Hear Me Roar
Michael Koch & Sarah Fulton
Journal of Politics, January 2011, Pages 1-16
Abstract:
Do women's political gains in office translate into substantive differences in foreign policy outcomes? Previous research shows that men and women hold different national security policy preferences and that greater representation by women in the legislature reduces conflict behavior. But are these relationships an artifact of confounding variables? To answer this question, we analyze the defense spending and conflict behavior of 22 established democracies between 1970 and 2000. We argue that the ability of female officeholders to represent women's interests is context dependent-varying with the level of party control over legislators and the gender stereotypes that officeholders confront. Consistent with the literature on stereotypes, we find that increases in women's legislative representation decreases conflict behavior and defense spending, while the presence of women executives increases both. However, these effects are conditioned by the gendered balance of power in the legislature and the degree of party control in the political system.
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Darcy Reed et al.
Academic Medicine, January 2011, Pages 43-47
Purpose: Because those selected for leadership in academic medicine often have a record of academic productivity, publication disparities may help explain the gender imbalance in leadership roles. The authors aimed to compare the publication records, academic promotions, and leadership appointments of women and men physicians longitudinally throughout academic careers.
Method: In 2007, the authors conducted a retrospective, longitudinal cohort study of all 25 women physicians then employed at Mayo Clinic with ?20 years of service at Mayo and of 50 male physician controls, matched 2:1 by appointment date and career category, to women. The authors recorded peer-reviewed publications, timing of promotion, and leadership appointments throughout their careers.
Results: Women published fewer articles throughout their careers than men (mean [standard deviation] 29.5 [28.8] versus 75.8 [60.3], P = .001). However, after 27 years, women produced a mean of 1.57 more publications annually than men (P < .001). Thirty-three men (66%) achieved an academic rank of professor compared with seven women (28%) (P = .01). Throughout their careers, women held fewer leadership roles than men (P < .001). Nearly half (no. = 11; 44%) of women attained no leadership position, compared with 15 men (30%).
Conclusions: Women's publication rates increase and actually exceed those of men in the latter stages of careers, yet women hold fewer leadership positions than men overall, suggesting that academic productivity assessed midcareer may not be an appropriate measure of leadership skills and that factors other than publication record and academic rank should be considered in selecting leaders.
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Rachel Calogero & John Jost
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Despite extensive evidence confirming the negative consequences of self-objectification, direct experimental evidence concerning its environmental antecedents is scarce. Incidental exposure to sexist cues was employed in 3 experiments to investigate its effect on self-objectification variables. Consistent with system justification theory, exposure to benevolent and complementary forms of sexism, but not hostile or no sexism, increased state self-objectification, self-surveillance, and body shame among women but not men in Experiment 1. In Experiment 2, we replicated these effects and demonstrated that they are specific to self-objectification and not due to a more general self-focus. In addition, following exposure to benevolent sexism only, women planned more future behaviors pertaining to appearance management than did men; this effect was mediated by self-surveillance and body shame. Experiment 3 revealed that the need to avoid closure might afford women some protection against self-objectification in the context of sexist ideology.
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"I'll Get That for You": The Relationship Between Benevolent Sexism and Body Self-Perceptions
Melissa Shepherd et al.
Sex Roles, January 2011, Pages 1-8
Abstract:
Benevolent sexism has been shown to have negative consequences for women. In the present study, we investigated whether there were differences in reports of body self-perceptions between 93 college women in the southeastern United States who either witnessed or did not witness a staged act of benevolent sexism. Because we believed that benevolent sexism could make beauty norms more salient, we hypothesized that women who witnessed benevolent sexism would report higher levels of self-objectification, body surveillance, and body shame. Women who witnessed benevolent sexism did report higher levels of surveillance and shame, constructs associated with self-objectification, but not higher general levels of self-objectification. This research provides more evidence of the negative effects benevolent sexism has on women.
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From "In the Air" to "Under the Skin": Cortisol Responses to Social Identity Threat
Sarah Townsend, Brenda Major, Cynthia Gangi & Wendy Berry Mendes
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, February 2011, Pages 151-164
Abstract:
The authors examined women's neuroendocrine stress responses associated with sexism. They predicted that, when being evaluated by a man, women who chronically perceive more sexism would experience more stress unless the situation contained overt cues that sexism would not occur. The authors measured stress as the end product of the primary stress system linked to social evaluative threat-the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal cortical axis. In Study 1, female participants were rejected by a male confederate in favor of another male for sexist reasons or in favor of another female for merit-based reasons. In Study 2, female participants interacted with a male confederate who they learned held sexist attitudes or whose attitudes were unknown. Participants with higher chronic perceptions of sexism had higher cortisol, unless the situation contained cues that sexism was not possible. These results illustrate the powerful interactive effects of chronic perceptions of sexism and situational cues on women's stress reactivity.
