Attitudes Toward Women Scale
Also known as: AWS, Spence-Helmreich AWS
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.
Key highlights
- One of the earliest and most widely used objective measures of attitudes toward women, providing a long historical baseline for studying attitude change.
- Offers validated 25-item and 15-item short forms that correlate strongly with the original 55-item scale, easing administration burden.
- Simple summed Likert scoring yields an interpretable single dimension from traditional to egalitarian.
- Extensively validated across decades and populations, with well-documented reliability and known correlates.
Intuition
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How it works
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When to use it
Use the AWS to measure general attitudes about the rights and roles of women in studies of gender-role ideology, attitude change, socialisation, and the correlates of traditional versus egalitarian beliefs. It is well suited to historical comparison, generational research, and as a covariate in studies of sexism and gender attitudes. It is less appropriate as a sensitive contemporary discriminator, because its 1970s content is dated and modern samples often show ceiling effects, clustering at the egalitarian end and limiting variance; subtler measures of sexism are preferable when fine discrimination among generally egalitarian respondents is needed.
Strengths & limitations
- One of the earliest and most widely used objective measures of attitudes toward women, providing a long historical baseline for studying attitude change.
- Offers validated 25-item and 15-item short forms that correlate strongly with the original 55-item scale, easing administration burden.
- Simple summed Likert scoring yields an interpretable single dimension from traditional to egalitarian.
- Extensively validated across decades and populations, with well-documented reliability and known correlates.
- Item content reflects the social context of the early 1970s and now reads as dated, reducing relevance to contemporary respondents.
- Modern samples tend to score near the egalitarian extreme, producing ceiling effects and restricted variance that weaken its discriminating power.
- It measures explicitly endorsed attitudes about rights and roles, missing subtle, ambivalent, or covert forms of sexism that respondents may not openly avow.
- Susceptible to social-desirability bias, as the egalitarian response is now widely seen as the socially approved one.
Common pitfalls
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Applications
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Frequently asked
How is the AWS different from measures of modern sexism?
The AWS assesses explicitly held, openly stated attitudes about the formal rights and roles of women, such as employment and education. Modern sexism measures instead capture subtle, covert beliefs — like denying that discrimination still exists — that respondents may not recognise as sexist. Because overt egalitarian attitudes are now socially normative, the AWS often shows little variance where modern sexism measures still discriminate.
Which version of the AWS should I use?
The 25-item and 15-item short forms are the most practical choices for most studies; both correlate highly with the original 55-item scale while reducing respondent burden. The full 55-item version is mainly useful for replication of older studies. Whichever you choose, report the version and its score range explicitly, because totals are not comparable across versions without rescaling.
Why do modern samples often score so high on the AWS?
Public attitudes toward women's rights and roles have become far more egalitarian since 1972, and the egalitarian response is now widely viewed as socially desirable. As a result, contemporary respondents — especially students — tend to cluster near the egalitarian end of the scale, producing ceiling effects and reduced variance that limit how well the AWS can distinguish among generally progressive respondents.
Sources
- 1.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.
- 2.Spence, J. T., Helmreich, R., & Stapp, J. (1973). A short version of the Attitudes toward Women Scale (AWS). Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 2(4), 219–220.
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Cite this page
ScholarGate. (2026, June 22). Attitudes Toward Women Scale. ScholarGate. https://scholargate.app/gender-studies/attitudes-toward-women-scale