While men are not immune to gender-based discrimination at work, it is nonetheless fair to say that women face the majority of the problems formed by such acts. So it’s perhaps no surprise that research from Cornell finds that women are more frustrated by any gendered expectations placed on them at work than men. What’s more, this is even the case when the expectations focus on women’s virtues and are seen as important for career progression.
Gendered pressures are unfortunately common at work. Men, for instance, might be expected to display qualities such as being assertive, whereas women are expected to display more communal qualities.
On the rise
The authors highlight how such gendered beliefs are on the rise. Indeed, they argue that women themselves can often view social and collaboration skills as vital to career progression. Nonetheless, when women and men encounter gendered stereotypes, even when deemed positive, women tend to experience more frustration with them than men. What’s more, they also show less motivation to comply with the stereotypes.
“We find that one reason why women feel more frustrated than men by these positive gendered expectations is that women and men face gender stereotypes that differ in the extent to which they affirm a sense of autonomy,” the researchers explain. “In the Western world, people tend to strive to maintain an autonomous sense of self. But while Western society is subtly communicating that an ideal self is an autonomous, independent self, society is also telling women that they should be interdependent and connected to others. We find that this conflict helps explain women’s frustration toward the positive gender stereotypes they experience.”
The researchers wanted to examine how women feel about gendered stereotypes, even if they’re deemed as positive. They also wanted to explore whether women in Western individualistic cultures feel differently to those in non-Western collectivist cultures, such as India.
“Our findings provide initial evidence that culture influences the way that women and men respond to gender stereotypes,” they explain. “We show that it’s the interaction between cultural models of ideal selfhood and the expectations placed on women and men that shape how women and men experience gendered pressures.”
Negative reactions
The researchers conducted five studies to understand how people respond to positive gender stereotypes. Each of the studies revolved around personal experiences and how people felt as a result of them. For instance, sometimes volunteers were asked to remember a time when they were expected to behave in a particular way due to their gender.
“What we find is that women report more anger and frustration when they were expected to be collaborative or socially skilled than men experienced when they were expected to be assertive or decisive,” the authors explain.
The researchers then compared how men and women in the United States respond with how men and women in India respond. The two countries were chosen to represent individualistic and collectivist cultures respectively. The results show that women in India didn’t tend to feel the same feelings of anger as the positive gender stereotypes would align more with cultural goals.
Cultural distinctions
There was a clear intersection between the cultural norms in Western countries around autonomy and independence and then the expectations placed on men and women.
“Our research considers how people’s experiences of gendered trait expectations are dependent on the cultural context they grew up in and the ideal model of self-promoted by that culture,” the researchers explain.
Indeed, it’s quite possible that in individualist cultures, complementing women for their social skills or collaborative capabilities could backfire, with clear emotional and motivational consequences for the women involved.
