Prejudice
against women in power is greater than we think
Springer
This could be because participants
in surveys investigating attitudes towards men and women in leadership
positions may not answer honestly unless they are guaranteed confidentiality of
their answers.
These are the findings of a new
study by Adrian Hoffmann and Jochen Musch of the Heinrich-Heine-University
Düsseldorf in Germany, which is published in Springer's journal Sex
Roles.
Hoffmann and Musch used an indirect
questioning technique to gather information on people's true feelings about
women leaders.
The technique showed that people are
not always honest when directly asked their opinion on socially sensitive
questions because they prefer to give answers that they think will be accepted
by others.
Gender stereotypes and gender-oriented prejudice pose a serious threat to women's careers and facilitate gender bias in the workplace.
According to theorists, prejudice
against women leaders emerges from an incongruity between their gender role and
the more masculine social role of a leader.
Self-reports are often used to study
people's prejudice against women leaders, and these have helped to gather
important information about the form intolerance and stereotyping against women
in power takes.
Such methods may, however, be biased
because of the unwillingness of some people to disclose information that could
be viewed by others as violating social norms, and therefore reflect
unfavourably on the respondent.
To counter this effect, Hoffmann and
Musch collected responses from 1529 German students with either a conventional
direct question, or an indirect question in the format of the so-called
Crosswise Model.
The randomization of individual
answers which lies at the core of this advanced questioning technique grants
full confidentially to respondents answering questions of a sensitive nature.
It therefore allows respondents more
freedom to answer honestly without feeling the need to provide answers that
would put themselves in a better light.
Estimates of the prevalence of
prejudice obtained using the Crosswise Model were further compared with ones
obtained using a conventional direct question.
Results from the Crosswise Model
show that people are significantly more prejudiced against women (37 per cent)
than results from direct questions indicate (23 per cent).
This could be because more
participants were willing to admit to being prejudiced against women leaders if
they were granted full confidentiality in their answers.
When granted full confidentiality,
28 per cent of women and 45 per cent of men in the sample indicated that they
considered women to be less qualified for leadership positions than men. Across
the two study methods, men showed more prejudice than women.
However, the increase in the
estimated prevalence of prejudice from a conventional direct question to the
Crosswise Model was higher in women (from 10 per cent to 28 per cent) than in
men (from 36 per cent to 45 per cent), indicating that women responded more
strongly to being granted full confidentiality of their answers.
"This pattern suggests that
women are much more reluctant than men to express their prejudice against women
leaders. Perhaps because women feel obligated to solidarize with members of
their in-group," explains Hoffmann.
"Given that even many women
have reservations against women leaders, the societal and political promotion
of gender equity has obviously not been successful at changing the attitudes of
every potential future leader. It therefore does not seem unreasonable to
expect the further persistence of workplace bias," adds Musch.
