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A bed of thorns: Female leaders and the self-reinforcing cycle of illegitimacy
Abstract
In an attempt to explain why the gender gap in leadership positions persists, we propose a model centered on legitimacy. When women hold powerful positions, they have a harder time than men eliciting respect and admiration (i.e., status) from subordinates. As a result, female power-holders are seen as less legitimate than male power-holders. Unless they are able to legitimize their role, relative illegitimacy will prompt a variety of consequences such as more negative subordinate behavior and reduced cooperation when the leader is a woman. Subordinate rejection will likely put female leaders in a precarious mindset, and trigger negative responses toward subordinates; such behavior can confirm negative expectations of female leaders and further undermine female authority in a self-reinforcing cycle of illegitimacy. Leader or organizational features that enhance status attributions and/or lower subordinates' perceptions of power differentials may increase legitimacy for women in leadership roles.
... While associated with the power-holding position of a leader (Vial et al., 2016), legitimacy is not a given but attributed, and recognized through relations with others (Maak & Pless, 2006). Women leaders' legitimacy is complicated by gender; they experience "comparative devaluation" (Ridgeway, 2001, p. 652), against persistent association of leadership with men, and are less likely to be "accepted" as leaders than men counterparts (Parks-Stamm et al., 2008). ...
... Women's legitimation is further complicated should they act counter to gendered expectations. Women failing to comply with gender norms may be penalized (Moss-Racusin et al., 2010), resulting in negative reactions and resistance to their authority (Vial et al., 2016). ...
... Women in powerful positions find it harder than men eliciting respect and achieving legitimacy as credible leaders (Vial et al., 2016). Being misrecognized in the media and by audiences can place women leaders' legitimacy at risk. ...
This paper interrogates a shift in patriarchal media discourse related to women leaders' recognition and legitimation in the UK. We conduct a multimodal discourse analysis of an online newspaper article about the UK politician and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Angela Rayner, and analyzed public responses. Understanding the media as a means to distribute power and enable the challenging of norms, we contribute a theory of intersectional misrecognition in media's representation of women political leaders. This reveals an enduring and dynamic subordinate status of women leaders, shown specifically through the intersection of gender and class. We theorize that while women leaders continue to be misrecognized in the media, destabilizing their legitimacy, there is a demonstrable flexing of patriarchal discourse combined with stronger and accelerated resistance to ongoing sexism. We identify this resistance as productive in its call for consequences and a redistribution of cultural values, reflecting a discursive shift toward a productive resistance of resilient gender norms, evident in the intersection of gender with class. Intersectional misrecognition has value in making inequalities explicit for women leaders and where there may be productive tensions
with potential to mobilize for change.
... However, it is short-sighted to think that a token female manager (Kanter, 1977) can freely oppose the dominant group or violate existing hierarchies. Considering collisions of incongruence (Eagly and Karau, 2002) and power relationships, a token women in a male-dominated area should be wary of counterblows or being perceived 'as less legitimate than male power holders', according to Vial et al. (2016). This can be seen in Brescoll's (2011) case study, which investigated the concept of power and gender within a political setting to understand volubility in organisations. ...
... The data revealed both aligned and differing views among participants on barriers to women in the work environment. The analysis and data draw on current business positions and concepts, such as 'power in relation to gender' (Brescoll, 2011;Huse and Solberg, 2006) and 'gendered leadership experiences' (Collinson, 2011;Ford, 2006), which assume that the leader has a formal leadership role and legitimate power, as Vial et al. (2016) define it. ...
... All of the female research participants described similar misuse-of-power incidents. By contrast, only one male manager mentioned an experience of coercive power involving a person with hierarchical power (Vial et al., 2016) during his sports career. In broad terms, only the female managers working in a male-dominated areas within their work environments mentioned physical or mental power issues or 'power-over' (Melé and Rosanas, 2003) related to gender. ...
This study aims to explain the continued relative absence of female managers in top positions, within the context of the current legally binding gender-quota debate in Germany.
This study uses the concept of embedded gender images, rooted in a historical, cultural, and societal context, to explore the relationship between tokenism and gender quotas. To support this investigation, insights from research on stereotypes, barriers, and bias are incorporated into a discussion of the relationship between tokenism and gender quotas through the concept of embedded gender images.
... As status characteristics theory (Berger et al., 1977;Ridgeway, 1991) delineates, status is a position embedded in the social structure, and women are assigned with lesser amount of respect than men in our society (Lucas, 2003). Indeed, there are many empirical findings that show people do not respect women in leadership positions as much as they respect men in the same position (Eagly and Karau, 2002;Ragins and Winkel, 2011;Vial et al., 2016). Taking into account that women take up lower status and that individuals are aware of such social reality, we expected that women and men will sense their status differently even when given the same roles. ...
... In particular, as women face sociocultural barriers of constant feedback that they are not a good fit for leadership roles, they might rely on legitimacy perceptions to sense their status. In other words, women leaders are described as caught in the 'self-reinforcing cycle of illegitimacy (Vial et al., 2016)'; their low perception of legitimacy is highly likely to be contributing to low status perceptions. Based on the above, the following hypotheses are proposed: ...
... Interestingly, this was the case even when participants were provided with reasons for their assigned roles (Study 2), albeit bogus. As low legitimacy perceptions of women leaders were an important mediator between roles and status perceptions in the present study, and might lead to precarious and ineffective leadership (Vial et al., 2016), it is Perceived status of men and women according to assigned roles in Study 2. Error bars represent standard errors. Perceived legitimacy of men and women according to assigned roles in Study 2. Error bars represent standard errors. ...
The present study examined the difference between women and men in perceiving leadership roles. Two experiments, one conducted online and the other in a lab, investigated the subjective experiences of Japanese men and women when they are assigned with different roles (e.g., leader vs. subordinate). Both studies revealed that women perceived their role as less legitimate when they were assigned leader role (vs. subordinate role). In contrast, men did not differ in their perceived legitimacy according to the assigned roles. This discrepancy in legitimacy perception in response to different roles between men and women accounted for a significant variance in women's lower sense of status when they were a leader (vs. subordinate), but not among men. Our study results illustrate the psychological barrier operating for women in organizations that are embedded in a cultural context in which women leaders are highly underrepresented.
... Although much is known about the struggles women face when climbing the power ladder, for example, being discriminated against, excluded from informal networks, lesser feelings of "fitting in, " and lack of mentoring opportunities (Lyness and Thompson, 2000;Peters et al., 2012;Ellemers, 2014;Begeny et al., 2020), we know relatively little about what happens once women obtain such positions of power. Prior research in this realm has focused on how others perceive powerful women (Eagly et al., 2000;Heilman, 2012;Vial et al., 2016;Ellemers, 2018), but scholars have paid less attention to women's own perceptions and experiences of obtaining positions of power. ...
... On the other hand, there is research arguing that women's negative workplace experiences and internalized power threats may sabotage effective leadership. Vial et al. (2016), for instance, propose that female leaders might end up in a "self-reinforcing cycle of illegitimacy" (p. 400) where a lack of validation of their power, results in aggressive leader behaviour. ...
... It would be interesting for future research to examine if, when, and why men feel like their power is under threat and the consequences of this. Probably, men experience less negative workplace experiences and are therefore less likely to experiences these power threats and accompanying negative consequences (Vial et al., 2016). But men might have different contexts in which they are likely to feel like impostors and will likely react more strongly towards threats of their power (Feenstra et al., 2017). ...
More and more women are breaking the glass ceiling to obtain positions of power. Yet with this rise, some women experience threats to their power. Here we focus on women’s perceived threats to the stability of their power and the degree to which women feel they do not deserve their power positions, as reflected in their impostor feelings. The present research identifies key workplace characteristics that are associated with these internalized power threats with survey data collected among 185 women in high-power positions. We find that negative workplace experiences (i.e., gender discrimination, denigrating treatment, lack of cultural fit, and lack of mentoring) are associated with a greater sense of power threat, which in turn relates to adverse workplace outcomes (i.e., reduced job satisfaction and increased emotional exhaustion and opting-out intentions). With this unique sample of high-powered women, our findings help illustrate the forces that make women experience power as precarious, thereby shedding light on the disadvantages these women face. We provide suggestions on how to reduce women’s internalized power threats.
... Ambiguous situations provide ample opportunity for stereotypes to be unconsciously activated and to influence judgments of when emotions are appropriate and inappropriate. For example, Vial et al. (2016) argue that increased gender salience activates negative stereotypes about women and hurts them as leaders. Pulling from research on stereotype threat, even subtle environmental cues to stereotypes have been shown to create inequalities (e.g., Seitchik et al., 2014;Spencer et al., 1999). ...
... A White man played the labeler, and a White woman and man played the two targets (see Method section below for more information and the online Supplemental Materials). Finally, given prior theory and research suggesting that delegitimization has negative consequences for leaders such as decreased compliance, cooperation, and deference from subordinates (e.g., Johnson et al., 2006;Vial et al., 2016) and that being perceived as emotional negatively affects workplace success and compensation for women (e.g., Brescoll & Uhlmann, 2008;Fischbach et al., 2015), we added outcome-based measures to Study 3 to capture the potentially negative effects of being labeled as emotional. In this way, we sought to understand how an emotional label might extend beyond one conversation and affect women's advancement in other arenas. ...
... Put more simply, our women targets as a whole may have been perceived as having less legitimate arguments than men targets to such an extent that it did not matter whether or not they were labeled as emotional. Such a large main effect reflects society's broader tendencies to evaluate women leaders more negatively in comparison to men leaders (e.g., Eagly et al., 1992;Vial et al., 2016). However, there are several limitations to Study 3 that could explain the contradictions between Study 3 and Studies 1 and 2, and that provide an avenue for future research. ...
With one in eight Americans thinking women are too emotional to be in politics (Carnevale et al., 2019), being labeled as emotional during a disagreement may activate stereotypes about a woman's irrationality and affect how legitimate people perceive her arguments to be. We experimentally tested the effects of such labels. In Study 1 ( N = 86), participants who read a vignette where a woman (versus a man) was told to “calm down” during a disagreement, saw her argument as significantly less legitimate. Perceived emotionality mediated the relation between condition and perceived legitimacy. Study 2 replicated this finding ( N = 126) with different vignettes where the character was explicitly labeled as “emotional.” Using video vignettes in Study 3 ( N = 251), we failed to replicate the results observed in Studies 1 and 2. We hope practitioners use these studies to increase awareness of how stereotype-laden labels can delegitimize women's arguments, particularly when heard via writing (e.g., via email, text, or instant messaging) rather than when observed. This work may motivate observers to challenge the use of delegitimizing labels, so that women's claims can be judged based on the soundness of their arguments, rather than stereotypes about their ability to think rationally. Additional online materials for this article are available on PWQ's website at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/03616843221123745
... This type of gender bias continues to hinder the advancement of women in leadership roles (Vial et al., 2016). Although some studies have indicated that women tend to devalue female leaders more than men (Parks-Stamm et al., 2008;Warning & Buchanan, 2009), the majority of studies have shown that gender bias is primarily observed among male subordinates (Ayman et al., 2009;see Koch et al., 2015;Koenig et al., 2011; for meta-analyses; Ryan et al., 2011). ...
... Although some studies have indicated that women tend to devalue female leaders more than men (Parks-Stamm et al., 2008;Warning & Buchanan, 2009), the majority of studies have shown that gender bias is primarily observed among male subordinates (Ayman et al., 2009;see Koch et al., 2015;Koenig et al., 2011; for meta-analyses; Ryan et al., 2011). As a result, gender bias against female leaders is more pronounced among male versus female subordinates, which suggests that male subordinates are likely to be less accepting of a female leader's influence (Netchaeva et al., 2015;Vial et al., 2016). In line with this, research has suggested that male subordinates act assertively when negotiating with female superiors (Netchaeva et al., 2015). ...
... Second, we provide further evidence that both leader's gender and subordinates' gender are important for understanding the implications of women's leadership (e.g., Ayman et al., 2009;Ryan et al., 2011). By studying individual influence as a downstream outcome, we contribute to the literature on the effects of women's leadership on subordinates' behaviors and outcomes (e.g., Vial et al., 2016;Wang et al., 2013). ...
