The Gradual Move Toward Gender Equality: A 7

Sexist ideologies maintain and reinforce gender inequality, yet the stability of these belief systems is unknown. We addressed this oversight by examining changes in men’s and women’s hostile sexism (HS) and benevolent sexism (BS)—complementary gender-based belief systems, respectively, rooted in punitive and protective (albeit restrictive) attitudes toward women—using seven annual waves of longitudinal panel data (N = 15,626). Autoregressive cross-lagged models examined the rank-order stability of BS and HS, whereas latent growth models examined mean-level changes in both ideologies for men and women from 2009 to 2016. Results indicated that both BS and HS demonstrated high levels of rank-order stability across time for men and women. Nevertheless, women and men experienced mean-level curvilinear decreases in HS characterized by initial sharp declines that decelerated over time. Conversely, women’s mean-level BS initially declined slowly before gradually accelerating, whereas men’s mean-level HS decreased linearly. Together, these results indicate that sexism decreased over time