Institutional-level Contributors to Inequality: The Existence and Impact of Gendered Wording within Job Advertisements

The present research demonstrates a novel institutional-level contributor--that is, gendered wording used in job recruitment materials--that serves to perpetuate the status quo, keeping women underrepresented in traditionally male-dominated occupations. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the literature on barriers to women’s inclusion in traditionally male-dominated fields. Chapter 2 demonstrates the existence of subtle but systematic wording differences within a randomly sampled set of job advertisements. Results indicated that job advertisements for male-dominated areas employed greater "masculine" (e.g., challenge, analyze, lead) than “feminine” wording (e.g., support, understand, interpersonal; Studies 1 and 2). In Chapter 3, I tested the consequences of these wording differences across four experimental studies. When job ads were constructed to include more masculine than feminine wording, people perceived fewer women within these occupations (Study 3) and, importantly, women found these jobs less appealing (Studies 4-6). Men showed the opposite pattern, preferring jobs with masculinely-worded ads to the femininely-worded jobs (Study 4-5). Results confirmed that perceptions of belongingness (but not perceived skills) mediated the effect of gendered wording on job appeal (Studies 4 and 6). The system-justifying function of gendered wording and implications for gender parity and theoretical models of inequality are discussed in Chapter 4

Danielle Gaucher

ProgramMA, Deaf Education | Fontbonne University Previous EducationBS, Sociology | James Madison Universityhttps://griffinshare.fontbonne.edu/fcnc-2017/1000/thumbnail.jp

God and the government: Testing a compensatory control mechanism for the support of external systems.

The authors propose that the high levels of support often observed for governmental and religious systems can be explained, in part, as a means of coping with the threat posed by chronically or situationally fluctuating levels of perceived personal control. Three experiments demonstrated a causal relation between lowered perceptions of personal control and the defense of external systems, including increased beliefs in the existence of a controlling God (Studies 1 and 2) and defense of the overarching socio-political system (Study 4). A 4th experiment (Study 5) showed the converse to be true: A challenge to the usefulness of external systems of control led to increased illusory perceptions of personal control. In addition, a cross-national data set demonstrated that lower levels of personal control are associated with higher support for governmental control (across 67 nations; Study 3). Each study identified theoretically consistent moderators and mediators of these effects. The implications of these results for understanding why a high percentage of the population believes in the existence of God, and why people so often endorse and justify their socio-political systems, are discussed. © 2008 American Psychological Association

Supplemental Material, SPPS746463_suppl_mat - Changes in the Positivity of Migrant Stereotype Content: How System-Sanctioned Pro-Migrant Ideology Can Affect Public Opinions of Migrants

<p>Supplemental Material, SPPS746463_suppl_mat for Changes in the Positivity of Migrant Stereotype Content: How System-Sanctioned Pro-Migrant Ideology Can Affect Public Opinions of Migrants by Danielle Gaucher, Justin P. Friesen, Katelin H. S. Neufeld and Victoria M. Esses in Social Psychological and Personality Science</p

Supplemental Material for How feeling connected to one’s own community can increase support for addressing injustice impacting outgroup communities

<p>Supplemental material, Supplemental_Material for How feeling connected to one’s own community can increase support for addressing injustice impacting outgroup communities by Katelin H. S. Neufeld, Danielle Gaucher, Katherine B. Starzyk and Gregory D. Boese in Group Processes & Intergroup Relations</p