Gender bias against female leaders suggests that female leaders are less accepted than male leaders. Moreover, research has suggested that male subordinates are less willing to accept female leaders than their female peers. We propose that their unwillingness to accept a female leader's influence may invite male team members to seek to develop their own influence within the team. Drawing on the theory of social self‐regulation in relational demography, we argue that compared with their female counterparts, male team members are more motivated to increase their influence within the team through competence monitoring (self‐regulated behavior to establish their competence within the team), especially when there is a greater proportion of male peers in the team (i.e., a lower level of gender dissimilarity between themselves and the rest of the team). In turn, we propose that competence monitoring has an increasingly positive relationship with the influence of male members within the team. The findings of our multisource survey of 288 members of 61 research and development teams supported our hypotheses. We discuss the implications of our findings for research on gender and leadership and relational demography.
... Some scholars argue that due to the increased level of serotonin and oxytocin, instead of endorphin and dopamine, women are biologically stronger leaders, as they demonstrate an increased level of interest in groups and, unlike their male counterparts, not in their own personal gain (Lopez & Ensari, 2014). This view is emphasized by more recent research of Vial et al. (2016) and Offermann et al. (2021) who state that leaders need to have interpersonal skills to motivate their teams to follow and simultaneously empower them before reaching organizational goals. Thus, this increased EQ of managing their emotions skillfully before integrating them into their thoughts (Goleman, 1995) would automatically make them stronger leaders (Herrera et al., 2012;Seager, 2018). ...
... While the German law obliges specific organizations to follow quota regulations and hire the required female percentage, the number of female executives is still behind the expectation (Schnetgöcke, 2017). Vial et al. (2016) see the issue in the acceptance within organizations, stating that one female suffices for numerous organizations as the representative of the entire gender, a view that is supported by Yundan (2021). Accepting the female attributes and the assets women bring to the overall leadership, Mildner (2018) and Nett et al. (2021) consider evaluating particular female leadership styles and potentially analyze financial gain in female leadership. ...
Through globalization and cultural awareness, more focus has been set on gender-related issues and the treatment of women throughout the world. Particular research attention has focused on the achievements and setbacks of female leaders as a major aspect of global organizations’ success. The purpose of this qualitative comparative phenomenological study was to analyze the relationship between culture and gender in leadership, specifically with female leaders in Germany and Iran. The study aimed to get insights into the cultural challenges and opportunities women face in gaining access to leadership positions in these two countries. Cultural aspects and the symbiotic acceptance of gender-specific traits were analyzed in relation to effective leadership in order to describe and document the perceptions of female leaders in Germany and Iran. Female leaders from Germany and Iran were interviewed to share their experiences regarding challenges, opportunities, cultural perceptions of their roles, and, finally, their best practices of how to overcome the barriers. By clustering the participants’ responses into themes and sub-themes and with the application of thematic coding, the research obtained a reflection of female leaders’ experiences in Germany and Iran. Study participants agreed that leadership is difficult and had challenges for all women, even more for women in Iran where structural barriers are more apparent. Agreement was achieved regarding male dominance in both cultures and the support men receive in management positions. Women often have to work harder and are missing the feeling of belonging. Participants agreed that women who are naturally competitive may have fewer challenges in leadership positions. Women seek mentorship; however, while this exists in Germany, the concept is missing in Iran. German women incorporate their organization’s mission statement and ethical values into their own work, and Iranian women consider themselves more ethical. While legal and corporate structures in Germany are working toward incorporating women into the workforce, these structures do not exist in Iran. Germany prefers the sustainable leadership style in combination with transformational leadership. Iranian leaders are drawn toward servant leadership. The result of the study demonstrates that culture is related to the challenges women face in leadership positions. While opportunities have a cultural correlation, they differ based on the societal expectations of females. Last but not least, women in both countries are able to develop their best practices with different leadership styles.
Keywords:
gender, gender diversity, culture, cultural diversity, cultures, leadership, Iran, Germany, servant leadership, Sustainable leadership, virtual leadership, transformational leadership, female leaders
... On the one hand, the incongruity between the agentic attributes emphasized in leadership roles and the communal characteristics embedded in stereotypical female gender roles exposes female leaders to long-standing disadvantages in performance evaluation (Eagly and Karau, 2002;Eagly et al., 1992) and job stability (Gupta et al., 2020;Klein et al., 2021). The underrepresentation of female leaders also results in their lack of organizational legitimacy (Vial et al., 2016), and thus they tend to be categorized by the "old boys' club" as alienated outgroup members (Tajfel and Turner, 1986), facing greater scrutiny and criticism from organizational insiders (Vial et al., 2016), activist investors (Gupta et al., 2018), and social media (Park and Westphal, 2013;Dixon-Fowler et al., 2013). From a status characteristics perspective, Berger et al. (1972) also indicate that the relatively lower social status invites more stringent evaluation criteria for women. ...
... On the one hand, the incongruity between the agentic attributes emphasized in leadership roles and the communal characteristics embedded in stereotypical female gender roles exposes female leaders to long-standing disadvantages in performance evaluation (Eagly and Karau, 2002;Eagly et al., 1992) and job stability (Gupta et al., 2020;Klein et al., 2021). The underrepresentation of female leaders also results in their lack of organizational legitimacy (Vial et al., 2016), and thus they tend to be categorized by the "old boys' club" as alienated outgroup members (Tajfel and Turner, 1986), facing greater scrutiny and criticism from organizational insiders (Vial et al., 2016), activist investors (Gupta et al., 2018), and social media (Park and Westphal, 2013;Dixon-Fowler et al., 2013). From a status characteristics perspective, Berger et al. (1972) also indicate that the relatively lower social status invites more stringent evaluation criteria for women. ...
I examine gender differences in CEO turnover-performance sensitivity to provide evidence for gendered performance evaluation in leadership positions from a new perspective. Using a large sample of Chinese listed companies from 2010 to 2019, I find that on average the turnover-performance sensitivity of female CEOs is significantly higher than that of their male counterparts, indicating that female CEOs are evaluated more unfavorably when performance declines. By exploring possible moderators of the gendered turnover-performance sensitivity, I observe that gender differences in CEO turnover-performance sensitivity are moderated by gender diversity in upper echelons, female CEOs' informal relationship with board members, CEO tenure, investor attention, and characteristics of controlling shareholders. In addition, below the performance threshold for CEO turnover risk, I document a performance threshold for gender differences in CEO turnover-performance sensitivity, suggesting that the unfavorable performance evaluation of female CEOs is triggered by extreme underperformance. I also find that past performance declines significantly worsen the evaluation of female CEOs' current performance but are immaterial to that of male CEOs. Finally, there are no significant gender differences in the performance threshold for CEO turnover risk, in the direct effect of past performance on the likelihood of current CEO turnover, and in the effect of industry performance on CEO turnover. This study particularly contributes to unraveling the boundary conditions of gender differences in CEO turnover-performance sensitivity and to opening the black box of CEO evaluation process from a gender perspective.
... In the same manner, the role congruence theory argues for an enabling environment pertaining to women's gender-specific performance. It has been reported that, if the board culture is suppressive of the gender-specific traits of women, it will misalign them in the form of backlash avoidance behaviors (Vial et al., 2016), and they will prove counterproductive for the green innovation's strategic upheaval (Triana et al., 2014). ...
... In extension to this view, a remarkable point of the current study is that it asserts the role congruence of women on board in terms of a conducive environment for women's gender-specific performance (Amore et al., 2014). Role congruence complements the resource base for the optimized capability of the firm, on the one hand, and tackles the hampering factors restraining women to deliver at their full potential, on the other hand, so as to address the demands regarding the "Going greener" initiatives and innovations (Triana et al., 2014;Vial et al., 2016). ...
The current research investigates the interplay of board gender diversity (BGD), the quality of corporate social responsibility disclosure (CSRD), and the green innovation performance (GIP) of a firm. It examines the moderation effect of the CSRD on the relationship between corporate GIP and BGD. The study inculcates 3,736 firm-year observations of A-share listed Chinese firms from 2010 to 2019. Least square dummy variables method, generalized method of moments, and 2SLS are employed for the analysis of the study. The findings foster an affirmative and significant impact of BGD on corporate GIP in terms of green innovation patents. Moreover, the quality of CSRD is also detected for a significant moderating effect on the relationship between BGD and corporate GIP. The quality of CSRD emerges to be an indicator for social resilience and female role congruence under the purview of the social resilience theory and the role congruence theory, respectively. This research would help managers and policymakers of developing nations in formulating environmental innovation strategies for corporate sustainability.
... Due to the call for gender equality, many countries and organizations face pressure to promote female leaders (Krook, 2016;Sojo et al., 2016). Selecting a QB into management positions alleviates the external stress of meeting the quota for women in leadership without jeopardizing the current gender hierarchy (Vial et al., 2016). After all, a QB might deny the existence of gender discrimination and refuse to give opportunities for other women. ...
... Legitimization of gender inequality reduces the probability of being happy (versus not happy), and displaying masculine traits increase the probability of being happy (column 1). The hypothesis that QB is a multi-faceted concept and exerts divergent impact is supported (Vial et al., 2016). This argument is further examined in models 2 and 3 with the probit model and clustering effects. ...
This paper aims to study the determinants of subjective happiness among working females with a focus on female managers. Drawn on a large social survey data set (N = 10470) in China, this paper constructs gender development index at sub-national levels to study how institutional settings are related to female managers’ happiness. We find that female managers report higher levels of happiness than non-managerial employees. However, the promoting effect is contingent on individual characteristics and social-economic settings. The full sample regression suggests that female managers behaving in a masculine way generally report a high level of happiness. Meanwhile, female managers who refuse to support gender equality report low happiness levels. Sub-sample analysis reveals that these causalities are conditioned on regional culture. Masculine behavior and gender role orientation significantly predict subjective happiness only in gender-egalitarian regions. This study is one of the first to consider both internal (individual traits) and external (social-economic environment) factors when investigating how female managers’ happiness is impacted. Also, this study challenges the traditional wisdom on the relationship between female managers’ job satisfaction and work-home conflict. This study extends the literature by investigating the impacts of female managers’ masculine behavior on their happiness. This study is useful for promoting female managers’ leadership effectiveness and happiness.
... Leadership legitimacy, the claiming and granting a leader identity, is a socially constructed process with consequences for an individual leader and his leadership (DeRue and Ashford, 2010). The basics for gaining approval for a leader is admiration, respect and sanctioned authority to act and be recognized as a legitimate leader (Vial et al., 2016). The popularity ratings of political leaders based on elections studies of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi, between 2014 and 2023 reveal (Table 1) Modi being way ahead of his competitor Rahul Gandhi, and this is a strong evidence of his magnetic personality transcending normative structure of party politics (Rai, 2019). ...
Modi ‘Wave’ is a political phenomenon that describes a strong hegemon (Prime Minister Narendra Modi) who scripts landslide victories in Indian elections based on political charisma and electoral legitimacy. The consecutive victories of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in national elections 2014 and 2019 is a testimony of charismatic routinization of Modi ‘Wave’. ‘There Is No Alternative’ to Modi seems to be ingrained in the conscious psyche of the electorate (will of the majority), which provides successive leadership legitimacy renewals. The political momentum of Modi’s charisma is a discursive dynamic, but it continues to institutionalize right-wing ideology and expand saffron electoral footprints in India.
... To begin with, successful women are often perceived differently than men, and women working in roles associated as male are judged more harshly when compared to males in those same roles and can be perceived as "coldly ambitious" instead of assertive (Brescoll et al., 2010, Okimoto and. Also, female power holders are often seen as less legitimate than male power holders and receive less support from subordinates (Vial et al., 2016). These perceptions hinder women's ability to obtain key roles in the organization or limit their ability for further advancement. ...
