Gender stereotypes and workplace bias

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Abstract

This paper focuses on the workplace consequences of both descriptive gender stereotypes (designating what women and men are like) and prescriptive gender stereotypes (designating what women and men should be like), and their implications for women's career progress. Its central argument is that gender stereotypes give rise to biased judgments and decisions, impeding women's advancement. The paper discusses how descriptive gender stereotypes promote gender bias because of the negative performance expectations that result from the perception that there is a poor fit between what women are like and the attributes believed necessary for successful performance in male gender-typed positions and roles. It also discusses how prescriptive gender stereotypes promote gender bias by creating normative standards for behavior that induce disapproval and social penalties when they are directly violated or when violation is inferred because a woman is successful. Research is presented that tests these ideas, considers specific career consequences likely to result from stereotype-based bias, and identifies conditions that exaggerate or minimize the likelihood of their occurrence.

Section snippets

Gender stereotypes

Stereotypes are generalizations about groups that are applied to individual group members simply because they belong to that group, and gender stereotypes are generalizations about the attributes of men and women. Gender stereotypes have both descriptive and prescriptive properties (Burgess and Borgida, 1999, Eagly and Karau, 2002, Heilman, 2001). Descriptive gender stereotypes designate what women and men are like. Prescriptive gender stereotypes designate what women and men should be like.

Descriptive gender stereotypes

Beliefs about how men and women typically are comprise descriptive gender stereotypes. The content of stereotypes has been studied extensively, and researchers have identified the attributes that are thought to characterize men and women (Abele, 2003, Bakan, 1966, Broverman et al., 1972, Diekman and Eagly, 2000). Agency is often taken to be the defining characteristic of the male stereotype, and communality as the defining characteristic of the female stereotype. Agency has come to denote

Prescriptive gender stereotypes

Gender stereotypes not only descriptive; they also are prescriptive (Burgess and Borgida, 1999, Eagly and Karau, 2002, Heilman, 2001, Prentice and Carranza, 2002, Rudman and Glick, 2001). That is, they not only designate how women and men are but also how they should be. They function as injunctive norms (Cialdini & Trost, 1998), dictating what attributes and behaviors are appropriate and inappropriate for people from different groups – in this case men and women.

There is overlap in the content

What about men?

Our ideas should have implications not only for women but also for men. They, too, should experience penalties for violating prescriptive gender stereotypes. Although researchers have primarily examined the effect of prescriptive stereotypes for women, there are several investigations that demonstrate that men are not immune to their consequences (Judge et al., 2012, Moss-Racusin et al., 2010). The prescription for men involves being agentic, and when men fail to act in accordance with it,

Summary and conclusions

This chapter describes how both descriptive and prescriptive gender stereotypes can produce gender bias in work settings, impeding women's career advancement. It discusses how descriptive gender stereotypes promote gender bias because of negative performance expectations that are a consequence of the perception that there is a poor “fit” between the stereotype of women and the attributes believed necessary to succeed in male gender-typed positions. It also discusses the way in which

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