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Women’s Intention to Apply to Top-Executive Positions: The Role of Gender Meta-Stereotypes in Job Ads

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Sex Roles
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Women are still underrepresented at the top levels of organizations across Europe and the United States. Scholars have identified obstacles that hinder women’s climb to the top but have overlooked women’s perceptions of job advertisements for top-level positions as a potential barrier to top-level positions. The present study investigated the effects of meta-stereotyped person requirements (positive vs. negative) and their wording (dispositional vs. behavioral) in job ads for top-level executive positions on female candidates’ application intention, as well as the mediating effect of job attractiveness. An experimental field study in a large, Western European governmental organization (Nmain study = 432 female officers), preceded by a pilot study (verbal protocol analysis; Npilot = 19 female executives) showed that compared to positively meta-stereotyped person requirements, negatively meta-stereotyped person requirements reduced female candidates’ attraction to a job and, in turn, their intention to apply for top-level executive positions. The way person requirements were worded in job ads (i.e., in a behavioral versus dispositional way) also affected women’s perceived job attractiveness, yet this depended on the type of requirement. Implications are considered for drafting job ads to encourage more qualified female candidates to apply.
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Vol.:(0123456789)
Sex Roles (2025) 91:4
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-024-01557-z
ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Womens Intention toApply toTop‑Executive Positions: The Role
ofGender Meta‑Stereotypes inJob Ads
AylinKoçak1,2 · EvaDerous1
Accepted: 28 December 2024
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2025
Abstract
Women are still underrepresented at the top levels of organizations across Europe and the United States. Scholars have
identified obstacles that hinder women’s climb to the top but have overlooked women’s perceptions of job advertisements for
top-level positions as a potential barrier to top-level positions. The present study investigated the effects of meta-stereotyped
person requirements (positive vs. negative) and their wording (dispositional vs. behavioral) in job ads for top-level executive
positions on female candidates’ application intention, as well as the mediating effect of job attractiveness. An experimental
field study in a large, Western European governmental organization (Nmain study = 432 female officers), preceded by a pilot
study (verbal protocol analysis; Npilot = 19 female executives) showed that compared to positively meta-stereotyped person
requirements, negatively meta-stereotyped person requirements reduced female candidates’ attraction to a job and, in turn,
their intention to apply for top-level executive positions. The way person requirements were worded in job ads (i.e., in a
behavioral versus dispositional way) also affected women’s perceived job attractiveness, yet this depended on the type of
requirement. Implications are considered for drafting job ads to encourage more qualified female candidates to apply.
Keywords Gender meta-stereotypes· Job advertisements· Field experiment· Women· Promotion
It is high time we break the glass ceiling. There are
plenty of women qualified for top jobs: they should be
able to get them.
– Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European
Commission, during the press release regarding the
political agreement on gender balance on corporate
boards, reached by the European Parliament and the
Council, June 7, 2022.
Despite the existence of formal political agreement
regarding the gender balance on corporate boards (e.g.,
EU Gender Equality Strategy 2020–2025), women are still
underrepresented at high-level positions across Europe and
the United States (Bertrand, 2020; Warner & Corley, 2018).
Considerable research has focused on how stereotyped
perceptions and evaluations by others may interfere with
the recruitment and/or promotion of women to high-level
positions (Bosak & Sczesny, 2011). Yet, female candidates’
own beliefs about managerial/leadership abilities may mat-
ter too (Coffman etal., 2021). Indeed, women might be
aware of gender stereotypes, leading to so-called meta-
stereotypes: the stereotypes that one thinks that out-group
members hold about their in-group (Vorauer etal., 1998).
Imagine, for instance, a job ad that requires candidates to be
emotionally stable. Person requirements for the job, such as
emotional stability, can activate negative meta-stereotypes
(e.g., the belief that women are emotionally unstable), which
could negatively affect female candidates’ attraction to job
ads and intention to apply for the job (Born & Taris, 2010).
Specifically, such a requirement in job ads might signal to
candidates that they would be perceived in a stereotypical,
negative way by others, which threatens their social identity
as a female (Highhouse etal., 2007).
Moreover, building on the linguistic category model,
the exact wording of requirements might matter too (Semin
& Fiedler, 1991). Effects might be stronger when negative
meta-stereotypes are formulated in a dispositional way,
stressing how a person is rather than in a behavioral way,
stressing how a person can be. Meta-stereotypes for women
* Aylin Koçak
aylin.kocak@ugent.be
1 Department ofWork, Organization andSociety; Vocational
andPersonnel Psychology Lab, Ghent University, Ghent,
Belgium
2 Vocational andPersonnel Psychology Lab, Department
ofWork, Organization andSociety, Ghent University, Henri
Dunantlaan 2, Ghent9000, Belgium
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