Women feel more frustrated by gendered expectations at work, even if those appear to signal their virtues and can be important for workplace advancement, a new study has found.
Recent polls in the US suggest that the belief that women possess positive communal qualities are on the rise and women themselves view qualities such as collaboration and skill at interaction as relevant to advancement at work. However, when women are positively told that they were more collaborative and socially affable than others, they feel “anger and frustration” as it echoed an understated gender stereotype, the Cornell University study found.
“While trait expectations placed on men (i.e., to be confident and assertive) affirm an autonomous sense of self, trait expectations placed on women (i.e., to be caring and understanding) conflict with an autonomous sense of self,” the authors said in the abstract.
Published last month in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the study offers interesting results on “positive traits” still feeding a gender stereotype.
“What we find is that women report more anger and frustration when they were expected to be collaborative or socially skilled than men experienced when they were expected to be assertive or decisive,” said Devon Proudfoot, assistant professor of human resource studies at Cornell University’s ILR School and co-author.
While it can be argued that these traits are positive compliments that speak to someone’s virtue, the context is critical: in most work cultures, men are expected to be independent and assertive. Women, however, are expected to be communal and social.
“We find that one reason why women feel more frustrated than men by these positive gendered expectations is that women and men face gender stereotypes that differ in the extent to which they affirm a sense of autonomy,” Proudfoot said. “In the Western world, people tend to strive to maintain an autonomous sense of self. But while Western society is subtly communicating that an ideal self is an autonomous, independent self, society is also telling women that they should be interdependent and connected to others. We find that this conflict helps explain women’s frustration toward the positive gender stereotypes they experience.”
Proudfoot, along with co-author Aaron Kay of Duke University examined how women feel about positive gendered stereotypes in a Western individualistic culture such as the US. The duo also engaged in a cross-cultural comparison, finding that women in a non-Western collectivistic culture such as India — a country with a collectivistic culture where people strive for social connection and interdependence — did not feel the same resentment.
“What I find interesting is thinking how these Western cultural ideals around autonomy and independence intersect with gender and gendered expectations,” Proudfoot said.