Abstract

This study investigated the relationships between ambivalent sexism, social roles, and body compassion in Albanian and Italian women. The participants were 251 Albanian and 280 Italian women who completed validated measures assessing hostile and benevolent sexism, social role transcendence, link to social roles, and three subdimensions of body compassion (defusion, common humanity, and acceptance). Path analyses indicated excellent model fit across samples. In Albanian women, hostile sexism negatively predicted social role transcendence and positively predicted a link to social roles, both of which were associated with lower body compassion. Benevolent sexism was positively associated with social role transcendence, which in turn was related to higher body compassion. In contrast, Italian women showed a different pattern: benevolent sexism positively predicted a link to social roles, while social role transcendence and link to social roles were both negatively related to defusion. Age positively predicted defusion and acceptance, highlighting a possible protective effect. Explained variance was higher in the Italian sample, particularly for the link to social roles. Overall, the findings suggest that the pattern of associations between sexist attitudes, social role attitudes, and body compassion was not identical across the two samples. These findings should be interpreted as exploratory evidence from two distinct sociocultural contexts rather than as formal cross-cultural comparisons.

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