Our research provides a fuller picture by building on factors explaining perceptions of gender pay equity. Similar to previous human capital research, our study further validates the relationship between human capital factors such as gender, age, ethnicity, educational attainment, and beliefs about gender pay equity. We go one step further, developing two scales, employee and employer perceptions, answering the call to investigate the impact of psychological variables on gender pay equity. Findings suggest that the full model, which includes human capital and perception variables, explains 33% of the variance in beliefs about gender pay equity, whereas the model consisting of just human capital factors explains only 8%. Employer perceptions of pay equity were significantly associated with beliefs that women do not receive equal pay for equal work, confirming the need to explore psychological factors. Implications emphasizing the importance of perceptions as an integral component offering a fuller picture when considering actions to decrease the pay gap between women and men are discussed.
... Among the studies regarding the association between gender and leadership, the editorial article of Eagly & Heilman (2016) about gender and leadership and the review study of Lord et al. (2017) stand out. Many research focusing on the gender of leaders introduced comparisons of the features of female and male leaders, particularly emphasizing the distinct or disadvantageous characteristics of female leaders, their leadership styles, and the effects of these differences on employees and organizations (Eagly and Johnson, 1990;Eagly, 2007;Nash et al., 2017;Pew Research Center;Rink et al., 2013;Rosener, 1990;Van Engen & Willemsen, 2004;Vial et al., 2016). ...
The objective of this study is to address the research gap in the existing literature by examining the moderating influences of leaders' gender and employees' gender on the relationship between ethical leadership and employees' affective commitment to their organizations. The research sample consisted of 636 employees working in an industrially developed region in Turkey. Initially, factor analysis, correlation analysis, and reliability analysis were conducted for all variables. To test the hypotheses, the study investigated the various effects of gender-based variables through correlation and regression analyses. The correlation analysis revealed that the relationships between the gender of leaders and employees and all other variables were insignificant. In the regression analysis, when female leaders were selected from the sample, it was found that only the justice dimension significantly influenced affective commitment. In the remaining selections, both the morality and justice dimensions had a significant influence on affective commitment. In general, the moderation analyses indicated that neither leaders' nor employees' gender significantly moderated the relationship between the four dimensions of ethical leadership and affective commitment. Although the overall results did not yield significant implications, the findings related to women and the ethical leadership dimensions can shed light on future studies. This study contributes to the existing literature on employees' affective commitment, ethical leadership, and gender differences in organizations by examining the potential moderating variables that impact affective commitment. Additionally, the use of an unverified ethical leadership scale as an independent variable can be considered an original contribution to the methodology.
... Cognitive load has also been shown to disrupt trait inferences for counter-stereotypical targets (Wigboldus et al., 2004). This effect may disrupt any associations between gender-occupation incongruent messengers and positive traits like integrity, which may be more readily applied to congruent messengers (Hu et al., 2022;Vial et al., 2016). As such, cognitive load theory would predict that richer media will intensify trainees' biases against gender-occupation incongruent messengers. ...
While training design choices seem amoral, they interact to determine training (in)effectiveness, potentially harming/benefiting trainees and organizations. These moral implications intensify when training is administered at scale (e.g., e-training) and focuses on social issues like sexual harassment (hereafter, SH). In fact, research on SH training shows it can elicit trainees’ gender-based biases against content messengers. We suggest that one such bias, resulting from messenger gender-occupation incongruence and influencing training effectiveness, is lowered perceptions of the messenger’s integrity. We also investigate whether rich media will increase or decrease this perceived integrity penalty. Using an excerpt from real SH e-training and a sample [N = 210] consistent with the targeted training audience, we conducted a 2 × 2 × 2 relative comparison experiment (messenger gender x messenger occupation x media richness) and tested a moderated mediation model of the interactive effects of messenger gender-occupation incongruence and media richness on trainees’ perceptions of messenger integrity and training outcomes. Results suggest that trainees’ perceptions of messenger integrity decrease when the messenger’s gender is incongruent with their occupation, leading to worse outcomes in text-based training. These effects, however, are mitigated by increased media richness, providing support for media richness theory. Implications for researchers and practitioners are discussed.
... Therefore, male leaders may feel entitled to use rationalized hiding while female leaders may not for fear of being judged as gender role-incongruent, due to being openly unhelpful (Heilman & Chen, 2005;Kidder & Parks, 2001). Furthermore, the legitimacy of women in leadership roles is often challenged (Vial et al., 2016), so women may find it hard to persuade their colleagues that their reasons for rationalized hiding are valid. Evasive hiding, which imitates helping (communal behaviour), is likely to be seen as optional for male leaders but required for female leaders (Heilman & Chen, 2005;Kidder & Parks, 2001). ...
Knowledge hiding – intentionally concealing knowledge from a colleague who requested it – is often damaging for individuals and organizations. Amongst the factors explaining knowledge hiding, one has been overlooked, despite being an important lens for understanding employee behaviours: gender. In this article, we investigate its relevance by examining whether and how gender shapes two complementary aspects of knowledge hiding behaviour: frequency of hiding, and the approaches that knowledge hiders employ to do so. Building on extant literature about gender roles at the workplace, we suggest that the social roles into which women and men are socialized, and the sanctions they face if they behave incongruently with these roles affect both aspects of knowledge hiding. We explore these ideas in a multi‐wave study of full‐time employees based in the United Kingdom ( n = 449). Our findings suggest that men hide their knowledge from colleagues more frequently. In addition, both women and men hide knowledge in a way that is congruent with the expectations of others regarding their social role: that is, women use evasive hiding and playing dumb more than men, while men use rationalized hiding more than women. A male‐dominated context reduces these differences between genders.
... The absence of effective governance mechanisms provides opportunities for politicians to use firm resources to fulfill administrative mandates, secure political support, and get promoted. Because female leaders are perceived as more submissive and risk-averse (Vial et al., 2016;Zhang & Qu, 2016), investors may believe that female CEOs will work in favor of government mandates and be less willing to protect shareholders' interests. Therefore, state ownership may further reduce the credibility of female CEOs. ...
Female entrepreneurs and CEOs generally face greater challenges in securing funding to exploit entrepreneurial opportunities, yet contextual factors under which such challenges are more likely to arise are less understood. We find that female-led initial public offerings (IPOs) incur greater IPO underpricing, but this effect is moderated by their ownership structure, reflecting different institutional logics in which these firms operate. Specifically, the positive relationship between female CEOs and IPO underpricing is attenuated by venture capitalist ownership, whereas such a relationship is exacerbated by state ownership. Based on a sample of 958 IPOs in China between 2009 and 2015, this study corroborates these findings.
... This finding lines up with other empirical research that finds that leaders with disadvantaged status characteristics face "stricter standards", are often considered less "likeable" in comparison to leaders with consistent status characteristics and have been found to face a wide array of "backlash effects" when they present themselves as high status or attempt to fill high status positions (Rudman & Phelan, 2007;Foschi, 2000). Relatedly, there is evidence that atypical leaders within groups, like women or minorities, face problems of legitimacy that limit their influence (Vial, Napier, & Brescoll, 2016;Ridgeway & Nakagawa, 2014;Butler & Geis, 1990). ...
This dissertation examines whether there are unintended consequences that emerge from status interventions in task groups in relation to cohesion and solidarity. Past theorists have argued that inconsistent status structures produce weaker levels of cohesion and solidarity in comparison to consistent status structures. To contextualize the issue of group processes as they relate to public policy, I first introduce the complexity framework for public policy and then outline the history of group processes and the concept of solidarity. Despite centuries noting the complexity of group processes and their implications, policymakers remain myopically focused on either individual responsibility or social structure as the root of social inequality.
After providing a theoretical overview, I then proceed to discuss the procedure of the study more in-depth. Data come from an online experiment involving mixed-sex dyads interacting in one of three conditions. Participants individually completed an ambiguous problem-solving task and then worked together over Zoom audio to form a group decision. In the three conditions, participants were either given no performance feedback before the problem-solving task or were informed the male or the female participant performed better on a pre-test related to the task. The conversations were recorded and analyzed using measures related to paraverbal synchronization and accommodation.
In terms of self-reported cohesion, there appeared to be a difference, albeit a weak one, in only the inconsistent-status condition, with female participants reporting higher levels of cohesion in comparison to males. However, in terms of solidarity, there was no significant difference between the conditions. Although inconsistent status structures were associated with weaker perceptions of cohesion, it did not appear to impact solidarity like theorists have suggested. Status structures do not appear to impact group solidarity. The nature of group membership in conjunction with status consistency/inconsistency may produce the significant differences in solidarity that theorists have suggested. To date, there has been little empirical examination of how status consistency affects cohesion and solidarity. Relatedly, the current study advances the research on vocal accommodation by analyzing status and solidarity simultaneously. The implications of the findings on status interventions for public policy, in particular the nature of feasibility strategies, are discussed in detail at the end.
... Identify factors such as male ego, disobedience, and family responsibilities that make career and guidance difficult for women. The study by Vial et al. (2016) revealed that there are challenging times in leadership positions; however, women experienced more of this challenge than men. However, from this study, it could be observed that exceptional leadership was a necessary factor in STEM women's success. ...
This study examines the success and role of African women leaders in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). In the absence of significant research on women’s STEM leadership, the success and roles of others could motivate an aspiring African woman to pursue a career in STEM. A qualitative approach was sought using open online questions and narratives from African women leaders about their roles and career success in STEM. Data were collected from the western, eastern, northern, and southern regions of Africa from participants who held STEM leadership positions, such as directors, deans, and chief officers. The participants were 42 women representing 12 African nations. The narratives of these women leaders’ tones and life experiences were analyzed through content analysis. The narratives of these women leaders’ tones and life experiences were analyzed in search of recurring patterns and themes. Successful leadership in STEM requires balancing career and family life, setting goals, solving problems, being open to innovative ideas, embracing diversity, collaborating, and having knowledge of STEM research and mentoring skills. Using the achievements and roles of others could inspire future African women to pursue careers in STEM.
... roles, these studies show that both men and women rate women leaders more negatively on interpersonal measures (Parks-Stamm et al., 2008;Phelan et al., 2008) and hold them in lower esteem than they do male leaders (Vial et al., 2016). Studies also show that when women in senior roles are a minority (in terms of their representation), junior women tend to identify with them less, as well as to identify less with their own personal gender identity as women (Ely, 1994(Ely, , 1995. ...
Women in organizations must grapple with a double‐bind stemming from conflicting expectations toward them to exhibit both competition (per workplace norms) and cooperation (per societal gender‐specific norms), and they often suffer a backlash for conforming to one expectation at the expense of the other. Similarly, different streams of literature offer contrasting accounts of women’s competitive attitudes and behavior. This systematic review is the first attempt to integrate research on competition among women in organizations across research disciplines to gain a nuanced insight into the pervasiveness, causes, dynamics, and manifestations of this phenomenon. In doing so, we draw on the wide research pertaining to women’s intra‐gender competitive attitudes and behavior in structured competition within organizations, and on relevant intersectionality research that looks at diverse groups of women. We synthesize the research to suggest a paradoxical framework of coopetition (competitive‐cooperation) that can guide future theoretical insights and research directions, along with practical organizational tools, to effectively deal with the tension and inequality that result from paradoxical expectations and formulate important future research directions.
... In general, students consider upper-level courses essential to their mastery of their chosen fields, and they expect bonafide experts of that field to be their educators (31). Those in the gender majority are more so considered true and legitimate members of the department (14,26,32). Therefore, students might expect those in the gender majority to fill these essential roles of teaching upper-level courses. ...
Women are underrepresented in academia's higher ranks. Promotion oftentimes requires positive student-provided course evaluations. At a U.S. university, both an archival and an experimental investigation uncovered gender discrimination that affected both men and women. A department's gender composition and the course levels being taught interacted to predict biases in evaluations. However, women were disproportionately impacted because women were more often in the gender minority. A subsequent audit of the university's promotion guidelines suggested a disproportionate impact on women's career trajectories. Our framework was guided by role congruity theory, which poses that workplace positions are gendered by the ratios of men and women who fill them. We hypothesized that students would expect educators in a department's gender majority to fill more so essential positions of teaching upper-level courses and those in the minority to fill more so supportive positions of teaching lower-level courses. Consistent with role congruity theory when an educator's gender violated expected gendered roles, we generally found discrimination in the form of lower evaluation scores. A follow-up experiment demonstrated that it was possible to change students' expectations about which gender would teach their courses. When we assigned students randomly to picture themselves as students in a male-dominated, female-dominated, or gender-parity department, we shifted their expectations of whether men or women would teach upper- and lower-level courses. Violating students' expectations created negative biases in teaching evaluations. This provided a causal link between department gender composition and discrimination. The importance of gender representation and ameliorating strategies are discussed.
