Gender Misconception & Preconceptions in Corporate Management (original) (raw)
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Women and men in management : Stereotypes, evaluation and discourse
2014
Very few women hold top corporate positions in Sweden, and women are underrepresented as managers in all work sectors. The present thesis examined stereotypes, perceptions and presuppositions about women, men and management with a combination of perspectives from social and organizational psychology, discourse analysis and gender in organization research. Study 1 of Paper I was a content analysis of management attributes and cultural stereotypes of female and male managers. In Study 2, an inventory of these attributes was formed, and participants' stereotype endorsements tested. Stereotypes of female managers resembled good management more than male managers, and they were rated more positively, but a masculine norm was implied. Paper II aimed to study and compare gender-related management stereotypes and evaluations of actual managers, and examine perceived gender bias. Men evaluated the female manager stereotype more positively on communal attributes, and, contrary to women, judged the male manager stereotype more positively on agentic attributes. This may help explain the scarcity of women in top management. Women perceived more gender bias favoring male managers than men. Actual male and female managers were rated similarly. Still, the Euclidian distances showed that ratings of actual managers and stereotypes were linked. Paper III examined the discourse on the lack of women in top corporate positions, explanations and links to proposed measures in a project to counter the gender imbalance. A liberal discourse with contradictions and textual silences was exposed. Gender had to be construed in line with traditional gender norms and division of labor to make sense of the proposed explanations. To conclude, one can be reassured by the largely communal portrayal of good management and positive evaluations of female managers, but also apprehensive about the masculine norm of management, perceived gender bias in favor of men, and traditional gender constructions.
Gender, managers, and organizations
Scandinavian Journal of Management, 1997
BOOK REVIEWS intended that way? Perhaps it was, and at any rate interpretations always abound. But how about "distancing" as a wonderful flight of the imagination, as a journey like Gulliver's or of Alice's, as a metaphorical attempt to estrange oneself from a familiar world in order to better appreciate its wonders --and reveal its cruelties. I once spoke of"anthropology as a frame of mind" (1993), and I hope that I am not misinterpreting Weick's intentions when I read his "mindset" in this light. Sentimentalizing will not help the world; keen attention to the details of life, and to the way these are made sense of, might. by Yvonne Due Billing and Mats Alvesson provides, as stated on the back cover, a general introduction as well as an overview and a critical discussion of theory and research on gender, feminism, women in management and organizational studies. This is a topic which is much discussed in the popular debate and it bears the stamp of political correctness. These circumstances explain the great number of so-called experts and consultants who are producing courses, lectures, books and articles on different aspects of gender-and-management or, women-and-management. It is therefore of great importance that solid research is done and published, to alleviate the worst of the misunderstandings.
Gender role stereotypes and requisite management characteristics
Gender in Management: An International Journal, 2010
PurposeAlthough Schein's gender role management stereotype hypothesis has been examined in many countries around the world, no studies specifically examine the combined effects of race and gender on this phenomenon. The purpose of this paper is to use an intersectional analysis to test the hypothesis among different race and gender groups in South Africa.Design/methodology/approachThe 92‐item Schein descriptive index was randomly administered to 592 black men, white men, black women, and white women managers. The degree of resemblance between the descriptions of men and successful managers and between women and successful managers was determined by computing intra‐class correlation coefficients.FindingsResults confirm the think manager, think male hypothesis for black and white men but not for black and white women. Black and white men are less likely to attribute successful managerial characteristics to women. The hypothesis is more robust among black men than among white men. ...
Journal of Business and Psychology, 2012
Purpose Several studies have shown that the traditional stereotype of a ''good'' manager being masculine and male still exists. The recent changes in the proportion of women and female managers in organizations could affect these two managerial stereotypes, leading to a stronger preference for feminine characteristics and female leaders. This study examines if the gender of an employee, the gender of the manager, and the management gender ratio in an organization are related to employees' managerial stereotypes. Design/Methodology/Approach 3229 respondents working in various organizations completed an electronic questionnaire. Findings The results confirm our hypotheses that, although the general stereotype of a manager is masculine and although most prefer a man as a manager, female employees, employees with a female manager, and employees working in an organization with a high percentage of female managers, have a stronger preference for feminine characteristics of managers and for female managers. Moreover, we find that proximal variables are much stronger predictors of these preferences than more distal variables.
The Consequences of Gender Stereotypes in the Work of Managers
Procedia Economics and Finance, 2015
Gender inequality remains a significant factor affecting the status of men and women in society, despite some progress, thanks to the measures that have been introduced in recent years. Normally we look at the men that they are leaders, they are ambitious, rational and logical-thinking. Women managers take care of the family, which reduces their opportunities to succeed in recruiting managerial position. Often stereotyped manager (man) receives rather a person of the same sex as he is. The result of our research is showing effect of gender stereotypes resulting in low representation of women at senior management levels.
Gender stereotypes as cultural products of the organization
Scandinavian Journal of Management, 1994
This study seeks to understand how organizational cultures produce gender stereotypes. It is suggested here that interpretations of what it means to he "successful" in a corporate culture, and the stories reflecting these ideals in organizational talk, can be a crucial means to an understanding of the phenomenon. Ethnographic interview material is used to illustrate the way in which contrasting ideals for male and female behaviour evolve and remain in organizational memory in an enterprise with highly gender-segregated work structures. These stereotypes will restrict individual choices within the organizational boundaries. It is further suggested that a tendency to glorify strong organizational cultures imbued with heroic ideals may favour male ways of acting in organizations.
