GRANADA, Spain, Jan. 22 (UPI) -- Society tends to exonerate men for sexual violence between spouses when the men are kind to their wives, researchers in Spain suggest.
Study author Mercedes Duran Segura, a student at the University of Granada, supervised by professors Miguel Moya Morales and Jesus Lopez Megias, says the study involved more than 700 university students ages 18-24 who participated in six experimental studies. One of the six studies was carried out in collaboration with the University of Kent in England.
The researchers say "benevolent sexism," or "positive" ideas and attitudes of men toward women, are based on the assumption that men must take care of and sacrifice themselves for women. But such sexism is actually not benevolent because men with such attitudes consider women as inferior to men, which is why they assume women need their protection and care.
The findings, published in the journal Sex Roles, revealed that when people are told a man has attitudes socially considered as "good" toward his wife, even although those attitudes are sexist, they tend to justify sexual violence in the marriage and to exonerate the man -- as they consider he is entitled to have sexual relations with his wife -- and to blame the woman -- as they consider it is a woman's duty to sexually satisfy her husband -- the researchers say.