... women (Vial et al., 2016). Not surprisingly, female executives depart from senior management roles at a higher rate than men (Glass & Cook, 2016;Hom et al., 2008;Sabic, 2015;Zhang & Qu, 2016). ...
An extensive body of research has shed light on the structural challenges and stereotypic barriers that lead female leaders to exit their organizations. However, we know little about the factors that mitigate these exits. In this study, we advance the literature by examining how the chief executive officers (CEO's) diversity-valuing behavior relates to female executives' likelihood of turnover. We integrate insights from the literature on gender inclusive leadership, turnover, and psychological safety to propose psychological safety as a key underlying mechanism for this outcome. We test and find support for our theory and hypotheses using a unique data set that combines primary survey data and archival data on turnover for a sample of 365 male and female executives from large U.S. public firms. Our findings show that CEO diversity-valuing behavior is associated with psychological safety for female executives and that psychological safety, in turn, mediates the effect on female executive turnover. We do not find these effects in men. Our study contributes to the literature on gender diversity and female leadership by shifting the conversation from discussing barriers constraining women's longevity to how CEOs enable female executives' retention through diversity-valuing behaviors. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
... Despite considerable educational attainment, gender bias still prevails against the advancement of women in leadership roles (Heilman et al., 2004;Phelan et al., 2008;Rudman et al., 2012). A recent study (Vial et al., 2016) on genderbased leadership showed that women in leadership positions are less likely to be perceived as legitimate compared to their male counterparts. ...
Purpose
The purpose of the study was to examine the impact of both work and non-work domain contextual factors (family support, workplace social support, mentoring support, networking and visible assignment) on the general self-efficacy (GSE) of women leaders in India. Also, we tried to explore whether GSE is connected to women leaders' career aspirations.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a survey-based study where data was collected and analysed from 145 women leaders working in a large public sector organisation in India.
Findings
Results suggest that except for workplace social support, all other factors have a significant positive impact on the GSE of women leaders. GSE is also significantly associated with women leaders' career aspirations.
Originality/value
Uniqueness of the article is that we have empirically tested the enablers and deterrents of women leadership in the GSE context, taking note of both work and non-work domains of women leaders. The implications of the results for women's leadership development have been detailed.
... Women leaders are differentially vulnerable at work; they do work historically and culturally associated with men and masculinity and are in a minority. Perceived as less legitimate and less socially acceptable power-holders than men (Vial et al., 2016), they face contradictory obligations of normative femininity and a leadership role. Women leaders are marginalised and vulnerable at risk of having their credibility and legitimacy destabilised. ...
Purpose
This paper advances what is known about emotional experiences and challenges when researching work-caused trauma in organisations and illustrates learning for researchers of work-related trauma. Viewing vulnerability as strength could be conceived as an oxymoron. The paper explains how vulnerability can lead to strength for researchers/participants and focuses on researcher reflexivity in relation to one interview with a woman leader in a small-scale qualitative study.
Design/methodology/approach
The research protocols of the qualitative study are outlined: pre-interview briefings, participant journaling and semi-structured interviews. Researcher reflexivity, following Hibbert's (2021) four levels of reflexive practice (embodied, emotional, rational and relational), is applied to an interview with a woman leader.
Findings
The paper illustrates how research design and recognising vulnerability as strength facilitates considerable relational work and emotional experiences. Researcher reflexivity conveys impact of work-caused trauma on participants and researchers. The paper advances understandings of vulnerability as strength in practice, emotional experiences and challenges of work-caused trauma research.
Research limitations/implications
In this paper, a single case of researcher reflexivity is considered.
Practical implications
There are practical implications for researcher relationships with participants; demonstrating emotional awareness; responding to traumatic stories, participant distress and impact on the researcher; issues of vicarious/secondary traumatic stress; having safe psychological systems; scaffolding a process which recognises vulnerability as strength and becoming personally and methodologically vulnerable; risk of embodied and emotional impact; commitment to reflexivity and levels of reflexive practice.
Originality/value
There is lack of researcher reflexive accounts of practice when studying trauma. Few scholars suggest ways to support researchers in challenging and difficult research. There is silence in research exploring leaders' experiences of work-caused trauma. This paper provides a reflexive account in practice from a unique study of women leaders' experiences of work-caused trauma.
... This leadership-as-dominance model is a better fit for men: Men are often perceived to be more effective in those roles, especially by other men (Eagly, Karau, & Makhijani, 1995;though Eagly & Karau, 2002, describe this as a small effect). Women report feeling that they have a harder time than men eliciting respect and admiration from their subordinates (Vial, Napier, & Brescoll, 2016). Research even reveals that female faces with dominant features (e.g., a prominent brow) are perceived less positively, whereas the same is not true of male faces (Oh, Dotsch, Porter, & Todorov, 2020;Sutherland, Young, Mootz, & Oldmeadow, 2015). ...
Psychology is a popular subject to study, with thousands entering graduate school each year, but unlike med or pre-law, there is limited information available to help students learn about the field, how to successfully apply, and how to thrive while completing doctoral work. The Portable Mentor is a useful, must-have resource for all students interested in psychology. This third edition is updated and expanded, designed to address students' and trainees' need for open dialogue and mentorship. Throughout, it covers some of the common challenges graduates face and features discussions about how to celebrate your identity and find a rewarding, worthwhile career path. It comprises thirty chapters written by more than seventy of the field's top experts, successfully filling a void in professional development advice.
... We think that one reason could reside on women legitimation of authority. Especially in male-dominated sectors, such as that of wineries (Livat and Jaffré 2022), female leadership is not accepted due to lack of fit perceptions and feminine stereotypes (Vial et al. 2016). The consequence of a lack of legitimation of authority is reflected on the fact that subordinates are often not willing to follow the management strategic choices, with a threat for reaching the organizational outcome. ...
In a fast-changing world, characterized by evenly unexpected challenges and shocks, being resilient is a crucial aspect for every organization. Drawing from the goal setting theory and the double standards of competence perspective, this study aims at understanding the antecedents of organizational proactive resilience. More precisely, it looks at the impact of quantitative and qualitative organizational growth goals on proactive resilience, distinguishing between women-led and non-women-led firms. Based on a unique sample of 167 Italian wineries (67 women-led and 100 non-women-led), this paper tests this theoretical model using path analysis techniques. The wine sector is a particularly interesting context to study the phenomenon due to its exposure to natural disasters, new consumers' behaviours that are requiring firms to continuously innovate and differentiate in a traditionally low-tech sector, but also changes happening at wineries' management level. In fact, the sector has been traditionally male dominated, but women are increasingly taking the lead. The findings indicate that growth goals differently contribute to proactive organizational resilience , but their effects vary in women-and non-women-led businesses. Specifically, these results suggest that in women-led wineries, proactive organizational resilience depends on quantitative growth goals while in non-women-led wineries businesses this depends on qualitative growth goals.
... Violations of the prescriptions of gender roles are associated with backlash (for discussion, Rudman & Glick, 2012). Relative to genderconforming women, women who display stereotypically masculine qualities (e.g., agency) are disliked and perceived as deficient (Rudman, 1998), perceived as less socially skilled and hirable (Rudman & Glick, 1999, 2001, less respected and admired by subordinates (for review, see Vial, Napier, & Brescoll, 2016), and more frequent targets of social and economic punishments (Rudman & Fairchild, 2004;Yoder & Schleicher, 1996). Likewise, compared to gender-conforming men, men who display stereotypically feminine characteristics are often bullied via homophobic or misogynistic name-calling (Parry, 2015;Pascoe, 2007;Reigeluth & Addis, 2016), lose social power (Gartzia & Baniandrés, 2016), are perceived as worse leaders (Bartol & Butterfield, 1976), and are targets of physical abuse (Pascoe, 2007). ...
The present work examined whether men's and women's gender-identities and experiences of gender threats influenced their self-images. Findings across two studies (N = 567) revealed that masculinity in men appears to be more precarious than femininity is in women, but when similarly threatened in a given situation both men's and women's anger predicted their construction of gender compensatory self-images. Specifically, in Study 1, participants' definition of the self in terms of gender ingroup (vs. outgroup) traits (a) positively predicted the gender stereotypicality of men's and women's actual photographs and women's constructed self-images, but (b) negatively predicted the gender stereotypicality of men's self-images. Men whose self definitions least strongly prioritized gender ingroup (over outgroup) traits generated the most gender stereotypic self-images, as rated by independent judges. In addition, in Study 2, after being led to believe that they performed like average members of their gender outgroup (i.e., threat condition) on a gender knowledge test, men expressed more public discomfort and were angrier than women. Gender threat (vs. assurance) also indirectly predicted the generation of more gender stereotypic self-images for men, but not women; this effect was significant via serial mediation, through public discomfort and anger. However, extending prior findings, anger (but not public discomfort) was significantly associated with and predicted the construction of feedback contradicting self-images similarly. We discuss the implications of these findings for theory and research on gender-identity, self-image, and compensatory gender threat responses.
... The kinds of behaviors that are seen as required for leaders tend to be valued in men but contradict the traditional feminine role, which prescribes women to be kind and considerate rather than assertive (Prentice & Carranza, 2002). This incongruity can lead to bias against female leaders (Eagly & Karau, 2002), who are often disliked by others (Brescoll et al., 2018;Heilman & Okimoto, 2007), penalized for exercising authority (Sinclair & Kunda, 2000), and undermined by subordinates (Koch, 2005;Vial et al., 2016). The prospect of social disapproval can be a powerful disincentive (e.g., Tomasello, 2014); indeed, women tend to anticipate a lack of support from others if they were to behave assertively, which often deters them from doing so (Brescoll, 2011;Moss-Racusin et al., 2010). ...
Understanding how children think of leadership may provide important insights on the roots of adult gender gaps in leadership ambition. In three studies, we evaluated children’s anticipation of social support for leaders as well as their own motivation to pursue leadership roles, paying close attention to the way that gender may influence children’s responses. In Study 1, girls expected lower social support for leaders than boys across a variety of contexts involving group activities. In Study 2, girls appeared to be less interested than boys in a novel leader role in the context of a group game, and this difference was especially large among White children younger than 8 years old. In Study 3, we tested whether interest in a leader role could be increased by framing the role in a communal and gender-neutral manner. Results revealed that, regardless of their gender, children were more interested in the leader role in the communal leader condition (vs. control) and anticipated stronger social support and cooperation from others if they were to be the leader, as well as higher self-efficacy as leaders.
The contemporary global backlash against women has a dual structure of articulation. There is an over(t)‐articulation of the trend toward gender parity in social, political, and economic life and a simultaneous strengthening of subterranean forces of resistance and hostility against this trend. A proper understanding of the gender backlash should both identify the shortfalls in the over‐articulated parity trends, and also the hidden markers of hostility and resistance to them. Research shows that modern forms of war and conflict have taken an aggravated toll on women, children, and minority groups. The prevalence of intimate partner violence, the resistance to reproductive rights, asymmetries in the gender gap, anti‐women political discourse, and the phenomenon of “gendertrolling” are some other manifestations of the global backlash against women.
Purpose
This study aims to explore the factors that build positive leadership identities in women and reduce woman-leader identity conflict in societies with low gender equality. In doing so, it responds to calls to examine the role of “context” for women aspiring to leadership roles.
Design/methodology/approach
The required data were collected through semistructured interviews with 30 senior-level female leaders in the corporate sector of Pakistan and analyzed using NVivo.
Findings
Successful professional women are often facilitated by various social and organizational factors that boost their confidence and ability to view themselves positively as leaders, reducing woman-leader identity conflict. The main facilitators observed were egalitarian values practiced at home, male sponsorship in organizations and individual leadership experiences. Furthermore, the age and socio-economic status of women have also emerged as important factors contributing to the success of women leaders in Pakistani society, which is characterized by gender inequality and high power distance.
