Despite significant attempts to improve equality and fairness in the workplace, it’s still the case that our gender matters. For instance, in a recent article, I explored research that showed how women’s potential is often undervalued at work.
The researchers found that while women were around 7% more likely to receive a high rating in their performance reviews, their leadership potential was nearly 6% lower. They believe this contributes to at least half of the difference in promotions at the firm.
Responding to unfairness
Research from Oregon State University suggests, however, that where such gender unfairness exists, men are far more likely to engage in deviant behavior in response to the perceived unjustness. This behavior could include stealing, cheating, or even simply failing to help and support colleagues on team-based efforts.
The researchers argue that their findings are important because we live in an age where perceived threats to traditional masculinity are a hot topic of political and cultural debate. Such threats typically involve calling someone’s status as a member of a gender into question. This is particularly problematic for men as notions of masculinity are deeply entrenched, and threats to it can result in harmful efforts to reassert one’s status.
“The public has rightfully called out companies where frat-like cultures have created terrible places for female employees to work,” the researchers say. “This research gives us a more nuanced understanding of what actually triggers some of these problematic behaviors among men.”
Toxic masculinity
The authors highlight how masculinity has traditionally had a status that needs to be both earned and maintained, whereas womanhood has often been viewed as rather more stable. The behaviors that underpin masculinity can often focus on individual acts of assertiveness and achievement, whereas for women traditional behaviors have often focused more on collective endeavors and sensitivity.
They wanted to know how this so-called social proof reflex related to bad behavior in the workplace. They conducted a number of experiments to test how people perceived their gender at work, and whether they thought it was threatened or not. The results showed that when people felt their gender was threatened at work they were much more likely to engage in deviant behaviors, with this phenomenon much stronger among men than women.
In one experiment, this extended into the willingness to lie during a negotiation in order to try and gain an advantage. A third experiment revealed that those whose gender perceptions were threatened were also less likely to engage in positive acts, such as helping colleagues.
“Research in the psychology of motivation has generally found that people have three key needs: To feel autonomous and in control, to feel competent and to relate to others. We found that for men, gender threats erode their sense of autonomy, which in turn motivates them to behave in ways that demonstrate their independence from rules and from others,” the researchers explain.
“By contrast, because femininity is generally associated with communal behavior in organizations, women’s gender standing at work does not affect their perceived ability to behave autonomously.”
Healthier outlets
While the authors accept that some of the responses to this perceived gender threat can be viewed as innate, they also advocate various alternative responses men can deploy, such as various sports and recreational activities. These are better options than either hoping it goes away or employing unhealthy responses to the problem.
The authors also suggest that some of the debate around the topic in recent years, including the rise in phrases such as “toxic masculinity”, may inadvertently be worsening the problem by fueling perceived gender threats. They believe that a more constructive approach would be to instead focus the conversation on the various negative behaviors men can engage in when they feel threatened, and the harm these can cause.
“As a society, we need to normalize a broader and healthier conceptualization of what manhood is, because behaviors that historically maintained men’s status aren’t conducive to collaborative workplaces,” they conclude. “Additionally, instead of casually using labels such as ‘toxic masculinity,’ which imply these problems are endemic to manhood, we may be able to better address these issues by focusing on specific toxic behaviors such as sexual harassment or hyper-competition without creating gender threats among men and triggering subsequent negative reactions.”
