Washington [US]: According to new Cornell University research, ladies feel more disappointed than men by the gendered assumptions put on them at work, in any event, when those assumptions seem to flag ladies’ ideals and are viewed as significant for working environment headway.
The examination was distributed in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. All kinds of people face gendered pressures at work. While men are supposed to show free characteristics, such as being emphatic, ladies are supposed to show common characteristics, such as being cooperative, earlier examination shows. Late surveying uncovers that convictions that ladies have positive public characteristics are on the ascent in the U.S., and ILR School research has found that ladies themselves view characteristics like cooperation and ability at connection as applicable to progress and headway at work.
Still, when women and men are faced with positive gendered stereotypes, women experience more frustration and less motivation to comply with the expectation than men, according to Devon Proudfoot, assistant professor of human resource studies in the ILR School and co-author of “Communal Expectations Conflict With Autonomy Motives: The Western Drive for Autonomy Shapes Women’s Negative Responses to Positive Gender 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,” Proudfoot said. “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.”
In the paper, Proudfoot and her co-author, Aaron Kay of Duke University, examined how women feel about positive gendered stereotypes in the U.S., a Western individualistic culture. Further, the duo engaged in cross-cultural comparison, finding that women in a non-Western collectivistic culture, in this case, India, do not feel the same resentment.
“Our findings provide initial evidence that culture influences the way that women and men respond to gender stereotypes,” Proudfoot said. “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.”
Proudfoot, whose work often examines stereotyping and discrimination, as well as what motivates employee attitudes and behaviour, led participants through five studies to gauge their reactions to positive gender stereotypes. The centrepiece of each study focused on personal experience and how the participant felt as a result.
“For instance, in some studies, we ask participants to recall a time when they were expected to act a certain way because of their gender,” Proudfoot said. “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.”
To further examine their theory, Proudfoot and Kay compared women and men in the U.S. with women and men in India, a country that has a collectivistic culture in which people tend to strive for social connection and interdependence with others. They found that women in India did not experience the same feelings of anger and frustration, as the positive gender stereotypes align with cultural goals.
“What I find fascinating is thinking how these Western social goals around independence and autonomy converge with orientation and gendered assumptions,” Proudfoot said. “Our exploration thinks about how individuals’ encounters of gendered attribute assumptions are subject to the social setting they experienced childhood in and the ideal model of self-advanced by that culture.”
The exploration recommends that commending ladies representatives for being cooperative or socially gifted could blow up, she said.
“Reinforcing these types of gender stereotypes could have negative emotional and motivational consequences for women in the workplace,” Proudfoot said.
