How Intimate Relationships Contribute to Gender Inequality: Sexist Attitudes Encourage Women to Trade Off Career Success for Relationship Security

One reason gender inequality persists is because core needs in intimate relationships foster sexist attitudes. Benevolent sexism reveres women’s traditional caregiving roles and prescribes that men should cherish, protect, and provide for women. Benevolent sexism is appealing to both men and women because it promotes a gender role structure that promises intimacy and security within heterosexual relationships. However, benevolent sexism offers women relationship security at the expense of their career aspirations and accomplishments. The fundamental relationship motives that underpin this relationship-career trade-off for women present countervailing forces to policies designed to mitigate gender inequality. Thus, effective interventions must attend to the relationship processes that restrict women’s careers by valuing both career and relationship needs, promoting equity in career support and caregiving within intimate relationships, and providing early education to foster career and relationship goals that ensure both women and men thrive in both domains