Internalized Misogyny as Correlates to Experiences with Ambivalent Sexism among Female Engineering Student: Basis for SAGIP Gender Awareness Program

Women have experienced sexism even once in their lives which can affect them negatively. Considering this, women may manifest it subconsciously, not being aware that they are already perpetuating this kind of beliefs and attitudes. Besides, the idea of women hating other women and themselves are understudied in a local context which also became the drive of the researchers to study and further understand this topic. This paper aims to explore the relationship between internalized misogyny and experiences with ambivalent sexism among 229 qualified female engineering students enrolled in Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila, ranging from ages 19 to 23 years old. This quantitative study used a descriptive correlational design to assess the relationship between variables. Internalized Misogyny Scale (IMS) and Experiences with Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (EASI) were also utilized to measure the variables in the study. Participants were chosen using the purposive sampling technique, however only 229 students were qualified. Results showed that female engineering students showed moderate levels of internalized misogyny in terms of distrust of women, devaluing women, and valuing men over women. The participants also revealed that they encounter benevolent sexism more frequent than hostile sexism. Number of female engineering students who experienced ambivalent sexism often to very frequently were identified: 175 for protective paternalism, 197 for complementary gender differentiation, and 100 for hostile sexism. In data analysis, the Spearman's Rank Correlation Coefficient (RHO) was used to examine the relationship between variables. The results indicated that the domains of internalized misogyny showed a positively strong correlation with experienced ambivalent sexism, except the domain of valuing men over women having positively moderate correlation with complementary gender differentiation. Moreover, each domain of internalized misogyny has a significant relationship with the experiences with ambivalent sexism among the respondents (p = 0.000 < 0.01).