Extending the scope for resistance to gender-based devaluation

ABSTRACT

This review focuses on resistance to experiences of group-based devaluation, specifically in the context of gender. This literature has seen considerable development in recent years – we outline this development and review the empirical evidence that supports it. The first section of the review discusses definitional issues surrounding resistance. The second section describes how the literature on resistance has developed, with particular attention to the “broader” perspective on resistance that has gained prominence over the last decade or so. This perspective includes subtle and even implicit forms of resistance alongside its “traditional” forms. The third and fourth sections review empirical evidence for this perspective, derived primarily from the gender literature. The final section describes outstanding questions in research on resistance to group-based devaluation. Taken together, the evidence we review illustrates that members of devalued groups can employ a broad repertoire of strategies to resist group-based devaluation.

KEYWORDS:

• Resistance
• group-based devaluation
• gender
• stereotyping
• implicit strategies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Note that “action” as used here is not synonymous with behaviour or physical action, but rather as the opposite to passive, as highlighted in the manuscript text.

² Primes that are presented very briefly would normally be labelled as “subliminal” but in this study the primes were not masked, so we prefer the description “very brief” in this case.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Ministerio de Ciencia Tecnología y Telecomunicaciones [PSI2016-79971-P].