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Kathleen Denny
Gender & Society, February 2011, Pages 27-47
Abstract:
I explore gender messages in Boy Scout and Girl Scout handbooks through an analysis of how gender is infused in the context and content of Scout activities as well as in instructions about how the Scouts are to approach these activities. I find that girls are offered more activities intended to be performed in group contexts than are boys. Boys are offered proportionately more activities with scientific content and proportionately fewer artistic activities than are girls. The girls' handbook conveys messages about approaching activities with autonomous and critical thinking, whereas the boys' handbook facilitates intellectual passivity through a reliance on organizational scripts. Taken together, girls' messages promote an "up-to-date traditional woman" consistent with the Girl Scouts' organizational roots; boys' messages promote an assertive heteronormative masculinity that is offset by facilitating boys' intellectual passivity.
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Can Teams Help to Close the Gender Competition Gap?
Andrew Healy & Jennifer Pate
Economic Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
We investigate the effect that competing in teams has on gender differences in choosing to enter competitions. In our experiment, subjects chose whether to compete based on the combined performance of themselves and a teammate. We find that competing in two-person teams reduces the gender competition gap by two-thirds. Independent of the sex of one's partner, female subjects prefer to compete in teams whereas male subjects prefer to compete as individuals. We find that this result is driven primarily by gender differences in competitive preferences, as opposed to other potential explanations such as risk aversion, feedback aversion or confidence.
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Jane Stout et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Three studies tested a stereotype inoculation model, which proposed that contact with same-sex experts (advanced peers, professionals, professors) in academic environments involving science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) enhances women's self-concept in STEM, attitudes toward STEM, and motivation to pursue STEM careers. Two cross-sectional controlled experiments and 1 longitudinal naturalistic study in a calculus class revealed that exposure to female STEM experts promoted positive implicit attitudes and stronger implicit identification with STEM (Studies 1-3), greater self-efficacy in STEM (Study 3), and more effort on STEM tests (Study 1). Studies 2 and 3 suggested that the benefit of seeing same-sex experts is driven by greater subjective identification and connectedness with these individuals, which in turn predicts enhanced self-efficacy, domain identification, and commitment to pursue STEM careers. Importantly, women's own self-concept benefited from contact with female experts even though negative stereotypes about their gender and STEM remained active.
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Like Red Tulips at Springtime: Understanding the Absence of Female Martyrs in Afghanistan
Matthew Dearing
Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, December 2010, Pages 1079-1103
Abstract:
In an era where female suicide terrorism is on the rise in conflict regions such as the Middle East, the North Caucasus, and South Asia, why has Afghanistan been largely immune to this trend? Why do some violent groups use female suicide terrorism and others avoid it? This is a critical question for policy makers and analysts attempting to understand a dangerous terrorist phenomenon and how it may evolve in Afghanistan. During the anti-Soviet jihad, narratives were woven of men and women marching through the mountains of Nuristan to "offer their blood for the Islamic revolution like red tulips at springtime." But today, women are wholly absent from the Taliban and their jihad in Afghanistan. This article analyzes, in particular, the absence of women in Taliban martyrdom operations. There are three primary findings from this study that explain the low propensity for female suicide bombers in Afghanistan. First, a permissive social and geographic environment in Afghanistan gives insurgents freedom of mobility and a resistance capacity characterized by a reduced necessity for female suicide bombers; second, the capacity of a fiercely conservative culture restricts female participation in both Afghan society and within insurgent organizations; and third, the pronounced absence of a female culture of martyrdom limits women from participation in insurgent actions and narratives.
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Jamie Goldenberg, Douglas Cooper, Nathan Heflick, Clay Routledge & Jamie Arndt
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
From the perspective of terror management theory, awareness of death induces a need for validation of important values. Thus, for women who place a high value on their appearance (e.g., high self-objectifiers), mortality salience should increase positive reactions to objectifying experiences relative to women who do not highly value appearance. Two studies supported this hypothesis. Self-objectification moderated favorable reactions to objectifying stimuli (Study 1) and state self-esteem in response to an objectifying comment (Study 2) when women were primed with death. Together, the studies illustrate the complexity of reactions to objectification and, by highlighting conditions in which objectification serves a psychological function, help to explain the pervasiveness of the phenomena.
