A gendered self or a gendered context? A social identity approach to gender differences

This thesis examines the way in which traditional accounts of gender differences in the self-concept have relied on distal explanatory factors, and have thus conceptualised the gendered self as stable across both time and situation. This notion of a stable, gendered self has been implicated as underlying of a range of psychological gender differences (e.g., Cross & Madson, 1997), such as those in moral reasoning (e.g., Gillian, 1982) and ways of knowing (e.g., Belenky et al., 1989). As a result, these behaviours are also seen to be stable across time and context.¶ ..

The Effects of Gender Trouble:An Integrative Theoretical Framework of the Perpetuation and Disruption of the Gender/Sex Binary

In the Western world, gender has traditionally been viewed as binary and as following directly from biological sex. This view is slowly changing among both experts and the general public, a change that has been met with strong opposition. In this article, we explore the psychological processes underlying these dynamics. Drawing on previous work on gender performativity as well as gender as a performance, we develop a psychological framework of the perpetuation and disruption of the gender/sex binary on a stage that facilitates and foregrounds binary gender/sex performance. Whenever character, costume, and script are not aligned the gender/sex binary is disrupted and gender trouble ensues. We integrate various strands of the psychological literature into this framework and explain the processes underlying these reactions. We propose that gender trouble can elicit threat—personal threat, group-based and identity threat, and system threat—which in turn leads to efforts to alleviate this threat through the reinforcement of the gender/sex binary. Our framework challenges the way psychologists have traditionally treated gender/sex in theory and empirical work and proposes new avenues and implications for future research

Think Manager–Think Parent? Investigating the fatherhood advantage and the motherhood penalty using the Think Manager–Think Male paradigm

Men remain overrepresented in leadership positions, due in part to a think manager–think male (TMTM) association whereby stereotypes of men are more similar to stereotypes of manager than are stereotypes of women. Building on research into the motherhood penalty and fatherhood advantage, we extend Schein's TMTM paradigm to investigate whether parenthood exacerbates the phenomenon. In Study 1 (N = 326), we find clear support for a fatherhood advantage, such that fathers are described as more similar to managers compared to either men in general, women in general, or to mothers. We did not find evidence for a motherhood penalty. Indeed, mothers, compared to women in general, were seen as more similar to managers (a motherhood advantage within women), while relative to fathers, mothers were seen as less similar to managers, thus, a gender penalty remained within parenthood. We replicate these findings in a preregistered Study 2 (N = 561), and further show that patterns are similar for ideal managers (prescriptive manager stereotypes, Study 1) and leaders more generally (Study 2). Taken together, the results suggest that gender and managerial stereotypes do not reveal a simple fatherhood advantage and motherhood penalty. Rather, stereotypes of parenthood may provide benefits for both mothers and fathers—suggestive of a parenthood advantage, at least in terms of stereotype content

Attitudes to Sexism and Gender Equity at a Danish University

We designed this study to measure the degree of backlash a specific Danish university would encounter in response to gender equity interventions. To capture this resistance we used two standardized questionnaires: the Modern Sexism Scale, which measures explicit denial of gender discrimination and resentment towards gender equity demands (such as gender interventions) andthe Support for Discriminatory Practices which measures peoples explicit preferences for hiring men over women. We also asked an open question about attitudes towards the university’s current gender policies. The questionnaire was sent to 15,493 employees. With one prompt 1,805 completed the entire questionnaire. We found that university employees scored above the midpoint on modern sexism, indicating that, on average, they held sexist attitudes. We further showed that modern sexism scores varied depending on beliefs about what was being done forgender equity in the organization, such that those who thought that enough or too much was being done had significantly higher sexism scores than those who thought that not enough wasbeing done. Over all, our findings document explicit sexist attitudes within the target university and suggest that gender equity interventions are therefore likely to be met by great resistancefrom some

Why Women Are Blamed for Being Sexually Harassed:The Effects of Empathy for Female Victims and Male Perpetrators

The #MeToo movement has highlighted the widespread problem of men’s sexual harassment of women. Women are typically reluctant to make a sexual-harassment complaint and often encounter victim-blaming attitudes when they do, especially from men. Informed by the social identity perspective, two experiments examined the influence of empathy—both for women who are sexually harassed and for male harassers—on men’s and women’s propensity to blame victims. In Study 1, university students (N = 97) responded to a vignette describing a male student’s harassment of a female student. Men blamed the victim more than women, which was explained by their greater empathy for the male perpetrator but not lesser empathy for the female victim. Using the same vignette, Study 2 asked university students (N = 135) to take either the male perpetrator’s or the female victim’s perspective. Regardless of participant gender, participants who took the male-perpetrator’s perspective versus the female-victim’s perspective reported greater victim blame, and this was explained by their greater empathy for the male perpetrator and lesser empathy for the female victim. Together, the findings provide evidence to suggest that male-perpetrator empathy may be equally or more important than female-victim empathy for explaining victim blame for sexual harassment. Implications for social change, including policies to limit the effects of male-perpetrator empathy when responding to sexual-harassment complaints are discussed. Online slides for instructors who want to use this article for teaching are available on PWQ’s website at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/0361684319868730.</p

Social and relational identification as determinants of care workers’ motivation and wellbeing

AcceptedArticleA growing body of research in the field of health and social care indicates that the quality of the relationship between the person giving care and the person receiving it contributes significantly to the motivation and wellbeing of both. This paper examines how care workers’ motivation is shaped by their social and relational identification at work. Survey findings at two time points (T1, N = 643; T2, N = 1274) show that care workers’ motivation increases to the extent that incentives, the working context (of residential vs. domiciliary care), and the professionalization process (of acquiring vs. not acquiring a qualification) serve to build and maintain meaningful identities within the organization. In this context care workers attach greatest importance to their relational identity with clients and the more they perceive this as congruent with their organizational identity the more motivated they are. Implications are discussed with regard to the need to develop and sustain a professional and compassionate workforce that is able to meet the needs of an ageing society.Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)Australian Research Counci