The Attitudes towards Women Scale (AWS‐B): A comparison of women in engineering and traditional occupations with male engineers

Abstract

Parry (1983) presents a British version of the Attitudes towards Women Scale (Spence et al., 1973) and reports data for middle‐class and working‐class women. In the study described here the AWS‐B was administered to four groups of males and females aged between 16 and 21 years. The groups comprised 39 male and 27 female trainee engineers, 59 females pursuing careers in traditional occupations and 14 secondary school girls following an engineering link course. No significant differences in overall attitude emerged between female groups, but males were significantly more traditional in their attitudes towards women compared with the females. On 16 of the 21 items in the scale women were significantly more liberal, with strong differences on items concerned with women's position in politics, business and industry. Men were significantly more liberal on one item concerned with women's freedom to propose marriage, and more liberal, but not significantly so, on a further four items. Further research is needed into the determinants and consequences of individuals' attitudes towards women, and the AWS‐B provides a valuable instrument for this purpose.

An Examination of Potential Public Accounting Recruits’ Attitudes Toward Women

“…However, consistent with prior studies (e.g. Haworth et al, 1986a;1986b), males scored higher on certain individual items. To facilitate the interpretation of the participants' responses, the scale is divided into six subscales and each subscale is discussed separately.…”

“…However, males held distinctly more traditional views relative to females on such matters as women's place in business, university, gender-typed jobs (such as driving a train or darning socks), intellectual leadership, economic production, job preference and apprentice trades. These scores indicated that where men were concerned, equal opportunities for women were only desirable if women did not challenge the authority and leadership of men at work and in business (Haworth et al, 1986a). They also suggested that some occupations were viewed as stereotypically women's work.…”

The relationship between gender‐role measures: A review

“…androgynous vs. feminine group membership accounted for approximately 9 per cent of the variance in the AWS-B scores. This compares with the much larger differences found between males and females by Haworth, Povey & Clift (1985), where the effect size was d = 1.36 ( r = 0.562), and between working-class and middle-class women by Parry (1983), where the effect size was d = 1.24 (Y = 0.526).…”

Student Teacher Attitudes to Sex Role Stereotyping: some Australian data

“…They concluded that "role equality does also imply changes in female behaviour which many may find difficult to make" (p. 205). Haworth et al (1986) also found that males were more liberal than females on certain items, including women proposing marriage to men. Other items where men were more egalitarian were on dating and courtship behaviour, women paying for themselves when going out to dinner if they earn as much as their partner, and females having the same freedom as males to stay out late at night.…”

“…Using a British version of the AWS (AWS-B), Haworth et al (1986) reported that generally males were more traditional in their sex role attitudes than females. The groups in their sample were trainee engineers, females pursuing careers in traditional occupations and secondary school girls enrolled in an engineering linked course.…”