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The influence of sexuality stereotypes on men's experience of gender-role incongruence
Jill Allen & Jessi Smith
Psychology of Men & Masculinity, January 2011, Pages 77-96
Abstract:
For men especially, gender roles are highly conflated with sexuality stereotypes (Lehavot & Lambert, 2007). As such, we examined the specific role of gay salience in heterosexual men's task experience of gender role incongruency. We predicted that heterosexual men would show a reduction in performance and motivation when working on a feminine task under gay salience. Studies 1a and 1b established elementary teaching and nursing as feminine domains and as nonheterosexual. Study 2 confirmed our role incongruency prediction using an elementary school teaching task in which participants wrote a lesson plan, judged the emotions of children, and created a bulletin board. Study 3 replicated and extended these results to a medical role-playing task that was framed as a "nursing" or a "doctor" task. Like Study 2, results showed reduced motivation for men when engaging in a feminine (but not masculine) framed task under gay salience conditions. Women were relatively unaffected by the gender and sexuality manipulations. Taken together, results illustrate a range of motivational and performance consequences for men who engage in role incongruent tasks.
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Do Body Weight and Gender Shape the Work Force? The Case of Iceland
Tinna Laufey Asgeirsdottir
Economics & Human Biology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Most studies of the relationship between body weight -- as well as its corollary, beauty -- and labor-market outcomes have indicated that it is a function of a gender bias, the negative relationship between excess weight or obesity and labor-market outcomes being greater for women than for men. Iceland offers an exceptional opportunity to examine this hypothesis, given that it scores relatively well on an index of gender equality comprising economic, political, educational, labor-market, and health-based criteria. Equipped with an advanced level of educational attainment, on average, women are well represented in Iceland's labor force. When it comes to women's presence in the political sphere, Iceland is out of the ordinary as well; that Icelanders were the first in the world to elect a woman to be president may suggests a relatively gender-blind assessment in the labor market. In the current study, survey data collected by Gallup Iceland in 2002 are used to examine the relationship between weight and employment within this political and social setting. Point estimates indicate that, despite apparently lesser gender discrimination in Iceland than elsewhere, the bias against excess weight and obesity remains gender-based, showing a slightly negative relationship between weight and the employment rate of women, whereas a slightly positive relationship was found for men.
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Paul Klenowski, Heith Copes & Christopher Mullins
Justice Quarterly, February 2011, Pages 46-69
Abstract:
When offenders are asked to explain their crimes, they typically portray themselves as decent people despite their wrongdoings. To be effective at managing the stigma of crime, motivational accounts must be believable to the social audience. Thus, variation in patterns of accounts is likely due to the social position of the actors. Here we examine whether gender constrains the way individuals describe their crimes by analyzing the motivational accounts of male and female white collar offenders. Results show that while men and women both elicit justifications when discussing their crimes, they do differ in the frequency with which they call forth specific accounts and in the rhetorical nature of these accounts. When accounting for their crime, white collar offenders draw on gendered themes to align their actions with cultural expectations of masculinity and femininity. These findings suggest that gender does constrain the accounts that are available to white collar offenders.
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Accounting for the Gender Gap in College Attainment
Suqin Ge & Fang Yang
Economic Inquiry, forthcoming
Abstract:
One striking phenomenon in the U.S. labor market is the reversal of the gender gap in college attainment. Females have outnumbered males in college attainment since 1987. We develop a discrete choice model of college entry decisions to study the driving forces of changes in college attainment by gender. We find that the increase in relative earnings between college-educated and high-school-educated individuals and the increasing parental education have important effects on the increase in college attainment for both genders, but cannot explain the reversal of the gender gap. Rising divorce probabilities increase returns to college for females and decrease those for males, and thus are crucial in explaining the reversal of the gender gap in college attainment.
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Breaking the Glass Ceiling: Slow Progress Ahead
James Fain
Contemporary Economic Policy, January 2011, Pages 56-66
Abstract:
Studies show that the percentage of female senior managers in large corporations continues to grow slowly. I consider a firm that initially has an entirely male management structure. If this firm suddenly shifts its behavior and begins to hire male and female managers in equal numbers and treats them equally, then the gender composition of the firm's managers will change over time. Using well-established mathematical methods, I derive equations that show how rapidly this change will occur. Using data from previously published studies to establish parameter bounds, I draw random samples for parameter values and use these to investigate how quickly the gender composition of a firm's management structure can change. I find that the gender composition at lower management levels changes quickly, compared to the upper management levels.
