Home | Education & Distance Learning Articles | Article

Undergraduates regard deviation from occupational gender stereotypes as costly for women

Sex Roles: A Journal of Research - February 1, 1996

Much of the workplace is divided into "women's work" and "men's work" (Reskin & Hartmann, 1986). In fact, occupational gender segregation is so pervasive that researchers project that 53% of women (or men) workers would have to change occupations in order to achieve full gender integration (Reskin & Padavic, 1994). This uneven distribution of women and men into occupations both reflects and reinforces stereotypes about the gender-typing of occupations.

Social psychologists have long known that the clearest way to detect the existence of stereotypes is to explore the consequences of deviating from their prescriptions (Schachter, 1951). Negative outcomes signal that stereotypes have been violated, and these may be expressed in terms of personal as well as work-related denigration of the deviate. The purpose of the present study is to examine such reactions to occupational gender deviates, that is, women and men who are successful in occupations stereotypically associated with the other gender.

THE COSTS OF GENDER-ROLE INCONGRUENCE

In 1978, Cherry and Deaux published an elegantly simple study in which women and men wrote a story about a female or male target who was described as being at the top of his or her medical or nursing school class. They found that negative imagery occurred in the stories about targets in gender-incongruent occupations regardless of the target's or rater's gender. In other words, both women and men raters evaluated both women and men targets negatively when they succeeded in nontraditional occupations, that is, when Anne topped her medical school class and when John led his nursing school class. We speculate that if such fears persist in the 1990s, these could influence occupational pursuits such that women and men avoid nontraditional occupations, ultimately maintaining the status quo of occupational segregation.

The purpose of the present study is to see if such fears still exist among undergraduates in the 1990s. In other words, we will replicate Cherry and Deaux's (1978) work. However, several changes may have occurred across this time frame that might compromise an exact replication. First, one might argue that attitudes and stereotypes about women's and men's work have changed across this time period in response to significant increases in women's labor force participation (Kelley & Streeter, 1992). Secondly, the fields Cherry and Deaux (1978) studied, nursing and medical schools, may have changed. Finally, although Cherry and Deaux (1978) examined raters' personal descriptions of occupational deviates, negative evaluations of deviates might be expressed within the work domain as well.

Changing Attitudes and Stereotypes

Regarding changes in attitudes, Gallup polls conducted in 1975 reported that 37% of women and 43% of men agreed that a woman with the same ability as a man would have an equal chance of becoming an executive and 27% of women and 32% of men would prefer equally a woman or man boss (Simon & Landis, 1989). The same questions asked in 1987 showed stronger support for women in nontraditional roles of managers and bosses: 46% of women and 50% of men agreed that women would have equal opportunities to be a manager and 39% of women and 57% of men expressed equal preferences for women and men bosses. These opinions reflect significant attitudinal changes across the 1980s.

Although attitudes may have become somewhat more egalitarian, updated replications of research from the 1970s suggest that occupational gender stereotypes are alive and well. For example, recent replications of Schein's (1973) original finding that respondents characterized the role of middle manager as masculine confirmed the persistence of occupational stereotyping (Brenner, Tomkiewicz, & Schein, 1989; Heilman, Block, Martell, & Simon, 1989; Schein, Mueller, & Jacobson, 1989). Similarly, research on hiring preferences along gender-role congruent lines from the 1970s (Cohen & Bunker, 1975) has been replicated and extended (Glick, Zion, & Nelson, 1988; Heilman, 1984; Ward, 1991). Thus these studies suggest that while overt attitudes may have changed, more subtle indicators of gender stereotyping have persisted across the past two decades.

This apparent contradiction between attitudes and stereotyping may be reconciled by recent theoretical developments focused on how prejudice is expressed. Concentrating on racism, Dovidio and Gaertner (1986) proposed a theory of "aversive racism" whereby seemingly egalitarian people avoid overt forms of discrimination yet persistently engage in more subtle forms of differential treatment. Extending this logic to research on occupational gender-typing, respondents may express egalitarian attitudes in response to an attitude survey, but exhibit subtle biases when the probes for stereotypic responses are less direct. Thus the vignette and analog procedures used routinely in stereotyping studies may capture covert patterns of gender-biased behavior. This reasoning suggests then that the present study go beyond the overt measures of gender stereotyping used by Cherry and Deaux (1978) by adding indirect indicators of gender-bias.

It also is conceivable that the gender and gender-role attitudes of individual raters will influence their responses to vignettes. Cherry and Deaux (1978) [as well as earlier work by Monahan, Kuhn, and Shaver (1974)! found no differences in the ratings of women and men participants. Other researchers found that raters' attitudes toward gender roles mediated ratings of competent stimulus persons (Spence, Helmreich, & Stapp, 1975) as well as attributions for success (Garland, Hale, & Burnson, 1982). While the primary focus of the present study is on targets' characteristics, not raters', the possible interaction of the two will be explored.

