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Lean in Messages Increase Attributions of Women’s Responsibility for Gender Inequality

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Jae Yun Kim at Southern University of Science and Technology
Jae Yun Kim
Gráinne M. Fitzsimons
Gráinne M. Fitzsimons
Gráinne M. Fitzsimons
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Aaron C. Kay
Aaron C. Kay
Aaron C. Kay
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Although women's underrepresentation in senior-level positions in the workplace has multiple causes, women's self-improvement or "empowerment" at work has recently attracted cultural attention as a solution. For example, the bestselling book Lean In states that women can tackle gender inequality themselves by overcoming the "internal barriers" (e.g., lack of confidence and ambition) that prevent success. We sought to explore the consequences of this type of women's empowerment ideology. Study 1 found that perceptions of women's ability to solve inequality were associated with attributions of women's responsibility to do so. Studies 2, 3, 5a, and 5b experimentally manipulated exposure to women's empowerment messages, finding that while such messages increase perceptions that women are empowered to solve workplace gender inequality, they also lead to attributions that women are more responsible both for creating and solving the problem. Study 4 found a similar pattern in the context of a specific workplace problem, and found that such messages also lead to a preference for interventions focused on changing women rather than changing the system. Studies 5a and 5b sought to replicate prior studies and document the weakened effects of messages that explicitly explain that women's "internal barriers" are the products of "external barriers" obstructing women's progress. This research suggests that self-improvement messages intended to empower women to take charge of gender inequality may also yield potentially harmful societal beliefs.
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... Women also continue to be underrepresented in many occupations. For example, women occupy fewer than 5% of CEO positions (Kim et al., 2018), women comprise just 23% of Canadian science and technology workers (Wall, 2019, Persistence and representation of women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math programmes, para. 1), and women represent only 21% of police officers (Murray, 2021) and 21.7% of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (Royal Canadian Mounted Police, 2020) in Canada. ...
... Empowerment messaging is meant to convey that women have agency, choice, and the ability to succeed in life. Thus, modern empowerment messaging aimed at women is characterized by two features (Kim et al., 2018). First, the messages focus on individual action, calling on women as individuals to make their own choices to succeed in life. ...
... Recently, Kim et al. (2018) examined the harms of empowerment messaging, expressed in the bestselling book, Lean In (Sandberg, 2013), written by the Chief Operating Officer of Facebook, Sheryl Sandberg. In her book, Sandberg (2013) argued that women are holding themselves back and preventing their own success by failing to "lean in" (p. ...
Burdened and Blamed: Empowerment Messaging Increases Attributions of Women’s Responsibility for Gender Inequality in the Canadian Armed Forces
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... They advocate for women to "lean in" and adopt "men's ways of leading." However, recent perspectives argue for systemic rather than individual transformation, highlighting the need to "fix the system" versus to "fix the women" (Kim et al., 2018), to achieve sustainable change and redefine leadership itself. This shift in thinking ushers in gender resistance feminism, focusing on women's unique perspectives and voices (Calás & Smircich, 2016;Lorber, 2001). ...
... Emphasizing individual identities may detract from the collective action needed for systemic change. The attempt to empower individual women in various leadership practices and courses, advising them how to "lean-in" (Sandberg, 2013) and tackle gender inequality through internal changes of self-improvement, may curtail women's collective power (Kark et al., 2016(Kark et al., , 2024b and enhance the belief that if women are the solution to the problem, they are also likely to be the cause of it (Kim et al., 2018). Thus, "clicktivism" risks reducing feminism to personal achievements, potentially undermining collective power, and inadvertently suggesting women's complicity in gender issues rather than systemic flaws. ...
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... In support of this claim, Kim et al. (2018) found that messages emphasizing women's ability to tackle workplace gender inequality by overcoming their own internal barriers (e.g., lack of confidence and ambition) led to perceptions that women are responsible for both creating and solving the problem of inequality (see also Georgeac & Rattan, 2019). In addition, women's empowerment messages led to a preference for interventions aimed at changing women rather than fixing the system. ...
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