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Executive functioning and general cognitive ability in pregnant women and matched controls
Serge Onyper et al.
Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, November 2010, Pages 986-995
Abstract:
The current study compared the performances of pregnant women with education- and age-matched controls on a variety of measures that assessed perceptual speed, short-term and working memory capacity, subjective memory complaints, sleep quality, level of fatigue, executive functioning, episodic and prospective memory, and crystallized and fluid intelligence. A primary purpose was to test the hypothesis of Henry and Rendell (2007) that pregnancy-related declines in cognitive functioning would be especially evident in tasks that place a high demand on executive processes. We also investigated a parallel hypothesis: that the pregnant women would experience a broad-based reduction in cognitive capability. Very limited support was found for the executive functioning hypothesis. Pregnant women scored lower only on the measure of verbal fluency (Controlled Oral Word Association Test, COWAT) but not on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task or on any working memory measures. Furthermore, group differences in COWAT performance disappeared after controlling for verbal IQ (Shipley vocabulary). In addition, there was no support for the general decline hypothesis. We conclude that pregnancy-associated differences in performance observed in the current study were relatively mild and rarely reached either clinical or practical significance.
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Emotion blocks the path to learning under stereotype threat
Jennifer Mangels et al.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, forthcoming
Abstract:
Gender-based stereotypes undermine females' performance on challenging math tests, but how do they influence their ability to learn from the errors they make? Females under stereotype threat or non-threat were presented with accuracy feedback after each problem on a GRE-like math test, followed by an optional interactive tutorial that provided step-wise problem-solving instruction. Event-related potentials tracked the initial detection of the negative feedback following errors [feedback related negativity (FRN), P3a], as well as any subsequent sustained attention/arousal to that information [late positive potential (LPP)]. Learning was defined as success in applying tutorial information to correction of initial test errors on a surprise retest 24-h later. Under non-threat conditions, emotional responses to negative feedback did not curtail exploration of the tutor, and the amount of tutor exploration predicted learning success. In the stereotype threat condition, however, greater initial salience of the failure (FRN) predicted less exploration of the tutor, and sustained attention to the negative feedback (LPP) predicted poor learning from what was explored. Thus, under stereotype threat, emotional responses to negative feedback predicted both disengagement from learning and interference with learning attempts. We discuss the importance of emotion regulation in successful rebound from failure for stigmatized groups in stereotype-salient environments.
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Megan Fulcher
Sex Roles, January 2011, Pages 117-131
Abstract:
The current study was designed to test the application of the social-cognitive theory of gender development in predicting the traditionality of children's occupational aspirations (Bussey and Bandura 1999). Of primary interest was the influence of children's efficacy for nontraditional tasks on their occupational aspirations. Participants were 150 children and their mothers from the southern United States. Mothers reported their gendered attitudes, their perception of their children's skills, and their family's division of paid and unpaid labor. Children reported their occupational aspirations and efficacy for traditional and nontraditional skills, occupations, and school topics. Mothers who reported nontraditional attitudes had children with nontraditional occupational aspirations. This association was mediated by children's efficacy for nontraditional tasks, indicating some support for the social-cognitive theory.
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From Agents to Objects: Sexist Attitudes and Neural Responses to Sexualized Targets
Mina Cikara, Jennifer Eberhardt & Susan Fiske
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, March 2011, Pages 540-551
Abstract:
Agency attribution is a hallmark of mind perception; thus, diminished attributions of agency may disrupt social-cognition processes typically elicited by human targets. The current studies examine the effect of perceivers' sexist attitudes on associations of agency with, and neural responses to, images of sexualized and clothed men and women. In Study 1, male (but not female) participants with higher hostile sexism scores more quickly associated sexualized women with first-person action verbs ("handle") and clothed women with third-person action verbs ("handles") than the inverse, as compared to their less sexist peers. In Study 2, hostile sexism correlated negatively with activation of regions associated with mental state attribution - medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate, temporal poles - but only when viewing sexualized women. Heterosexual men best recognized images of sexualized female bodies (but not faces), as compared with other targets' bodies; however, neither face nor body recognition was related to hostile sexism, suggesting that the fMRI findings are not explained by more or less attention to sexualized female targets. Diminished mental state attribution is not unique to targets that people prefer to avoid, as in dehumanization of stigmatized people. The current studies demonstrate that appetitive social targets may elicit a similar response depending on perceivers' attitudes toward them.