Practical implications
Organizations committed to developing women for leadership roles and attaining their gender diversity goals need to address the structural and psychological barriers that hinder women’s progress in the workplace. Moreover, men need to be engaged as allies to enable women’s advancement as organizational leaders.
Originality/value
This study highlights how culture, gender norms and significant experiences of women moderate equality lows in patriarchal societies. It aims to demonstrate that women can progress as leaders within a low gender-egalitarian culture in the presence of factors that facilitate the establishment of their identities as leaders, thus reducing identity conflict. In addition, the role that men can play in creating a supportive environment for establishing women’s leadership identities is particularly highlighted in this study.
Drawing on data from an ethnographic study of the introduction and implementation of a flexible work policy intended in part to improve gender equality at a STEM professional organization, I develop grounded theory on how managers’ gender shapes their implementation of such initiatives. I identify an equality policy paradox in which women managers, who openly support gender equality, are more likely than men managers to limit the policy. This apparent contradiction between intentions and actions is reconciled through an interactional role-based mechanism. Specifically, in this setting women managers encounter barriers to developing technical expertise, client relations, and respected authority. They respond by engaging extensively with subordinates, which allows them to effectively manage by brokering information (as an alternative to technical and client-facing tasks) and cultivating cooperation (as an alternative to formal authority). The policy undermines these interdependent activities; reflecting this, women managers generally oppose it. Men managers tend not to experience these constraints, and they focus on technical and client-related tasks that are largely independent of subordinates. The policy maintains these activities; reflecting this, they implement it. By identifying the equality policy paradox and the mechanism underlying it, this study advances theory on managers’ implementation of equality-related practices and policies as well as theory on gender and management.
How does female board membership affect firm stakeholder strategy? With the large increase in pressure to add more women to boards, it is especially important to understand how they influence firm strategy. Moreover, despite the growing importance of firm stakeholder strategy, key stakeholders continue to criticize firms for failing to keep their commitments. Here, we expect that owing to their long-term nature, consistency is particularly important for stakeholder investments, and that owing to their greater interest in stakeholder issues and their effect on board monitoring, female board members can be a key driver of stakeholder strategy consistency. Specifically, we develop and test hypotheses that increasing architectural complexity and uncertainty make stakeholder investments more difficult or costly, leading to a reduction in such investments. However, female board membership increases firm stakeholder consistency and counteracts these negative effects. Using a sample of 1755 S&P 1500 firms for the period 2000–2013, we provide robust support for our hypotheses.
Legitimacy is crucial for the effectiveness of leaders in the workplace. We investigate pathways by which authorities in the workplace gain legitimacy and how they differ by authority race. In addition to leaders’ behaviors, subordinates’ impressions of leaders’ competence and warmth, stemming from those behaviors, impact their views of leader legitimacy. We further assess how the role of mediating impressions depends on the race of the authority enacting the behaviors. In an experimental vignette study, we manipulate the authority’s actions (use of fair procedures and power benevolently) and race (Black/white) and measure perceived competence, warmth, and legitimacy. Results indicate that the effects of leader behaviors on legitimacy operate through impressions of competence and warmth. Moreover, authority race alters this pathway; behaviors operate through competence impressions for white managers and through warmth impressions for Black managers. Our study illuminates how leaders gain legitimacy at work and how this process is racialized.
This study examines how gender diversity on nonprofit boards relates to chief executive officer (CEO) compensation using data of 1,835 501(c)(3) organizations with the GuideStar Platinum Seal of Transparency. The analysis reveals a positive association between women’s representation on a governing board and female CEO compensation until women’s proportion reaches 82%. By contrast, there is a negative relationship between women’s representation on boards and male CEO compensation. Overall, the findings suggest that board gender diversity has distinctive implications for CEO compensation depending on CEO gender and that having more women on governing boards contributes to closing the gender pay gap for nonprofit executives. These findings can be applied to other dimensions of diversity, including racial and ethnic diversity.
Objectives: Many studies examine female leadership and gender diversity, yet a gap exists in the literature regarding coaching female leaders. This study examines how leadership coaching influenced the development of nine women in senior leadership positions at a large NGO.
Design: A qualitative approach was used, employing a grounded theory methodology informed by a critical realist epistemology and an abductive research logic.
Method: Semi-structured individual interviews with a handpicked sample of nine participants, each of which operating within three levels of their CEO and having received leadership coaching within the past three years.
Results: These suggest a male-dominated workplace culture, gender bias and the participants’ lack of confidence and entitlement (or ‘psychological glass ceiling’) resulted in the women feeling that they lacked legitimacy. The findings indicate that leadership coaching increases feelings of legitimacy for women in senior leadership roles, through enabling them to form their leadership identity, build confidence and be seen as leaders.
Conclusions: This study concludes that coaching can be deployed to help female leaders combat feelings of a lack of legitimacy and thus even out power imbalances. Further research could assess how far these findings might be generalisable and therefore serve to inform the gender pay gap debate.
Keywords: Executive coaching; leadership coaching; coaching psychology; women; female leadership; male-dominated; workplace culture; power; psychological glass ceiling.
A growing literature examines whether women’s integration into management jobs erodes gender stereotypes and gender inequality. However, this literature neglects the other side of the status coin—women’s continued predominance in low-level support jobs. I theorize that what people see when they “look down” the occupational structural is more critical to the creation of status beliefs than what they see when they “look up,” and test this theory using matched employer-employee data from Japan. I find that, adjusting for job type and human capital, the gender pay gap is nearly three times greater in companies where subordinate jobs are female dominated. This theory provides new ways to understand the “stalled gender revolution” in the United States, Japan, and beyond.
Scholars have widely documented the challenges women face in being evaluated as competent leaders. The authors contribute to this field by addressing whether and when female supervisors might have a favorable position by examining evaluations of social competencies in supervision and by examining different organizational workplace features. To test the hypotheses, the authors used a representative Dutch sample on 1,251 employed respondents. The results indicated that male-led and female-led employees were equally satisfied with their supervisor's appreciation and understanding of employees' care tasks at home – but women with a female supervisor were slightly more satisfied with their supervisor's social skills than women with a male supervisor. Moreover, it was demonstrated that the share of female co-workers and the policy climate in the workplace shaped differentiated evaluations of male-female supervisors. These findings highlight the relevance of including (structural) workplace features in future studies on perceptions of women in leadership.
El presente artículo tiene como objetivo reflexionar, con perspectiva de género, sobre el liderazgo político y el estilo comunicativo en Twitter (1078 tuits) durante la campaña electoral andaluza de 2018. Analizamos, a través de un análisis del contenido cuantitativo, las posibles brechas de género. Los datos recabados demuestran que las mujeres políticas esgrimen un estilo comunicativo particular y son más visibles en la red social, colocando temas femeninos en la agenda y esgrimiendo un estilo de liderazgo fuerte y personalista cercano a las organizaciones partidistas en sus territorios. Cabe seguir profundizando en comprobar si nuestro marco de análisis y conclusiones puede trasladarse o explicar dinámicas similares en otras realidades o si, por el contrario, variables institucionales o contextuales definen más consistentemente la comunicación política de los líderes. Palabras clave: campañas electorales; comunicación política; género; liderazgo político; Twitter
Women use power in more prosocial ways than men and they also engage in more emotional labor (i.e., self-regulate their emotions to respond and attend to the needs and emotions of other people in a way that advances organizational goals). However, these two constructs have not been previously connected. We propose that gendered emotional labor practices and pressures result in gender differences in the prosocial use of power. We integrate the literature on emotional labor with research on the psychology of power to articulate three routes through which this happens. First, women may be more adept than men at the intrapersonal and interpersonal processes entailed in emotional labor practices—a skill that they can apply at all hierarchical levels. Second, given women’s stronger internal motivation to perform emotional labor, they construe power in a more interdependent manner than men, which promotes a more prosocial use of power. As a result, female powerholders tend to behave in more prosocial ways. Third, when they have power, women encounter stronger external motivation to engage in emotional labor, which effectively constrains powerful women’s behaviors in a way that fosters a more prosocial use of power. We discuss how, by promoting prosocial behavior among powerholders, emotional labor can be beneficial for subordinates and organizations (e.g., increase employee well-being and organizational trust), while simultaneously creating costs for individual powerholders, which may reduce women’s likelihood of actually attaining and retaining power by (a) making high-power roles less appealing, (b) guiding women toward less prestigious and (c) more precarious leadership roles, (d) draining powerful women’s time and resources without equitable rewards, and (e) making it difficult for women to legitimize their power in the eyes of subordinates (especially men). Thus, emotional labor practices can help explain the underrepresentation of women in top leadership positions.
Positioning the book within the worldwide resurgence in feminist focus, Kouvaras reflects on the collection’s accounts of creative processes and contextual issues pertaining to current-day and early-twentieth-century woman composers: their rich compositional voices and the testing—to say the least—scenarios in the professional settings in which these creators disseminate their work. This chapter presents the ways in which the book balances narratives of struggle, of artistic prowess, and of “breaking through” the obstacles in their profession. The book has a tripartite structure: Part I, “Creative Work—Then and Now,” illuminates historical and present-day women’s composition and various iterations and conceptions of the “feminine voice”; Part II, “The State of the Industry in the Present Day,” viewed through the creation of new music by women, provides solutions to the inequities women face in the sector; and Part III, “Creating; Collaborating: Composer and Performer Reflections,” offers personal accounts of current music creation. Kouvaras draws together the issues arising from these areas that have pertained to scholarship on women’s music since the advent of 1970s feminist criticism, through to the current so-called Fourth Wave, ending with a discussion that teases out the myriad contemporary complexities of the very concept of the “woman composer.”
The four theories—gendering of careers, glass ceiling, gender stereotypes and work-life balance—of the lack of inclusion of women in the technology sector have a certain face validity when looking at Nigeria, a historically patriarchal nation undergoing significant growth in penetration and diffusion in the technology sector. Consequently, this article is the first to further develop these theories through a critical realist exploration of the experiences of female senior managers in the Nigerian technology sector. The findings show that women technology leaders are ambitious and driven to scale the barriers to senior management roles. These four theories are extended by providing empirical data and insights into how this phenomenon is experienced differently in the Global South. The article recommends that organizations implement policies that support skilled and high-potential women employees to fulfill their career aspirations, thereby disrupting stereotypes and changing the dominant, masculine narrative of the technology industry.
Keywords: Gendered careersglass ceiling barriersNigeriawomen technology leaders
Purpose:
Women have made significant gains in leadership across all disciplines in academic medicine but have not yet achieved leadership parity as department chairs. The authors investigated the challenges experienced by one cohort of women department chairs in emergency medicine (EM) and the solutions they proposed to address these challenges.
Method:
The authors conducted a qualitative descriptive study of 19 of 20 possible current and emeritus emergency medicine women department chairs at academic medical centers between April and December 2020. Participant interviews elicited self-reported demographic characteristics and narrative responses to a semistructured interview template that focused on the role of gender in their leadership and career trajectories. Interviews were transcribed, blinded, and iteratively coded and categorized.
Results:
The analysis demonstrated 4 common challenges and 5 enacted or proposed solutions. The challenges discussed by the participants were: feeling unprepared for the role of department chair, being one of few women in leadership, inheriting unhealthy department cultures, and facing negative faculty reactions. The individual and institutional level solutions discuss by the participants were: gaining and maintaining confidence (individual), maintaining accountability and mission alignment (individual), facilitating teamwork (individual), supporting women's leadership (institution), and creating safe leadership cultures (institution).
Conclusions:
Women department chairs in EM were successful academic leaders despite confronting several challenges to their leadership. Considering the study findings through the lens of the concept of second-generation gender bias further illuminates the influence of gender on leadership in academic medicine. These findings suggest several possible strategies that can combat gender bias, increase gender parity among academic medicine's leadership, and improve the leadership experience for women leaders.
