By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: April 6, 2008



"...In contrast, there's no hard-wired hostility toward women, though men may have a hard-wired desire to control and impregnate them.

Yet racism may also be easier to override than sexism. For example, one experiment found it easy for whites to admire African-American doctors; they just mentally categorized them as "doctors" rather than as "blacks." Meanwhile, whites categorize black doctors whom they dislike as "blacks."

In another experiment, researchers put blacks and whites in sports jerseys as if they belonged to two basketball teams. People looking at the photos logged the players in their memories more by team than by race, recalling a player's jersey color but not necessarily his or her race. But only very rarely did people forget whether a player was male or female.

"We can make categorization by race go away, but we could never make gender categorization go away," said John Tooby, a scholar at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who ran the experiment. Looking at the challenges that black and female candidates face in overcoming unconscious bias, he added, "Based on the underlying psychology and anthropology, I think it's more difficult for a woman, though not impossible." "

People tend to differentiate more by sex/gender than by race when it comes to sexual interest.  Granted, there are still people who fear inter-racial relationships, but that does not compare to the upper-90s percent of people who have a sexual interest limited to one sex (whether to the same sex or the other sex).

Language also seems to perpetuate sexism a bit more than racism.  The very names we have for people almost always imply a gender, and we've got different pronouns for people depending on their gender.  Even various titles imply a gender (waiter/waitress, congressman/congresswoman, widower/widow, Mr./Miss/Mrs./Ms. -- and don't even get started about the nonsense of having Miss/Mrs. in the first place).

Also, for whatever reason, sexism isn't taken as seriously as racism.  "Male bashing" is okay, objectifying women is okay, guys are supposed to tough, and women can be excluded from membership by private golf clubs.  There may be a biological explanation for sexism being more ingrained, but the strength of a such a link (even when established by "reaction" tests) is muddled by the existing social structures affecting the way people think.

It's kind of interesting, but it's not a controlled experiment, so coming up with conclusions related to biology is not appropriate.