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.

/pdf/role-congruity-theory-of-prejudice-toward-female-leaders-4ldbwpzzgm.pdf

Role congruity theory of prejudice toward female leaders.

This meta-analysis examined the extent to which stereotypes of leaders are culturally masculine. The primary studies fit into 1 of 3 paradigms: (a) In Schein's (1973) think manager-think male paradigm, 40 studies with 51 effect sizes compared the similarity of male and leader stereotypes and the similarity of female and leader stereotypes; (b) in Powell and Butterfield's (1979) agency-communion paradigm, 22 studies with 47 effect sizes compared stereotypes of leaders' agency and communion; and (c) in Shinar's (1975) masculinity-femininity paradigm, 7 studies with 101 effect sizes represented stereotypes of leadership-related occupations on a single masculinity-femininity dimension. Analyses implemented appropriate random and mixed effects models. All 3 paradigms demonstrated overall masculinity of leader stereotypes: (a) In the think manager-think male paradigm, intraclass correlation = .25 for the women-leaders similarity and intraclass correlation = .62 for the men-leaders similarity; (b) in the agency-communion paradigm, g = 1.55, indicating greater agency than communion; and (c) in the masculinity-femininity paradigm, g = 0.92, indicating greater masculinity than the androgynous scale midpoint. Subgroup and meta-regression analyses indicated that this masculine construal of leadership has decreased over time and was greater for male than female research participants. In addition, stereotypes portrayed leaders as less masculine in educational organizations than in other domains and in moderate- than in high-status leader roles. This article considers the relation of these findings to Eagly and Karau's (2002) role congruity theory, which proposed contextual influences on the incongruity between stereotypes of women and leaders. The implications for prejudice against women leaders are also considered.

Are leader stereotypes masculine? A meta-analysis of three research paradigms.

This article examines the relationship between intergroup threat and negative outgroup attitudes. We first qualitatively review the intergroup threat literature, describing the shift from competing theories toward more integrated approaches, such as the integrated threat theory (ITT; W. G. Stephan & Stephan, 2000). The types of threats discussed include: realistic threat, symbolic threat, intergroup anxiety, negative stereotypes, group esteem threat, and distinctiveness threat. We then conducted a quantitative meta-analysis examining the relationships between various intergroup threats and outgroup attitudes. The meta-analysis, involving 95 samples, revealed that 5 different threat types had a positive relationship with negative outgroup attitudes. Additionally, outgroup status moderated some of these relationships. Implications and future directions are considered.

Intergroup Threat and Outgroup Attitudes: A Meta-Analytic Review

I describe how board structures influence the decision-making processes that investors use when purchasing shares of firms undertaking initial public offerings (IPOs). IPO firms are relatively unknown to investors and suffer from a liability of market newness. I rely on signaling theory, institutional theory, and sociological research on prestige to suggest that investor perceptions of board prestige signal organizational legitimacy, thereby reducing the liability of market newness and improving IPO firm stock performance. I also propose that the characteristics of investors, namely prestige, influence their perceptions of board prestige.

Influencing Initial Public Offering Investors with Prestige: Signaling with Board Structures

Many have suggested that complementary gender stereotypes of men as agentic (but not communal) and women as communal (but not agentic) serve to increase system justification, but direct experimental support has been lacking. The authors exposed people to specific types of gender-related beliefs and subsequently asked them to complete measures of gender-specific or diffuse system justification. In Studies 1 and 2, activating (a) communal or complementary (communal + agentic) gender stereotypes or (b) benevolent or complementary (benevolent + hostile) sexist items increased support for the status quo among women. In Study 3, activating stereotypes of men as agentic also increased system justification among men and women, but only when women's characteristics were associated with higher status. Results suggest that complementary stereotypes psychologically offset the one-sided advantage of any single group and contribute to an image of society in which everyone benefits through a balanced dispersion of benefits.

Exposure to benevolent sexism and complementary gender stereotypes: consequences for specific and diffuse forms of system justification.

By focusing on childcare and systematically comparing national experiences in Belgium, France, Italy, Sweden, and the European Union, Who Cares? provides detailed information on recent social policies and a clear perspective on welfare state redesign. Many countries have now designed childcare policies to reconcile family and work. Some encourage parents to provide their own childcare by granting parental leave; others encourage parents to stay at work by supporting childcare services. Using the case of childcare policy, the contributors to this volume examine how public policy choices over the last three decades have been fashioned by specific understandings of the gendered division of labour. The authors of the country studies analyse specific childcare strategies and place them within the larger context of state approaches to women's roles. They argue that an examination of the direction and the form of social spending, in this period when such spending is under attack, contributes to our understanding of new principles of citizenship as they have been developed and articulated by governments. Who Cares? highlights the connection between childcare and employment, and makes a significant contribution to the literature on citizenship and women's work.