Purpose
Despite abundant research on the negative effect of gender stereotypes on female leaders, it remains unclear whether leader competence perceived by the subordinates could overcome this backlash effect. Drawing on expectation states theory and expectancy violation theory, the authors investigate how the interaction among leaders' gender roles, leader sex and subordinates' perceived leader competence influences leader effectiveness through subordinates' affective trust.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were collected through two-wave surveys among 489 participants from various sectors in different parts of China. SPSS and Hayes PROCESS were used to test the hypotheses.
Findings
High competence perceived by the subordinates helps female leaders to overturn the negative effect of masculinity and strengthen the positive effect of femininity, whereas this positive moderation does not hold for male leaders.
Originality/value
This study addresses the ongoing debate about “female advantage” in leadership by showing that female leaders benefit from high perceived competence and are penalized by low perceived competence to a greater extent than male leaders in terms of leader effectiveness.
This article presents results from two complementary experiments that examine the effects of a potential obstacle to female leadership: gendered language in the form of masculine leadership titles. In the first experiment (N = 1753), we utilize an unobtrusive writing task to find that a masculine title (“Chairman” vs. “Chair”) increases assumptions that a hypothetical leader is a man, even when the leader’s gender is left unspecified. In the second experiment (N = 1000), we use a surprise recall task and a treatment that unambiguously communicates the leader’s gender to find that a masculine title increases the accuracy of leader recollection only when the leader is a man. In both studies, we find no significant differences by gender of respondents in the effects of masculine language on reinforcing the link between masculinity and leadership. Thus, implicitly sexist language as codified in masculine titles can reinforce stereotypes that tie masculinity to leadership and consequently, weaken the connection between women and leadership.
Importance:
The number of women entering medicine continues to increase, but women remain underrepresented at all tiers of academic rank and chair leadership in EM. The proportion of female chairs in EM has not exceeded 12% in 2 decades.
Objective:
To compare how male and female EM chairs experience leadership emergence, with attention to factors associated with support of the emergence of female chairs.
Design, setting, and participants:
This qualitative descriptive study was conducted between April 2020 and February 2021 at 36 US academic EM departments. Eligible participants were all current and emeritus female EM academic department chairs (with a possible cohort of 20 individuals) and an equal number of randomly selected male chairs.
Interventions:
Semistructured interviews were conducted via teleconferencing with an 11-item interview guide.
Main outcomes and measures:
Qualitative findings identifying similarities and gender differences in leadership emergence were collected.
Results:
Among 20 female chairs in EM, 19 women (mean [SD] age, 56.2 [7.1] years) participated in the study (95.0% response rate). There were 13 active chairs, and 6 women were within 5 years of chair leadership. Among 77 male chairs in EM identified and randomized, 37 men were invited to participate, among whom 19 individuals (51.4%) agreed to participate; 18 men (mean [SD] age, 52.2 [7.5] years) completed their interviews. Reflecting upon their experiences of leadership emergence, male chairs saw leadership as their destiny, were motivated to be chairs to gain influence, were dismissive of risks associated with chairing a department, and were sponsored by senior male leaders to advance in leadership. Female chairs saw leadership as something they had long prepared for, were motivated to be chairs to make a difference, were cautious of risks associated with chairing a department that could derail their careers, and relied on their own efforts to advance in leadership.
Conclusions and relevance:
This study found that experiences of leadership emergence differed by gender. These results suggest that leadership development strategies tailored to women should promote early internalization of leadership identity, tightly link leadership to purpose, cultivate active sponsorship, and encourage women's risk tolerance through leadership validation to support women's development as leaders and demonstrate a commitment to gender equity in EM leadership.
We hypothesized that women avoid male-dominated domains because they anticipate lacking the power to influence others in those contexts. In Study 1, a questionnaire study, male undergraduates were more interested in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors than were female undergraduates, and this gender disparity was mediated by women anticipating having less power in STEM fields than men did. Study 2 experimentally demonstrated that a lack of female representation within an academic context (MBA program) led women to infer that they would lack power in that context. Consequently, they became less interested in the program and in business schools in general. Our findings indicate that expecting low interpersonal power is an important mechanism by which women lose interest in pursuing male-dominated fields.
I draw on research on emotion and gender to illustrate how an essentialized view of gender as difference persists through the circulation of beliefs about gender from popular culture to scientific writing and back again. I begin by describing the paradoxical nature of beliefs about emotion and then show that emotion's representations in beliefs and stereotypes have a powerful effect on how we interpret our own and others' emotional behavior. I consider how the differences paradigm, the study of gender in terms of identification of difference(s) between girls/women and boys/men, aids the circulation of essentialized beliefs about gender from popular culture to psychological science. Specifically, essentializing discourses from popular culture are absorbed into scientific discourse and gain scientific authorization via research undertaken within a differences paradigm. These results circulate back again to popular culture and the cycle continues. I conclude with a discussion of how the differences paradigm can be disrupted by a research approach informed by contextual factors that moderate gender effects, the intersectionality of social identities, and attentiveness to gender fault lines, giving examples from our work on the negotiability of emotion's meaning and emotion's representation in language. My article has implications for counselors and therapists whose clients struggle with the expression of emotions, instructors who want to encourage their students to explore how they think about gender as essentialized, and researchers concerned with interpersonal interactions, especially workplace interactions where understanding of others' emotions often has a gendered cast.
In this paper we integrate recent theories of motivation and leadership. Drawing on the self-regulatory focus theory and on self-concept based theories of leadership, we develop a conceptual framework proposing that leaders' chronic self-regulatory focus (promotion versus prevention), in conjunction with their values, influences their motivation to lead and, subsequently, their leadership behavior. We further suggest that leaders may influence the motivational self-regulatory foci of their followers, which will mediate different follower outcomes at the individual and group level.
The current research integrates perspectives on gendered race and person-position fit to introduce the concept of a gender profile. We propose that both the "gender" of a person's biological sex and the "gender" of a person's race (Asians are perceived as feminine and Blacks as masculine) help comprise an individual's gender profile-the overall femininity or masculinity associated with their demographic characteristics. We also propose that occupational positions have gender profiles. Finally, we argue that the overall gender profile of one's demographics, rather than just one's biological sex, determines one's fit and hirability for feminine or masculine occupational roles. The current five studies establish the gender profiles of different races and sexes, and then demonstrate that individuals with feminine-typed and masculine-typed gender profiles are selected for feminine and masculine positions, respectively. These studies provide new insights on who gets ahead in different environments.
© 2015 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.
Race and gender categories, although long presumed to be perceived independently, are inextricably tethered in social perception due in part to natural confounding of phenotypic cues. We predicted that target gender would affect race categorizations. Consistent with this hypothesis, feminine faces compelled White categorizations, and masculine faces compelled Asian or Black categorizations of racially ambiguous targets (Study 1), monoracial targets (Study 2), and real facial photographs (Study 3). The efficiency of judgments varied concomitantly. White categorizations were rendered more rapidly for feminine, relative to masculine faces, but the opposite was true for Asian and Black categorizations (Studies 1-3). Moreover, the effect of gender on categorization efficiency was compelled by racial phenotypicality for Black targets (Study 3). Finally, when targets' race prototypicality was held constant, gender still influenced race categorizations (Study 4). These findings indicate that race categorizations are biased by presumably unrelated gender cues.
© 2015 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.
Despite evidence that men are typically perceived as more appropriate and effective than women in leadership positions, a recent debate has emerged in the popular press and academic literature over the potential existence of a female leadership advantage. This meta-analysis addresses this debate by quantitatively summarizing gender differences in perceptions of leadership effectiveness across 99 independent samples from 95 studies. Results show that when all leadership contexts are considered, men and women do not differ in perceived leadership effectiveness. Yet, when other-ratings only are examined, women are rated as significantly more effective than men. In contrast, when self-ratings only are examined, men rate themselves as significantly more effective than women rate themselves. Additionally, this synthesis examines the influence of contextual moderators developed from role congruity theory (Eagly & Karau, 2002). Our findings help to extend role congruity theory by demonstrating how it can be supplemented based on other theories in the literature, as well as how the theory can be applied to both female and male leaders. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).
We compared perceived cultural stereotypes of diverse groups varying by gender and ethnicity. Using a free-response procedure, we asked 627 U.S. undergraduates to generate 10 attributes for 1 of 17 groups: Asian Americans, Blacks, Latinos, Middle Eastern Americans, or Whites; men or women; or 10 gender-by-ethnic groups (e.g., Black men or Latina women). Based on intersectionality theory and social dominance theory, we developed and tested three hypotheses. First, consistent with the intersectionality hypothesis, gender-by-ethnic stereotypes contained unique elements that were not the result of adding gender stereotypes to ethnic stereotypes. Second, in support of an ethnicity hypothesis, stereotypes of ethnic groups were generally more similar to stereotypes of the men than of the women in each group. Third, a gender hypothesis postulated that stereotypes of men and women will be most similar to stereotypes of White men and White women, less similar to ethnic minority men and ethnic minority women, and least similar to Black men and Black women. This hypothesis was confirmed for target women, but results for target men were mixed. Collectively, our results contribute to research, theory, and practice by demonstrating that ethnic and gender stereotypes are complex and that the intersections of these social categories produce meaningful differences in the way groups are perceived.
We propose that the psychological states individuals bring into newly formed groups can produce meaningful differences in status attainment. Three experiments explored whether experimentally created approach-oriented mindsets affected status attainment in groups, both immediately and over time. We predicted that approach-oriented states would lead to greater status attainment by increasing proactive behavior. Furthermore, we hypothesized that these status gains would persist longitudinally, days after the original mindsets had dissipated, due to the self-reinforcing behavioral cycles the approach-oriented states initiated. In Experiment 1, individuals primed with a promotion focus achieved higher status in their newly formed groups, and this was mediated by proactive behavior as rated by themselves and their teammates. Experiment 2 was a longitudinal experiment and revealed that individuals primed with power achieved higher status, both immediately following the prime and when the groups were reassembled 2 days later to work on new tasks. These effects were mediated by independent coders' ratings of proactive behavior during the first few minutes of group interaction. Experiment 3 was another longitudinal experiment and revealed that priming happiness led to greater status as well as greater acquisition of material resources. Importantly, these immediate and longitudinal effects were independent of the effects of a number of stable dispositional traits. Our results establish that approach-oriented psychological states affect status attainment, over and above the more stable characteristics emphasized in prior research, and provide the most direct test yet of the self-reinforcing nature of status hierarchies. These findings depict a dynamic view of status organization in which the same group may organize itself differently depending on members' incoming psychological states. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).
In two experiments, we investigate how individuals' levels of power and status interact to determine how they are perceived by others. We find that power and status have similar, positive, effects on judged dominance. We also find that power has a negative effect on perceived warmth, but status moderates this “power penalty”: high power without status is associated with low warmth, but power with status is judged warm. Consequently, we find high status individuals, regardless of power level, are perceived positively – dominant and warm – whereas high power–low status individuals are judged most negatively — dominant and cold (Experiments 1 and 2). As a result, perceivers expect positive interactions with high status individuals, but negative interactions with high power, low status individuals (Experiment 2). These findings provide insight into power and status social judgments, and further our understanding of similarities and differences between these distinct, yet related, constructs.
Motivation may provoke stereotype use. In a field study of students’ evaluations of university instructors and in a controlled experiment, participants viewed women as less competent than men after receiving negative evaluations from them but not after receiving positive evaluations. As a result, the evaluation of women depended more on the favorability of the feedback they provided than was the case for men. Most likely, this occurred because the motivation of criticized participants to salvage their self-views by disparaging their evaluator led them to use a stereotype that they would otherwise not have used. The stereotype was not used by participants praised by a woman or by participants who observed someone else receive praise or criticism from a woman; all these participants rated the woman just as highly as participants rated a man delivering comparable feedback.
Attitudes toward female authority and their relationship to gender beliefs were examined using implicit and explicit measures of each. Implicit attitudes covaried with implicit gender authority beliefs (i.e., linking men to high-authority and women to low-authority roles). Explicit attitudes covaried with explicit gender authority beliefs, feminist identification, and hostile sexism. Thus, gender authority beliefs may influence both conscious and unconscious prejudice against female authorities. Although women showed less explicit prejudice than did men, their implicit attitudes were similarly negative. Finally, the relationship found between two different response latency methods (a priming task for attitudes, a categorization task for beliefs) supports the assumption that implicit measures assess similar constructs (i.e., automatic associations in long-term memory).