The Relationship Between Sex Role Stereotypes And Requisite Management Characteristics Revisited
Academy of Management Journal, 1989
Three hundred male middle managers rated either women in general, men in general, or successful middle managers on 92 descriptive terms. The results confirmed the hypothesis that successful middle managers are perceived to possess characteristics, attitudes, and temperaments more commonly ascribed to men in general than to women in general. There was a significant resemblance between the mean ratings of men and managers, whereas there was no resemblance between women and managers. Examination of mean rating differences among women, men, and managers on each of the items disclosed some requisite management characteristics which were not synonymous with the masculine sex role stereotype. Implications of the demonstrated relationship for organizational behaviors are discussed. Although women make up 38% of the work force (Koontz, 1971), the proportion of women who occupy managerial and executive positions is markedly small. One extensive survey of industrial organizations (Women in the Work Force, 1970) revealed that 87% of the companies surveyed had 5% or fewer women in middle management and above. According to Orth and Jacobs (1971), one reason for the limited number of women managers and executives is that "... traditional male attitudes toward women at the professional and managerial levels continue to block change [p. 140]." Bowman, Worthy, and Greyser (1965) found that of 1,000 male executives surveyed, 41% expressed mildly unfavorable to strongly unfavorable attitudes toward women in management. This negative reaction to women in management suggests that sex role stereotypes may be inhibiting women from advancing in the managerial work force. The existence of sex role stereotypes has been documented by numerous researchers
Introduction: The Many Faces of Gender and Organization
Texts on gender and organizations often start by referring to common knowledge or statistics showing an inferior position of women in relation to men. Women in general have lower wages, even within the same occupation and at the same level, experience more unemployment, take more responsibility for unpaid labour, are strongly underrepresented at higher positions in organizations, and have less autonomy and control over work and lower expectations of promotion (e.g. Chafetz, 1989; Nelson and Burke, 2000; Ely et al., 2003). There is massive empirical evidence on these issues and those arguing that there exists a gendered order (or patriarchal society), which gives many more options and privileges to men, particularly in working life, but also in life in general, have little difficulty in substantiating their case.
Introduction to the Handbook of Research Methods on Gender and Management
Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks, 2021
The motivation for this Handbook is to provide an essential resource for researchers in gender and management, and for those in other fields of study including adult education, leadership, culture, media and politics. Gender and management research is challenging, conducted in a wide range of geographical and organisational contexts, approached from individual, organisational and social levels of analysis. In this Handbook, contributing authors are unified in understanding gender as a complex, dynamic, socially constructed phenomenon, (re)created through processes and practices that maintain difference. This understanding brings attention to the ongoing 'doing' of gender, and how it is socially situated in our everyday practice, including in organisational and workplace contexts. Typically focused upon deeply embedded social issues and structural inequalities, gender and management research is concerned to make these issues and inequalities explicit within a particular socio-cultural and political context, and to provide understandings of how and why they persist in order to inform action for change. Gender and management scholars therefore require a repertoire of methodologies and methods capable of getting under the surface of everyday discourses, practices and processes, organisational routines and systems to access how gender organises, shapes, operates and influences. Evidencing the broad reach and fundamental importance of gender and management research, contributors to the Handbook are internationally diverse and draw on multiple disciplines in their research. These include management; leadership; organisation studies; public administration; sport; critical policy; entrepreneurship; accounting; sociology; cultural studies; adult education; ethics; philosophy; human resource development; media studies; and science and technology studies. The Handbook encompasses methodologies and methods that probe, explore and unearth gendered behaviours, interactions, systems, processes and practices. These include methods and approaches rarely utilised in gender and management research such as oral history, institutional ethnography, and quantitative methods for mining large volumes of data. Our categorisation of chapters emphasising either the autoethnographic, practical, critical or methodological acknowledges a primary focal point in each of the studies. However, we recognise that this is by no means a perfect categorisation and that the chapters, reflective of the multiplicity of gender and management research, may easily span different categories. Nonetheless, we hope this categorisation, and the acknowledgement of their interconnections, is helpful in recognising how gender and management research cannot work in isolation from the broader socio-cultural context, but must continually strive to challenge, question and call to account the wider systems in which we work and live.
Stereotypes and prejudice towards women managers
An experimental study based on Goldberg's paradigm was carried out to investigate stereotypical attitudes towards the women managers in a mixed gender sample. 329 participants were asked to participate in a simulated personnel selection decision task. 166 participants had to choose between 2 resumes describing 2 men, while 163 participants had to choose between the same 2 resumes, but they were told that the first resume belonged to a woman. All participants were also asked to assess the managerial skills, orientation towards task and towards relations of both candidates. The results show a clear drop of preferences in the second experimental condition for the resume describing a woman compared with the preferences expressed by the participants in the first experimental condition for the same resume describing a man. Also, the participants in the second experimental condition rated the male applicant's managerial skills, task orientation and relationships orientation higher than the female applicant's. However, contrary to what was expected, women rates were equally as discriminative against woman applicant as men rates were. This result does not support the prediction of the implicit social cognition theory and is explained by the traditional values of Romanian culture, in which women are much more perceived as being engaged in the private sphere than the public one.