Women-are-wonderful effect

Article here. Referenced from another article, I thought I'd just mention it here on MANN. Excerpt:

'The women-are-wonderful effect is the phenomenon found in psychological and sociological research which suggests that people associate more positive attributes with women compared to men. This bias reflects an emotional bias toward women as a general case. The phrase was coined by Alice Eagly and Antonio Mladinic in 1994 after finding that both male and female participants tend to assign positive traits to women, with female participants showing a far more pronounced bias. Positive traits were assigned to men by participants of both genders, but to a far lesser degree.

The authors supposed that the positive general evaluation of women might derive from the association between women and nurturing characteristics. This bias has been cited as an example of benevolent sexism.
...
This research found that while both women and men have more favorable views of women, women's in-group biases were 4.5 times stronger than those of men. And only women (not men) showed cognitive balance among in-group bias, identity, and self-esteem, revealing that men lack a mechanism that bolsters automatic preference for their own gender.

Other experiments in this study found people showed automatic preference for their mothers over their fathers, or associated the male gender with violence or aggression. Rudman and Goodwin's suggested that maternal bonding and male intimidation influences gender attitudes.'