A laboratory study and a field study (N = 168) investigated evaluative affect display (EAD), that is nonverbal evaluative reactions, toward leaders in small, face-to-face groups. Butler and Geis had found that female leaders received more negative affect than did male leaders, whereas both groups were judged equally competent on rating scales. Study 1 replicated their findings with a more economic coding method and improved methodological control. Study 2 examined EAD in routine meetings of real teams in different organizational field settings. Results suggest that EAD is a reliably observable phenomenon in field and laboratory settings. Generally, more negative affect was displayed toward female leaders across contexts. By contrast, there was no preference for men over women in competence ratings on scales.
Hierarchy is such a defining and pervasive feature of organizations that its forms and basic functions are often taken for granted in organizational research. In this review, we revisit some basic psychological and sociological elements of hierarchy and argue that status and power are two important yet distinct bases of hierarchical differentiation. We first define power and status and distinguish our definitions from previous conceptualizations. We then integrate a number of different literatures to explain why status and power hierarchies tend to be self‐reinforcing. Power, related to one’s control over valued resources, transforms individual psychology such that the powerful think and act in ways that lead to the retention and acquisition of power. Status, related to the respect one has in the eyes of others, generates expectations for behavior and opportunities for advancement that favor those with a prior status advantage. We also explore the role that hierarchy‐enhancing belief systems play in stabilizing hierarchy, both from the bottom up and from the top down. Finally, we address a number of factors that we think are instrumental in explaining the conditions under which hierarchies change. Our framework suggests a number of avenues for future research on the bases, causes, and consequences of hierarchy in groups and organizations.
A role congruity theory of prejudice toward female leaders proposes that perceived incongruity between the female gender role and leadership roles leads to 2 forms of prejudice: (a) perceiving women less favorably than men as potential occupants of leadership roles and (b) evaluating behavior that fulfills the prescriptions of a leader role less favorably when it is enacted by a woman. One consequence is that attitudes are less positive toward female than male leaders and potential leaders. Other consequences are that it is more difficult for women to become leaders and to achieve success in leadership roles. Evidence from varied research paradigms substantiates that these consequences occur, especially in situations that heighten perceptions of incongruity between the female gender role and leadership roles.
A leader's emotional display is proposed to affect his or her audience. In this study, observing a male or female leader express negative emotion was proposed to influence the observer's affective state and assessment of the leader's effectiveness. In a laboratory study, a leader's specific negative emotional tone impacted the affective state of participants in the study. Negative emotional display had a significant and negative main effect on participant assessment of leader effectiveness compared to a more neutral emotional display. Further, a significant interaction between leader gender and emotion was found. Male leaders received lower effectiveness ratings when expressing sadness compared to neutrality, while female leaders received lower ratings when expressing either sadness or anger. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Recent research suggests that women are more likely to participate in the helping dimension of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) whereas men are more likely to participate in the civic virtue dimension. Three laboratory studies were conducted to test the hypotheses that observers expect employees to participate in gender-congruent OCBs and that, when exhibited, observers are more likely to attribute gender-incongruent OCBs than gender-congruent OCBs to impression management motives. Results indicated that OCBs in general were expected more of women than of men. Only under specific conditions were OCB-civic virtue behaviors expected more of men. Additionally, participants were more likely to attribute men's OCB than women's OCB to impression management motives. Implications and future research suggestions are discussed.
Previous research suggests that women, more than men, experience negative outcomes when they display dominance. A closer look, however, reveals ambiguity about the specific forms of dominance proscribed for women. Here, we suggest that negative reactions to women's dominance, a counter-stereotypical behavior, may require that the behavior be clearly encoded as counter-stereotypical-which is less likely when the behavior is expressed implicitly. This hypothesis was tested with a meta-analysis of studies on the evaluation of individuals behaving dominantly, including articles not directly investigating gender. Results revealed that dominance indeed hurts women's, relative to men's, likability (although the overall effect is small, d = -0.19, k = 63), as well as more downstream outcomes such as hireability (d = -0.58, k = 20). More important, however, dominance expressed explicitly (e.g., direct demands) affected women's likability (d = -0.28) whereas implicit forms of dominance (e.g., eye contact) did not (d = 0.03). Finally, the effect of dominance on men's and women's perceived competence did not differ (d = 0.02, k = 31), consistent with the idea that it is interpersonal (rather than instrumental) evaluations that obstruct women leaders. Implications for theory, and for the success of male and female leaders, are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record
Despite the widespread interest in the topic of organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs), little empirical research has tested the fundamental assumption that these forms of behavior improve the effectiveness of work groups or organizations in which they are exhibited. In the present study, the effects of OCBs on the quantity and quality of the performance of 218 people working in 40 machine crews in a paper mill located in the Northeastern United States were examined. The results indicate that helping behavior and sportsmanship had significant effects on performance quantity and that helping behavior had a significant impact on performance quality. However, civic virtue had no effect on either performance measure. In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in the topic of organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs).
Despite a long history in social sciences such as anthropology and sociology, status has not received its deserved status in psychology and related domains such as management. This chapter attempts to bring greater clarity to the conceptualization of status and to highlight its distinctions from related bases of social hierarchy, such as power, dominance, and influence. To accomplish these goals, we first review current conceptual thinking on status and other related bases of social hierarchy. We then present a review of recent empirical evidence that supports differentiation among these bases of social hierarchy, focusing primarily on empirical work that differentiates status and power. We then propose an integrative framework that organizes the many related, yet distinct constructs that describe social hierarchy. Throughout, we are attentive to the fundamental question of why distinguishing status from these related aspects of social hierarchy matters-both for research and for a better understanding of social life. © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014. All rights are reserved.
Any organization's success depends upon the voluntary cooperation of its members. But what motivates people to cooperate? In Why People Cooperate, Tom Tyler challenges the decades-old notion that individuals within groups are primarily motivated by their self-interest. Instead, he demonstrates that human behaviors are influenced by shared attitudes, values, and identities that reflect social connections rather than material interests. Tyler examines employee cooperation in work organizations, resident cooperation with legal authorities responsible for social order in neighborhoods, and citizen cooperation with governmental authorities in political communities. He demonstrates that the main factors for achieving cooperation are socially driven, rather than instrumentally based on incentives or sanctions. Because of this, social motivations are critical when authorities attempt to secure voluntary cooperation from group members. Tyler also explains that two related aspects of group practices--the use of fair procedures when exercising authority and the belief by group members that authorities are benevolent and sincere--are crucial to the development of the attitudes, values, and identities that underlie cooperation. With widespread implications for the management of organizations, community regulation, and governance, Why People Cooperate illustrates the vital role that voluntary cooperation plays in the long-standing viability of groups.
This article explores strategies for enhancing women's effectiveness as leaders by first recognizing that leadership itself is gendered and is enacted within a gendered context, two themes that recur throughout this issue. These contexts exist along a continuum ranging from male-dominated, hierarchical, performance-oriented, power-expressive and thus masculinized contexts at one extreme to transformational contexts that stress the empowerment of followers at the other pole. Each context suggests different strategies for making women leaders effective, emphasizing women-specific recommendations in masculinized contexts that focus on status enhancement and the legitimation of women leaders in contrast to innovative contexts with broader task goals that prove more congenial for women, as well as men, leaders.
This review article posits that the scarcity of women at the upper levels of organizations is a consequence of gender bias in evaluations. It is proposed that gender stereotypes and the expectations they produce about both what women are like (descriptive) and how they should behave (prescriptive) can result in devaluation of their performance, denial of credit to them for their successes, or their penalization for being competent. The processes giving rise to these outcomes are explored, and the procedures that are likely to encourage them are identified. Because of gender bias and the way in which it influences evaluations in work settings, it is argued that being competent does not ensure that a woman will advance to the same organizational level as an equivalently performing man.
How might being outcome dependent on another person influence the processes that one uses to form impressions of that person? We designed three experiments to investigate this question with respect to short-term, task-oriented outcome dependency. In all three experiments, subjects expected to interact with a young man formerly hospitalized as a schizophrenic, and they received information about the person's attributes in either written profiles or videotapes. In Experiment 1, short-term, task-oriented outcome dependency led subjects to use relatively individuating processes (i.e., to base their impressions of the patient on his particular attributes), even under conditions that typically lead subjects to use relatively category-based processes (i.e., to base their impressions on the patient's schizophrenic label). Moreover, in the conditions that elicited individuating processes, subjects spent more time attending to the patient's particular attribute information. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the attention effects in Experiment 1 were not merely a function of impression positivity and that outcome dependency did not influence the impression formation process when attribute information in addition to category-level information was unavailable. Finally, Experiment 3 manipulated not outcome dependency but the attentional goal of forming an accurate impression. We found that accuracy-driven attention to attribute information also led to individuating processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
Past research has demonstrated a causal relationship between power and dominant behavior, motivated in part by the desire to maintain the social distinctiveness created by one's position of power. In this article, we test the novel idea that some individuals respond to high-power roles by displaying not dominance but instead submissiveness. We theorize that high-power individuals who are also high in the need to belong experience the social distinctiveness associated with power as threatening, rather than as an arrangement to protect and maintain. We predict that such individuals will counter their feelings of threat with submissive behaviors to downplay their power and thereby reduce their distinctiveness. We found support for this hypothesis across three studies using different operationalizations of power, need to belong, and submissiveness. Furthermore, Study 3 illustrated the mediating role of fear of (positive) attention in the relationship between power, need to belong, and submissive behavior.
© 2015 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.
Two major types of motivation underlie the ability of leaders to gain cooperation in groups. First is the desire of people to gain rewards and avoid punishments. Leaders can tap into such motivations to the extent that then control resources and/or instruments of surveillance and sanctioning. Second is people's internal attitudes and values, which shape what people want or feel they ought to do. Leaders can draw on these internal motivations by appealing to or creating attitudes and values. Both strategies influence behavior, but there are clear advantages to leadership based on connecting to people's attitudes and values. In particular, people voluntarily follow leaders who engage their internal motivations.
This article presents the results from two expectation-states studies on gender and double standards for task competence. The emergence of such standards under several experimental conditions is investigated. In both studies, men and women, participating in opposite-sex dyads, worked first individually and then as a team in solving a perceptual task. As predicted, result from Experiment 1 show that although subjects of both sexes achieved equal levels of performance, women were held to a stricter standard of competence than men. This difference was more pronounced when the referent of the standard was the partner rather than self. Experimetn 2 investigates the extent to which the double standard is affected by level of accountability for one's assessments. Results show a significant difference by sex of referent of standard when accountability was low, but not when it was increased. In both studies, measures of perceived competence in self and in partner reflected reported standards, as predicted. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.
This study examined recipients’ perceptions of workplace discipline. Females delivering discipline were perceived to be less effective and less fair than males. Both recipients’ biases and behavior differences by male and female supervisors appear to contribute to reduced effectiveness. These results suggest the need to raise the awareness of managers and subordinates regarding potential negative reactions to females administering discipline. Special training in discipline delivery for female managers may also be warranted.
Why do some leaders use their position to amass personal prestige and resources, and others to benefit the team, the organization, or society? This article synthesizes new, cross-disciplinary research showing that self-serving leader behavior is predictable based on the function and nature of power—an essential component of leadership. First, because power increases goal-oriented behavior, it amplifies the tendency of self-focused goals to yield self-interested behav-ior. Self-focused goals may arise from a variety of sources; evidence is reviewed for the role of traits (e.g., low agreeableness), values (e.g., self-enhancement), self-construal (e.g., indepen-dence), and motivation (e.g., personalized power motivation). Second, because power is gener-ally desirable, leaders whose power is threatened (e.g., self-doubts, positional instability) will turn their focus to maintaining that power—even at others' expense. These ideas have important implications for research and for organizational efforts to develop leaders who will improve others' outcomes rather than merely benefit themselves. A position of leadership brings power to its occupant—the power to steer the direction of a group, to decide whether others get plum assignments or international transfers or demo-tions, and to use available resources as the leader sees fit. Each time power is placed in the Acknowledgments: I thank Emily Bianchi, Nate Fast, Jill Perry-Smith, and Becky Schaumberg for thoughtful comments on earlier drafts.
