Compare methods

	Attitudes Toward Women Scale	Modern Sexism Scale
Field	Gender Studies	Gender Studies
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1972	1995
Originator	Janet T. Spence and Robert Helmreich	Janet K. Swim, Kathryn J. Aikin, Wayne S. Hall, and Barbara A. Hunter
Type	Self-report attitude scale	Self-report attitude scale
Seminal source	Spence, J. T., & Helmreich, R. (1972). The Attitudes Toward Women Scale: An objective instrument to measure attitudes toward the rights and roles of women in contemporary society. JSAS Catalog of Selected Documents in Psychology, 2, 66–67.	Swim, J. K., Aikin, K. J., Hall, W. S., & Hunter, B. A. (1995). Sexism and racism: Old-fashioned and modern prejudices. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68(2), 199–214.
Aliases	AWS, Spence-Helmreich AWS	MSS, Swim Modern Sexism Scale, Neosexism
Related	4	4
Summary	The Attitudes Toward Women Scale (AWS), developed by Janet Spence and Robert Helmreich in 1972, is a self-report Likert instrument that measures beliefs about the appropriate rights and roles of women in contemporary society. Respondents indicate their agreement with statements about vocational, educational, intellectual, marital, and social conduct expectations for women, yielding a single score that ranges from traditional and conservative to egalitarian and liberal.	The Modern Sexism Scale, developed by Janet Swim and colleagues in 1995, distinguishes between old-fashioned (blatant) sexism and modern (subtle) sexism, paralleling work on old-fashioned versus modern racism. The accompanying Old-Fashioned Sexism Scale captures openly endorsed beliefs in women's inferiority and prescribed traditional roles, while the Modern Sexism Scale captures covert sexism expressed through denial of continuing discrimination, antagonism toward women's demands, and resentment of policies perceived as special favours.