The integration of "honorable woman" and "honorable man" representations into the stereotype content model and examination of the system-justifying function of the gender stereotypes

Four empirical researches have been carried out to examine the stereotype contents and the conceptual structure of the contents of stereotypes about women and men in Turkey and to analyze the contents about the honor together with the gender stereotypes defined in the field. The first study is aimed to understand the content of the honor concept in Turkey. First of all, the suggestion was tested that the properties made women and men honorable are distinct from each other in Turkey which is a culture of honor, then the hypothesis was tested that the properties about honorable woman and honorable man are related to different dimensions of morality. For these purposes, data were collected from 157 participants (76 men, 81 women) about "an honorable woman" and "an honorable man" social representations. As a result of prototype and cluster analyses, in accordance with the expectations it was found that while some contents of "an honorable woman" and "an honorable man" are specific to one gender and some of them are same. In the second study, content of honorable woman and honorable man representations were evaluated as the contents of stereotypes, and the relationship between the honor representation and the basic stereotype dimensions defined in the Stereotypical Content Model (SCM) –sociability/competence/morality- was examined. Adjectives previously used in the evaluation of basic stereotypes -sociality/competence/morality- were collected together and with all these adjectives the adjective lists of honorable women and honorable men contents obtained in the first study were presented to 251 participants (112 men, 139 women). They were asked to what extent these adjectives define women and men when considering the opinion of society. Exploratory factor analyzes applied separately to each of the two data sets (where adjectives are evaluated for women and are evaluated for men) to determine the stereotype dimensions specific to women and men and the content of these dimensions. It has been found that grouping gender stereotypes in three dimensions as competence, sociability and morality, and clustering the contents of honor representation together with the morality stereotype contents is appropriate. Confirmatory factor analyses were performed in a third study with data collected from 451 participants (225 men, 226 women) and then the consistency of factor structure obtained in the second study was confirmed. In the last study, the hypotheses and research questions about the predictive effects of gender stereotypes on gender system justification, honor system justification and legitimizing violence against women were tested separately on male and female participants. For this purpose, data were collected from 230 participants (114 men, 116 women) through a questionnaire. Consistent with the hypotheses of the study, the decrease in defining women as competent and the increase in defining them as moral/honorable and the increase in defining men as moral/honorable and competent have strong effects on the increase of gender system justifying ideologies. These effects observed specifically among females. Results were discussed by compared with the findings of previous studies.