This article reviews research on the evaluation of women and men who occupy leadership roles. In these experiments, the characteristics of leaders other than their sex were held constant, and the sex of the leader was varied. These experiments thus investigated whether people are biased against female leaders and managers. Although this research showed only a small overall tendency for subjects to evaluate female leaders less favorably than male leaders, this tendency was more pronounced under certain circumstances. Specifically, women in leadership positions were devalued relative to their male counterparts when leadership was carried out in stereotypically masculine styles, particularly when this style was autocratic or directive. In addition, the devaluation of women was greater when leaders occupied male-dominated roles and when the evaluators were men. These and other findings are interpreted from a perspective that emphasizes the influence of gender roles within organizational settings.
The authors identify status and power as the principal bases of influence for public managers and describe how managers can use this conceptual distinction to increase their influence. Status is defined as the degree to which one is respected by one's colleagues, and power is defined as asymmetric control over valued resources. Different social and relational processes govern (1) how people determine who is, and who ought to be, high status versus powerful and (2) how status and power affect individual psychology and behavior. To illustrate key points, the authors provide examples of individuals from the public sector and public service organizations. The framework of interpersonal influence gives practitioners behavioral strategies for increasing their status and power as well as a way to assess and diagnose interpersonal dimensions of their own performance in their jobs and careers.
This contribution focuses on women in leadership positions. We propose that two convictions are relevant to the effects of having women in high places. On the one hand, women as a group are expected to employ different leadership styles than men, in this way adding diversity to management teams. On the other hand, individual women are expected to ascend to leadership positions by showing their ability to display the competitiveness and toughness typically required from those at the top. We posit that both convictions stem from gendered leadership beliefs, and that these interact with women's self-views to determine the effectiveness of female leaders. We develop an integrative model that explains the interplay between organizational beliefs and individual-self definitions and its implications for female leadership. We then present initial evidence in support of this model from two recent programs of research. The model allows us to connect “glass cliff” effects to “queen bee” effects showing that both relate to the perceived salience of gender in the organization, as well as individual gender identities. Each of these phenomena may harm future career opportunities of women, be it as individuals or as a group. We outline how future research may build on our proposed model and examine its further implications. We also indicate how the model may offer a concrete starting point for developing strategies to enhance the effectiveness of women in leadership positions.
This article presents a four-category framework to characterize the contents of prescriptive gender stereotypes. The framework distinguishes between prescriptions and proscriptions that are intensified by virtue of one's gender, and those that are relaxed by virtue of one's gender. Two studies examined the utility of this framework for characterizing prescriptive gender stereotypes in American society (Study 1) and in the highly masculine context of Princeton University (Study 2). The results demonstrated the persistence of traditional gender prescriptions in both contexts, but also revealed distinct areas of societal vigilance and leeway for each gender. In addition, they showed that women are seen more positively, relative to societal standards, than are men. We consider the implications of this framework for research on reactions to gender stereotype deviants and sex discrimination.
In two scenario-based studies, we found that women and men evaluate glass-cliff positions (i.e., precarious leadership positions at organizations in crisis) differently depending on the social and financial resources available. Female and male participants evaluated a hypothetical leadership position in which they would have both social and financial resources, financial resources but no social resources, or social resources but no financial resources. Women evaluated the position without social resources most negatively, whereas men evaluated the position without financial resources most negatively. In Study 2, we found that women and men considered different issues when evaluating these leadership positions. Women’s evaluations and expected levels of influence as leaders depended on the degree to which they expected to be accepted by subordinates. In contrast, men’s evaluations and expected levels of acceptance by subordinates depended on the degree to which they expected to be influential in the position. Our findings have implications for the understanding of the glass-cliff phenomenon and gendered leadership stereotypes.
Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) isbehavior that extends beyond that required by anorganization in a formal job description. Past researchshows that engaging in OCB is related to higherperformance evaluations. We wished to determine whether therelationship between OCB and job performance ratingswould be affected by the gender of persons performingOCB. Ninety-six primarily Caucasian dormitory Resident Advisors (RAs) rated one another on thelikelihood of performing OCB and we obtained RAperformance ratings from their Hall Directors. Aspredicted, women received higher OCB scores than menalthough they did not differ from men on performance ratings.This finding may suggest a form of subtle discriminationagainst women, although other interpretations arepossible.
Gender- and race-bias have often been studied as separate phenomena, but examining intersections of race and gender is critical given that people always belong to many social categories simultaneously. In two studies, we focus on the evaluation of mixed-sex work teams, and examine how race and gender of team members affect the evaluations they receive. Participants read about a pair of employees assigned to work together on a “masculine” task on which they either succeeded (Study 1) or failed (Study 2). Mixed-sex teams included White pairs, Black pairs, or mixed race pairs (White woman–Black man; Black woman–White man). In both studies, pro-male gender bias was evident only in the White male–White female work pair. We suggest that rather than suffering the double jeopardy of dual subordinate identities, Black women were buffered from the effects of gender bias by virtue of their non-prototypicality or invisibility.
We contribute to a current debate that focuses on whether individuals with more than one subordinate identity (i.e., Black women) experience more negative leader perceptions than do leaders with single-subordinate identities (i.e., Black men and White women). Results confirmed that Black women leaders suffered double jeopardy, and were evaluated more negatively than Black men and White women, but only under conditions of organizational failure. Under conditions of organizational success, the three groups were evaluated comparably to each other, but each group was evaluated less favorably than White men. Further, leader typicality, the extent to which individuals possess characteristics usually associated with a leader role, mediated the indirect effect of leader race, leader gender, and organizational performance on leader effectiveness. Taken together, these results suggest that Black women leaders may carry a burden of being disproportionately sanctioned for making mistakes on the job.
This research extends the role incongruity analysis of employment-related gender bias by investigating the role of dispositional and situational antecedents, specifically political ideology and the salience of cues to the traditional female gender role. The prediction that conservatives would show an anti-female candidate bias and liberals would show a pro-female bias when the traditional female gender role is salient was tested across three experimental studies. In Study 1, 126 participants evaluated a male or a female job applicant with thoughts of the traditional female gender role activated or not. Results showed that when the gender role is salient, political ideology moderates evaluations of the female candidates such that conservatives evaluate her negatively and liberals evaluate her positively. Study 2 (89 participants) replicated this effect and showed that this political ideology-based bias does not occur when the non-traditional female gender role is made salient. Study 2 also demonstrated that the observed effects are not driven by liberals' and conservatives' differing perceptions regarding the female applicant's qualifications for the job. Finally, Study 3 (159 participants) both replicated the political ideology-based evaluation bias for female candidates and demonstrated that this bias is mediated by conservatives' and liberals' attitudes toward the roles of women in society.
We present evidence that shifting hiring criteria reflects backlash toward agentic (“masterful”) women (Rudman, 1998). Participants (N = 428) evaluated male or female agentic or communal managerial applicants on dimensions of competence, social skills, and hireability. Consistent with past research, agentic women were perceived as highly competent but deficient in social skills, compared with agentic men. New to the present research, social skills predicted hiring decisions more than competence for agentic women; for all other applicants, competence received more weight than social skills. Thus, evaluators shifted the job criteria away from agentic women's strong suit (competence) and toward their perceived deficit (social skills) to justify hiring discrimination. The implications of these findings for women's professional success are discussed.
Although past research has noted the importance of both power and gender for understanding volubility—the total amount of time spent talking—in organizations, to date, identifying the unique contributions of power and gender to volubility has been somewhat elusive. Using both naturalistic data sets and experiments, the present studies indicate that while power has a strong, positive effect on volubility for men, no such effect exists for women. Study 1 uses archival data to examine the relationship between the relative power of United States senators and their talking behavior on the Senate floor. Results indicate a strong positive relationship between power and volubility for male senators, but a non-significant relationship for female senators. Study 2 replicates this effect in an experimental setting by priming the concept of power and shows that though men primed with power talk more, women show no effect of power on volubility. Mediation analyses indicate that this difference is explained by women’s concern that being highly voluble will result in negative consequences (i.e., backlash). Study 3 shows that powerful women are in fact correct in assuming that they will incur backlash as a result of talking more than others—an effect that is observed among both male and female perceivers. Implications for the literatures on volubility, power, and previous studies of backlash are discussed.
Two experimental studies examined whether gender stereotypes about the transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire leadership styles constitute an advantage or an impediment for women's access to leadership positions in organizations. The first study investigated the accuracy of descriptive gender stereotypes about leadership styles, showing that participants accurately believe that women display more transformational and contingent reward behaviors, and fewer management-by-exception and laissez-faire behaviors than men. The second study investigated prescriptive stereotypes about the importance of leadership styles for the promotion of women and men to different levels in organizations. Inspirational motivation was perceived as more important for men than women and especially important for promotion to CEO. In contrast, individualized consideration was perceived as more important for women than men and especially important for promotion to senior management. Consistent with these stereotypical beliefs about leadership, women interested in promotion may be well advised to blend individualized consideration and inspirational motivation behaviors.
The current research explores how roles that possess power but lack status influence behavior toward others. Past research has primarily examined the isolated effects of having either power or status, but we propose that power and status interact to affect interpersonal behavior. Based on the notions that a) low-status is threatening and aversive and b) power frees people to act on their internal states and feelings, we hypothesized that power without status fosters demeaning behaviors toward others. To test this idea, we orthogonally manipulated both power and status and gave participants the chance to select activities for their partners to perform. As predicted, individuals in high-power/low-status roles chose more demeaning activities for their partners (e.g., bark like a dog, say “I am filthy”) than did those in any other combination of power and status roles. We discuss how these results clarify, challenge, and advance the existing power and status literatures.
Occupying gender stereotype-incongruent roles can lead individuals to lose status and earn a lower salary. The present research examined whether merely working for a supervisor in a gender-atypical occupational role leads a subordinate to lose status. Two studies found that male subordinates of gender deviants (i.e., a female supervisor in a masculine domain or a male supervisor in a feminine domain) were accorded lower status and were paid less than male subordinates of supervisors in gender-congruent roles (i.e., a female supervisor in a feminine domain or a male supervisor in a masculine domain). However, the status of female subordinates was unaffected by working for a gender atypical supervisor. Moreover, the status loss for male subordinates was mediated by a perceived lack of masculinity. Thus, establishing the male subordinate's masculine credentials eliminated the bias.
This study investigated the effectiveness of male and female managers when they engaged in the masculine-oriented managerial behavior of discipline. A sample of 155 employed students rated their managers. When managers reportedly allowed two-way discussion with employees, their subordinates reported improved behavior. Two-way discussion and timely and private discipline behaviors were related to fewer negative outcomes. Male and female managers did not differ on discipline behaviors; however, manager gender by behavior interactions indicated that when women were low on two-way discussion, employees reported fewer improvements. This finding suggests that women may experience costs that men do not when they fail to discipline in a considerate way. Our results suggest that when females provide two-way discussion and discipline in private, they realize more improvements in employee behavior than males.
Acriticalexaminationofresearchontherelationshipbetweenstereotypingandworkplace discrimination must meet three requirements.Thefirstrequirementisanunderstanding of the theory that guides this research. The second requirement is anunbiased review of relevant research. The third requirement is comprehension of the ways thatdifferenttypesofresearchareinformative about behavior in organizations. Landy (2008) meets none of these requirements. He misstates the consensual social scientific theory about the relation between stereotyping and discrimination, presents onlya selective portion of the relevant research, and misconstrues the basis for generalizing researchfindingstoorganizations.Asaresult, Landy misrepresents the evidence for stereotype-based workplace discrimination. For brevity, we consider only sex discrimination. Also, consistent with Landy’s emphasis, we address the consequences of stereotypes that describe women and men as opposed to stereotypes that prescribe normatively acceptable behavior for them and thus sanction behavior deviating from gender norms (see Eagly & Karau, 2002; Heilman, 2001).