Reinforcing the glass ceiling: The consequences of hostile sexism for female managerial candidates

Previous research has established that benevolent sexism is related to the negative evaluation of women who violate specific norms for behavior. Research has yet to document the causal impact of hostile sexism on evaluations of individual targets. Correlational evidence and ambivalent sexism theory led us to predict that hostile sexism would be associated with negative evaluations of a female candidate for a masculine-typed occupational role. Participants completed the ASI (P. Glick & S. T. Fiske, 1996) and evaluated a curriculum vitae from either a male or female candidate. Higher hostile sexism was significantly associated with more negative evaluations of the female candidate and with lower recommendations that she be employed as a manager. Conversely, higher hostile sexism was significantly associated with higher recommendations that a male candidate should be employed as a manager. Benevolent sexism was unrelated to evaluations and recommendations in this context. The findings support the hypothesis that hostile, but not benevolent, sexism results in negativity toward individual women who pose a threat to men's status in the workplace.

Demographic category membership and leadership in small groups: A social identity analysis

Developing the social identity theory of leadership (e.g., [Hogg, M. A. (2001). A social identity theory of leadership. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 5, 184-200]), an experiment (N=257) tested the hypothesis that as group members identify more strongly with their group (salience) their evaluations of leadership effectiveness become more strongly influenced by the extent to which their demographic stereotype-based impressions of their leader match the norm of the group (prototypicality). Participants, with more or less traditional gender attitudes (orientation), were members, under high or low group salience conditions (salience), of non-interactive laboratory groups that had instrumental or expressive group norms (norm), and a male or female leader (leader gender). As predicted, these four variables interacted significantly to affect perceptions of leadership effectiveness. Reconfiguration of the eight conditions formed by orientation, norm and leader gender produced a single prototypicality variable. Irrespective of participant gender, prototypical leaders were considered more effective in high then low salience groups, and in high salience groups prototypical leaders were more effective than less prototypical leaders. Alternative explanations based on status characteristics and role incongruity theory do not account well for the findings. Implications of these results for the glass ceiling effect and for a wider social identity analysis of the impact of demographic group membership on leadership in small groups are discussed. (c) 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

If you're going to be a leader, at least act like it! Prejudice towards women who are tentative in leader roles

Role congruity theory predicts prejudice towards women who meet the agentic requirements of the leader role. In line with recent findings indicating greater acceptance of agentic behaviour from women, we find evidence for a more subtle form of prejudice towards women who fail to display agency in leader roles. Using a classic methodology, the agency of male and female leaders was manipulated using assertive or tentative speech, presented through written (Study 1, N = 167) or verbal (Study 2, N = 66) communications. Consistent with predictions, assertive women were as likeable and influential as assertive men, while being tentative in leadership reduced the likeability and influence of women, but not of men. Although approval of agentic behaviour from women in leadership reflects progress, evidence that women are quickly singled out for disapproval if they fail to show agency is important for understanding how they continue to be at a distinct disadvantage to men in leader roles.

Exploring girl power : gender, literacy and the textual practices of young women attending an elite school

Popular discourses concerning the relationship between gender and academic literacies have suggested that boys are lacking in particular, school-based literacy competencies compared with girls. Such discourses construct “gender” according to a binary framework and they obscure the way in which literacy and textual practices operate as a site in which gendered identities are constituted and negotiated by young people in multiple sites including schooling, which academic inquiry has often emphasized. In this paper I consider the school-based textual practices of young women attending an elite school, in order to explore how these practices construct “femininities”. Feminist education researchers have shown how young women negotiate discourses of feminine passivity and heterosexuality through their reading and writing practices. Yet discourses of girlhood and femininity have undergone important transformations in times of ‘girl power’ in which young women are increasingly constructed as successful, autonomous and sexually agentic. Thus young women’s reading and writing practices may well operate as a space in which new discourses around girlhood and femininity are constituted. Throughout the paper, I utilize the notion of “performativity”, understood through the work of Judith Butler, to show how textual practices variously inscribe and negotiate discourses of gender. Thus the importance of textual work in inscribing and challenging notions of gender is asserted. I argue that critical literacy is just as important, but perhaps no more guaranteed, within elite girls’ education as it is within boys’ education.

Communality sells: The impact of perceivers' sexism on the evaluation of women's portrayals in advertisements

Portrayals of women in advertisements have a significant impact on the maintenance of gender stereotypes in society. Therefore, the present research investigates the effectiveness of communal and agentic female characters in advertisements as well as the question how evaluations of such characters are influenced by perceivers' sexist attitudes toward women. Results show that communal female advertising characters are evaluated more favorably than agentic ones and that these evaluations predict advertising effectiveness. Benevolent sexism predicts more positive evaluations of communal female advertising characters (studies 1 and 2). Moreover, hostile sexism predicts less positive evaluations of agentic female advertising characters when it is assessed under time pressure (Study 2). Implications of these findings for the perpetuation of gender stereotypes in advertisements and in society are discussed.

Women's experiential journey toward voluntary childlessness

Voluntary childlessness is a relatively novel yet growing phenomenon. This idiographic study explored three women's experiential journeys toward voluntary childlessness. Semi-structured interviews were carried out and analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Themes identified were: Owning the choice to be childless, social expectations, and models of mothering. Despite defining ‘voluntary childlessness’ as an unequivocal decision, the women's experiential accounts revealed an intrinsic fluidity in their journeys toward childlessness. Factors including beliefs in equality, independence and career aspirations competed with constructs of mothering/motherhood, partnership and choice to create a complex tapestry of contributory factors in these women's childlessness. The findings question the notion of choice and particularly women's ownership of that choice. The journeys toward childlessness these women shared reveal a synthesis of agentic decision-making, personal histories and challenging lifestyle choices bound up within an existential need to be a woman. More research is needed to determine the place of voluntary childlessness within society. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Feminist Disability Theory: Domestic Violence Against Women with a Disability

Women with a disability continue to experience social oppression and domestic violence as a consequence of gender and disability dimensions. Current explanations of domestic violence and disability inadequately explain several features that lead women who have a disability to experience violent situations. This article incorporates both disability and material feminist theory as an alternative explanation to the dominant approaches (psychological and sociological traditions) of conceptualising domestic violence. This paper is informed by a study which was concerned with examining the nature and perceptions of violence against women with a physical impairment. The emerging analytical framework integrating material feminist interpretations and disability theory provided a basis for exploring gender and disability dimensions. Insight was also provided by the women who identified as having a disability in the study and who explained domestic violence in terms of a gendered and disabling experience. The article argues that material feminist interpretations and disability theory, with their emphasis on gender relations, disablism and poverty, should be used as an alternative tool for exploring the nature and consequences of violence against women with a disability.