Am I the Right Candidate? Self-Ascribed Fit of Women and Men to a Leadership Position

Women are assumed to show a self-ascribed lack-of-fit to leadership positions compared to men (Heilman Research in Organizational Behavior 5:269-298, 1983). The present study examined whether this gender difference would diminish when agency is accounted for and whether a stimulus person's gender would alter women's self-ascribed fit. German management students (91 women, 95 men) received a fictitious recruitment advertisement for a leadership position that portrayed a man, a woman, or both a man and a woman. Participants indicated their perceptions of agency and suitability to the advertised position. As predicted, women judged themselves as less suitable for the leadership position than men and participants' self-reported agency mediated this effect. Furthermore, all participants felt most suitable if a male and a female stimulus person were portraye

Footsteps I would like to follow? How gender quotas affect the acceptance of women leaders as role models and inspirations for leadership

This research examines how the method of selecting women leaders affects other women’s leadership interest. The results of three experiments (N = 1,015) indicated that only when women leaders were selected due to merit, not quota-based policies, did they boost female participants’ interest in a leadership position. These reactions were mediated by perceptions of the woman leader’s deservingness of her position (Studies 1–3) and consequent acceptance as a role model (Studies 2 and 3). Accordingly, success information validating quota-based selected leaders’ competence provided a boost in leadership interest equal to that of merit-based selected leaders (Study 2). For male participants, quota but not merit-based selected women leaders lowered interest in leadership due to their pessimistic assessment of the probability of being selected (Study 1). These results suggest that a wise implementation of quota regulations includes validating women’s competence so they are perceived as deserving of their leader roles and can thus serve as inspiring role models

High prevalence of sexual aggression in Iran: Examining Correlates of Sexual Aggression Victimization and Perpetration between Women and Men

We examined the prevalence and correlates of sexual aggression between men and women in Iran. A pre-registered survey (N=530) with behaviorally specific questions showed high prevalence of heterosexual aggression victimization and perpetration. Child sexual abuse, risky sexual behaviors, and hostile masculinity (among men) predicted higher sexual aggression among women and men

Editorial: language, cognition and gender

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The social perception of heroes and murders: Effects of gender-inclusive language in media reports

The way media depict women and men can reinforce or diminish gender stereotyping. Which part does language play in this context? Are roles perceived as more gender-balanced when feminine role nouns are used in addition to masculine ones? Research on gender-inclusive language shows that the use of feminine-masculine word pairs tends to increase the visibility of women in various social roles. For example, when speakers of German were asked to name their favorite "heroine or hero in a novel," they listed more female characters than when asked to name their favorite "hero in a novel." The research reported in this article examines how the use of gender-inclusive language in news reports affects readers' own usage of such forms as well as their mental representation of women and men in the respective roles. In the main experiment, German participants (N = 256) read short reports about heroes or murderers which contained either masculine generics or gender-inclusive forms (feminine-masculine word pairs). Gender-inclusive forms enhanced participants' own usage of gender-inclusive language and this resulted in more gender-balanced mental representations of these roles. Reading about "heroines and heroes" made participants assume a higher percentage of women among persons performing heroic acts than reading about "heroes" only, but there was no such effect for murderers. A post-test suggested that this might be due to a higher accessibility of female exemplars in the category heroes than in the category murderers. Importantly, the influence of gender-inclusive language on the perceived percentage of women in a role was mediated by speakers' own usage of inclusive forms. This suggests that people who encounter gender-inclusive forms and are given an opportunity to use them, use them more themselves and in turn have more gender-balanced mental representations of social roles

Age Bias in Selection Decisions: The Role of Facial Appearance and Fitness Impressions

This research examined the impact of facial age appearance on hiring, and impressions of fitness as the underlying mechanism. In two experimental hiring simulations, one with lay persons and one with Human Resource professionals, participants evaluated a chronologically older or younger candidate (as indicated by date of birth and age label) with either younger or older facial age appearance (as indicated by a photograph). In both studies, older-looking candidates received lower hireability ratings, due to less favorable fitness impressions. In addition, Study 1 showed that this age bias was reduced when the candidates provided counter-stereotypic information about their fitness. Study 2 showed that facial age-based discrimination is less prevalent in jobs with less costumer contact (e.g., back office)

Gender and language in online job advertisements - a cross-cultural study

The aim of this project is to investigate the use of gender-fair language from a cross-linguistic perspective. Specifically, we are interested in whether the use of gender-fair language correlates with socio-economic rankings of gender equality and with structural features of a language. We decided to analyze online job advertisements, as they reflect common language use and can easily be compared across languages. Moreover, formulations in job advertisements have been shown to impact personnel selection via the way target groups are addressed and referred to. In the present study we examined to what extent job advertisements are formulated in a gender-fair way and how this correlates with factors such as language, culture as well as status and gender-typicality of the job advertised. The data consisted of job advertisements published online in four European countries which occupy different positions in socio-economic rankings of gender equality (World Economic Forum, 2011): Switzerland (10), Austria (rank 34), Poland (42), and Czech Republic (75). We randomly selected 100 job advertisements from four lines of business characterized by different proportions of female employees – steels/metals, science, restaurants/food services, and health care. The advertisements were analyzed with regard to the linguistic form of the job title and the remaining text; we also noted indicators of job status, reference to gender-typical traits, pictures of women/men and other information which might be relevant to the use of gender-fair language (e.g., equal opportunity policies). A first analysis of the data indicates that the phrasing of job titles is closely related to the gender-typicality of a profession. While mainly gender-fair forms are used in healthcare, masculine forms are used more often in the domain of steels and metals. Feminine forms only, however, are almost never used. Cultural differences as well as correlations with associated variables will be discussed

Norms on the gender perception of role nouns in Czech, English, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, and Slovak

We collected norms on the gender stereotypicality of an extensive list of role nouns in Czech, English, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, and Slovak, to be used as a basis for the selection of stimulus materials in future studies. We present a Web-based tool (available at https://www.unifr.ch/lcg/ ) that we developed to collect these norms and that we expect to be useful for other researchers, as well. In essence, we provide (a) gender stereotypicality norms across a number of languages and (b) a tool to facilitate cross-language as well as cross-cultural comparisons when researchers are interested in the investigation of the impact of stereotypicality on the processing of role nouns