Who cares? : women's work, childcare, and welfare state redesign

Jane Jenson and Mariette Sineau with seven contributing authors, Who Cares? Women's Work, Childcare, and Welfare State Redesign. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001, 289 pp. This is a nine-chapter book with contributions from nine social scientists. However five of the chapters are co-written by Jane Jenson and Mariette Sineau, including the introductory and concluding chapters that give the book analytical and theoretical coherence. Jane Jenson's work is well known in Canada, and the central thesis of Who Cares?, that welfare state redesign since the early 1980s has been accompanied by a shift in the foundational principles of citizenship (p. 262), was previously elaborated in a series of publications (e.g., Jenson and Phillips, 1996; Jenson, 1997). This particular book began as a study commissioned by the Caisses Nationales des Allocations Familiales, "the public body in France most responsible for implementing family policy" (p. ix). Mariette Sineau is a French political scientist and the director of research in Conseil national de recherche scientifique. Jenson and Sineau define citizenship regime "as the widely accepted ideas about the relationship between the citizen and the state and the balance of power among the state, market, and community" (p.24l; a more institutional definition is found on p. 8). Their objective in Who Cares? is to "examine the ways in which a key value of citizenship, that of equality -- particularly gender equality -- has been taken into account or ignored in the redesign of childcare services in these neo-liberal times" (p. 8). Childcare is thus not of intrinsic interest in this book; rather childcare is a strategically selected policy domain that provides a "window into ... the recomposition of citizenship" (p. 211). In keeping with this objective, the authors interpretively "read" details of changes in childcare policies and the changing representations of gender expressed in debates about childcare policies as indicators of "modifications in the very principles underpinning the citizenship regimes" (p. 242). The book employs a nested case study design. At the primary level of policy domain, one case (childcare) is selected for study. At the secondary level of political unit, five cases of childcare are selected: Belgium, France, Italy, Sweden and the European Union. For each political unit, childcare policies and the gender representations accompanying the policies are studied over time, with particular emphasis on the period from the early 1970s to the 1990s. Jenson and Sineau then systematically compare the findings for the five political units. They conclude that there is "convergence in the five cases towards a set of basic principles in childcare provision: less costly services, decentralization of service provision from the central government to local authorities, increased diversification in programs available and conditions of access to them, greater flexibility in the use of childcare, and individualization of choice" (p. 16). In general, childcare policies have shifted "in the direction of privileging m arkets and individual citizens' market power to choose" (p. 255). They interpret this as evidence that the citizenship regimes of redesigned welfare states are of a fundamentally different character than the citizenship regimes of the post-war Keynesian welfare state: choice has replaced equality as the principal value and the market has replaced the state as the dominant sector (p. …

Who Cares? Women's Work, Childcare, and Welfare State Redesign. (Book Reviews/Comptes Rendus)

This research reexamines the meaning of occupational prestige scores from the social psychological perspective of identity theory. Using comparable data for Canada and the United States, it analyze...

The meaning of occupational prestige scores: a social psychological analysis and interpretation

In this study we reconsider the relationships between gender stereotypes and the three universal dimensions of affective meaning: Evaluation (E), Potency (P), and Activity (A). Multiple regression analyses of comparable data sets for the United States and Canada are aimed at the most contentious question found in the literature: To what extent are male and female stereotypes differentiated along the E dimension? We find that, net of P and A, higher levels of goodness are consistent with the perception that a trait is associated with females. This suggests that two status hierarchies operate in the gendering of traits: a primary hierarchy, which overlaps with the power hierarchy favoring men, and, a secondary status hierarchy favoring women. We note that women's status advantage on this secondary hierarchy might be understood as benevolent sexism or, alternatively, as social recognition of the importance of women's caring labor.

The affective bases for the gendering of traits: Comparing the United States and Canada.

Dane cette communication, les auteurs se servent de trois mesures des preferences en matiere de politique gouvernementale pour determiner les effets des prejuges, de l'ethnocentrisme, du conservatisme eonomique, des perceptions de conflits d'inerets entre groupes et de l'apprehension d'une menace contre les interets personnels Bur lee attitudea des Canadiens a l'egard des autochtones. Lee trois variables dependantes sont: l'appui a l'autonomie politique, l'appui au statut particulier et le degre de priorite accorde aux preoccupations des autochtones. Lee donnees d'un ehantillon national aleatoire (N= 1834) ont ete analysees a l'aide de regressions multiples et de techniques LISREL. Les principales conclusions sont les suivantes: 1/la variation dans lee reactions des non-autochtones aux preoccupations des autochtones s'explique en grande partie par trois facteurs — les prejuges, le conservatisme economique et la perception d'un conflit d'interets de groupe; 2/ les prejuges et la perception d'un conflit d'interets se combinent et influent fortement sur les reactions des Canadiens non autochtones; 3/ l'influence de l'ethnocentrisme est tout au plus mineure; 4/ lea indicateurs objectifs (region, situation socio-economique familiale et âge) employes comme mesures indirectee du sentiment que les interets personnels sont menaces ont une influence somme toute mineure sur la reaction aux preoccupations des autochtones de la part des Canadiens. La communication se termine par une reflexion sur lee lecons que les dirigeants politiques des autochtones pourraient tirer de l'etude.



This paper examines the effects of prejudice, ethnocentrism, economic conservatism, perceived conflict of group interests and perceived personal threat in shaping Canadians' views on three different measures of preferences for government policy in the aboriginal affairs field. Those dependent variables are: support for self-government, support for special status, and level of priority attached to Native issues. Multiple regression analysis and LISREL techniques are applied to data from a 1986 national random sample (N= 1834). The main findings are that: 1/ a moderate to large proportion of the variation in non-aboriginal responses to aboriginal issues can be explained by three factors -prejudice, economic conservatism, and perceived conflict of group interests; 2/ prejudice and perceived conflict interact strongly in influencing non-aboriginal Canadians' responses; 3/ ethnocentrism has a negligible to minor influence; and 4/ objective indicators (region, family SES and age) serving as proxies for perceived personal threat have only minor net effects on how Canadians respond to aboriginal issues. The paper concludes with comments on the relevance of the findings for aboriginal political leaders.

Tom Langford

Papers

Who cares? : women's work, childcare, and welfare state redesign

Who Cares? Women's Work, Childcare, and Welfare State Redesign. (Book Reviews/Comptes Rendus)

The meaning of occupational prestige scores: a social psychological analysis and interpretation

The affective bases for the gendering of traits: Comparing the United States and Canada.

Canadians' responses to aboriginal issues: the roles of prejudice, perceived group conflict and economic conservatism