Changing Occupations

Exploring the relative impact of job content, employees' personality, and gender ratios on occupational stereotyping, Krefting, Berger, and Wallace (1978) concluded that gender imbalances signal prospective employees that a job is or is not suitable for their own gender category (see also Eagly & Steffen, Experiment 3, 1984; Hoffman & Hurst, 1990). In other words, what made medical school masculine in the 1970s was not the tasks physicians did (job content) and not the personal characteristics of doctors (personality), but simply the basic demographic fact that most medical practitioners were men.

Enrollments in nursing schools across the past two decades have remained stable [95.4% women in 1974-75 (Digest of Education Statistics, 1976, p. 120); 94.7% women in 1988-89 (Digest of Education Statistics, 1992, p. 258)!. In contrast, the gender composition of medical school has changed substantially from 13% women in the mid-1970s (Taeuber, 1991) to 33% now (Reis & Stone, 1992). If indeed gender composition is the major determinant of occupational gender-typing, then Anne in medical school is no longer numerically deviant. Thus, we expect not to replicate Cherry and Deaux's (1978) findings when Anne and John top their medical school classes. Given our speculation, a true conceptual replication of Cherry and Deaux (1978) must replace medical school with occupations presently showing gender-skewed participation rates comparable to those of medical school in the mid-1970s.

Potential Work-Related Costs

Two strands of intervening research suggest that occupational gender incongruence may have work-related consequences beyond the personal costs recorded by stereotyping researchers. Research on reactions to competent women found that such women were socially (Hagen & Kahn, 1975) and professionally (Hodson & Pryor, 1984) rejected. Most interestingly, women and men rated a target woman as least attractive as a work partner when she combined competence with high career orientation and masculine preferences (Shaffer & Wegley, 1974). Although these studies are somewhat dated, they suggest that successful women targets will suffer work-related costs as well as the personal costs reported by Cherry and Deaux (1978).

The second strand of research focused on attributions underlying women's competent behavior. Again, a series of dated studies concluded that women's successes were less likely to be attributed to stable (Weiner, 1974) dispositional characteristics, like ability (Deaux & Emswiller, 1974; Feather & Simon, 1975), and more to the vagaries of luck (Deaux & Emswiller, 1974), hard work (Feldman-Summers & Kiesler, 1974; Yarkin, Town, & Wallston, 1982), and ease of the task (Feather & Simon, 1975). These findings have persisted into the 1990s; for example, Greenhaus and Parasuraman (1993) found that the performances of the most highly successful women managers were less likely to be attributed to ability than those of their comparable male counterparts. Thus, attributions about the causes of targets' successes may be a second useful measure of work-related judgments.

THE PRESENT STUDY

1 2 3 4 5 Next »

If you would like to discuss any of the issues raised in this article with hundreds of other Education & Distance Learning enthusiasts from around the world, please feel free to visit the discussion forums & post a message.

Discuss this article in the discussion forums now.

Popular Education & Distance Learning Discussions From The Past

Re: Is a PhD in Education worth it? (1 posts)
by Rose Bear - Last post on: 06-25-03 11:33
Well, there seem to be a few issues going on here. First, there is the cost-benefit analysis of the 18-year-old kid who is hoping that Daddy can be talked to pay full-ride tuition and living expenses for the BA, MA, and PhD (so that he/she can finish his/her degrees by ages 22, 25, and 30 and gra... (Read More)

The AED Gang: Disgraced, Criminal, and Gone! (1 posts)
by big noise - Last post on: 02-02-04 04:42
From: isue4you (isue4you@usa.com) Subject: Re: The AED Gang: Disgraced, Criminal, and Gone! Newsgroups: alt.education.distance Date: 2004-01-09 08:08:23 PST > THE A.E.D. GANG - - Disgraced, Criminal, and Gone! > > Over the years there have been quite a few so-called experts, > (s... (Read More)

Stanford Breast Oncology Fellowship (1 posts)
by Susan Overholser - Last post on: 09-09-03 13:59
One year Breast Fellowship available for medical/surgical/radiation oncologists in the Susan G. Komen Interdisciplinary Program at Stanford University School of Medicine beginning June 2004. Fellows will rotate for six months in area of their specialty, with six months in other areas. Candidates... (Read More)

Re: Oi you YODA, Yes you (1 posts)
by KCOM - Last post on: 10-07-03 12:56
On Tue, 07 Oct 2003 20:21:53 +0100, "Toger ²°°3 :->" wrote: > > >First time poster...Yes >Sock...Yes. >Post rating -0 > Which still puts is post rating at least a trillion times your's. -- Steve ... (Read More)

You must register before posting in the Education & Distance Learning discussion forums. It's free & only takes a few seconds. Please also remember that no advertising is allowed...
Enter The Forums Here