Leadership Stereotypes and Performance/Promotion Issues Affecting Women

How gender stereotype could impact performance? What is a stereotype ? How gender stereotype could impact performance? Some common gender stereotype in the workplace are…..

Steele (1997) Stereotype threat “… the event of a negative stereotype about a group to which one belongs becoming self-relevant, usually as a plausible interpretation for something one is doing, for an experience one is having or for a situation one is in, that has relevance to one’s self definition” (p.616).

Gender Stereotypes Prescriptive Aspects Descriptive Aspects Lack of fit model (Heilman 1983, 1995). Perceived fit between the person attributes and the job requirements. Descriptive Aspects Dictate how women should be like. Therefore, if women prove themselves competent at a male work, they violate this norm.

Role Congruity (Eagly et al. 2000) Is based in the social role theory’s treatment on the area of gender roles and the importance of promoting different behaviors between sexes This theory considers the congruity between gender roles and other roles, principally leadership roles They proposed a theory of prejudice against female leaders based in the analysis of injunctive aspects of gender roles.

Gender and Job Performance Women present a tendency to be over-represented in jobs with piece-rate, because they leave less room for gender discrimination (Heywood and Jirjahn, 2002) During the past years, women have held 14.8 % of Fortune 500 seats in 2007. (2007, Census: Board Directors) Some researchers have pointed that gender, racial diversity has been found to increase conflict in small groups, and this might inhibit their decision-making capacity (E. Jackson, Susan, 2003)

Dobbin, F., & Jung, J., (2011) Analyzed the effect of women on corporate performance specifically related to stock price of the actions of the company They explored how the institutional investor community influences board diversity and stock price. The sampling frame was Fortune’s list of America’s 500 largest companies

Dobbin, F., & Jung, J., (2011) Findings: Profits do not suffer with an increase in gender diversity on boards. Even so, this increase of diversity is followed by a significant decrease in stock value The authors suggested that gender diversity might influence corporate performance by activating bias on the part of the institutional investors who control eighty percent of the shares of America’s leading companies.

References Bergeron, D., Block, C., & Echtenkamp, B. (2006) Disabling the able: Stereotype threat and women’s work performance. Human performance. 19(2), 133-158 doi: 10.1207/s15327043hup1902_3 Bowen, C., Swim, J., & Jacobs, R. (2000). Evaluating Gender Biases on Actual Job Performance of Real People: A Meta- Analysis. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 30(10), 2194-2215. Clifton, G., Jegadees, N., & Tang, J (2009). Gender and Job Performance: Evidence from Wall Street. Financial Analysis Journal. 65(6)  

References Bergeron, D., Block, C., & Echtenkamp, B. (2006) Disabling the able: Stereotype threat and women’s work Crystal L. Hoyt, Stefanie Simon, Lindsey Reid, Choosing the best (wo)man for the job: The effects of mortality salience, sex, and gender stereotypes on leader evaluations, The Leadership Quarterly, Volume 20, Issue 2, April 2009, Pages 233-246 Dobbin, F., & Jung, J., (2011) Corporate Board Gender Diversity and Stock Performance: The competence gap or institutional investor bias? North Carolina Law Review. 89 Eagly, A., & Steven, K., (2002) Role Congruity Theory of Prejudice Toward Female Leaders Psychological Review. 109(3) 573- 598.doi:10.1037//0033-295X.109.3.573