompted to doso. We suggested that men might be less inclined thanwomen to compare current conditions to the end goal of fullequality in part because this comparison highlights theinadequacy of progress toward gender equality and thusundermines the moral legitimacy of men’s dominantposition in the social hierarchy (Adams et al. 2006; Kahnet al. 2009). Thus, the difference in men’s and women’sjudgments of gender progress may be a window into thepsychological processes that influence the social percep-tions of dominant and subordinate groups.

Previous research has documented the extensive waysthat dominant and subordinate groups differ in theirperspectives on social conditions (e.g., Adams et al. 2006;Brodish et al. 2008; Davis and Robinson 1991; Eibach andEhrlinger 2006; Eibach and Keegan 2006; Eibach andPurdie-Vaughns 2009; Robinson 2008; Kahn et al. 2009;Kluegel and Smith 1986; O’Brien et al. 2009; Robinson2008; Sidanius and Pratto 1999; Siegelman and Welch1991). These differences in men’s and women’s perspec-tives and White and ethnic minority Americans’ perspec-tives are so reliable and pervasive that Robinson (2008)recently described them as “perceptual segregation.” Thepresent research makes a contribution to this literature bytesting a social cognitive explanation of the divergence inmen’s and women’s judgments of progress toward equality.It is possible that other group differences in judgments ofsocial conditions would also be better understood by usingsocial cognitive approaches, similar to those used in thepresent studies, to investigate how dominant and subordi-nate groups construct different mental representations ofsocial conditions and relevant comparison standards.Indeed, the patterns of American men’s and women’sjudgments of gender progress across the reference pointconditions in the present study matched the patterns ofWhite and ethnic minority Americans’ judgments of racialprogress documented in previous research (Eibach andEhrlinger 2006). This may indicate that a general process

leads socially dominant groups (i.e., White Americans,men) to construct comparisons with the past and subordi-nate groups (i.e., ethnic minority Americans, women) toconstruct comparisons with the end goal of full equalitywhen judging societal progress. It remains to be seenwhether this pattern generalizes to situations where othersocially dominant and subordinate groups judge progresstoward equality.

Future research could also use this approach to investi-gate implications for understanding group differences insupport for social policies. Judgments of progress towardequality tend to predict approval of policies intended toremedy inequalities. For example, the less progress WhiteAmericans believe there has been toward racial equality themore supportive they are of affirmative action for racialminorities (Brodish et al. 2008). It is possible that judg-ments of progress toward gender equality would similarlypredict people’s attitudes toward policies designed toaddress gender inequality. Americans who believe thatthere has been little progress toward gender equality may bemore willing to support government intervention toimprove women’s social position than those who believethat there has been more substantial progress. Futureresearch that experimentally manipulates judgments ofgender progress and racial progress could test whetherthese variables influence people’s opinions about govern-ment intervention to remedy gender and racial inequalitiesrespectively. The reference point salience manipulationused in the present study is one method by which progressjudgments could be manipulated to assess their impact onrelevant policy attitudes and behaviors.

The present studies recruited convenience samples ofundergraduates at majority White North American universi-ties. Thus, it remains to be seen whether the findings wouldgeneralize to more nationally representative samples. Onereason for focusing the present studies on undergraduates isthat gender differences in perceptions of social equality tend tobe more pronounced among those who are highly educated(Davis and Robinson 1991; Kluegel and Smith 1986). Forexample, gender differences in perceptions of progressreducing the gender wage gap tend to be higher amongthose who have gone to college than they are among thosewho have not gone to college, though there is not asignificant interaction between gender and education (Snider-man et al. 1999). The gender gap in perceptions of progresstoward gender equality may be particularly pronouncedamong highly educated men and women in part becauseone effect of education is to increase a person’s sophistica-tion in determining what ideologies and worldviews bestserve his or her group interests (Jackman 1978; Jackman andMuha 1984; Sidanius et al. 2000). Thus highly educated menand women living in a society that values fairness should bemore aware that paying attending to persisting inequalities

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undermines the moral legitimacy of male dominance, whichharms men’s group interests but helps women’s groupinterests. Thus there are reasons to believe both that thegender gap in perceptions of progress toward equality andthe reference point model that we used to explain it wouldapply particularly well to highly educated samples such asthose we recruited in the present studies.

While the present findings might be particularly appli-cable to highly educated samples we hypothesize thatsimilar, albeit potentially weaker, effects would be found insamples with less educated participants. This hypothesisshould be tested in future research with participantsrepresenting a broader range of educational backgrounds.It also remains to be seen whether the differences in men’sand women’s uses of references points to judge progressdocumented in the present study would generalize to otherage and socioeconomic groups within North America andother cultural contexts where men and women may havediverging perceptions of progress toward gender equality.

Conclusion

We have seen that men’s and women’s judgments of themagnitude of gender progress tend to differ because theyanchor their judgments on different reference points, withmen tending to focus on how far we have come relative tothe past and women tending to focus on how far we haveleft to go to achieve full equality. Both of these perspectiveson progress are important and a truly balanced assessmentof progress requires that we take into account both how farwe have come and how far we have left to go. Recognitionof the need to carefully balance both perspectives onprogress was evident in Hillary Clinton’s speech at theconclusion of her historic run for the Democratic Party’s2008 nomination when she remarked, “Although weweren’t able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceilingthis time, thanks to you, it’s got about 18 million cracks init. And the light is shining through like never before, fillingus all with hope and the sure knowledge that the path willbe a little easier next time.”

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