1 Gender and Race Discrimination: The Interactive Nature of Disadvantage

While many parts of the world made great strides in reducing racial, ethnic and gender discrimination during the 1960's and 1970's, a casual glance across the globe quickly reveals that the scourges of ethnic and gender intolerance are far from having been eliminated. Despite intense and almost desperate efforts to eliminate ethnic intolerance and discrimination, ethnic intolerance appears to be every bit as bad at the close of the 20th century as it was at the beginning of this century. Why are ethnic, racial and gender discrimination so difficult to eliminate and what can we do to hasten their demise? Traditional approaches to the study of prejudice and discrimination within social psychology and sociology have viewed sexism and racism largely within the same broad conceptual framework and essentially as different manifestations of the same underlying phenomenon. In contrast, we will argue that while these two forms of discrimination are clearly related, they are also qualitatively and dynamically distinct. Using social dominance theory as our conceptual frame of reference, we suggest that one cannot hope to eradicate ethnic or gender prejudice until we have a better understanding of exactly how these two social phenomena are both similar to and different from one another. Social dominance theory (SDT) begins with the observation that human societies are structured as group-based social hierarchies, with dominant groups enjoying a disproportionate amount of positive socia