Another ceiling? Can males compete for traditionally female jobs? - includes appendix

Journal of Management,  Sept-Oct, 1997  by Leanne E. Atwater,  David D. Van Fleet

• E-mail
• Print
• Link

The second question addresses the ratio of female-to-male subordinates to be supervised. Kanter (1977), known for her theory of tokenism, argues that when any group represents less than 15% of an organization, its members will be subject to predictable forms of discrimination. That is, they will suffer from their minority status. If evaluators know that the majority of job incumbents to be supervised are female, they may be more likely to select a female manager. As mentioned earlier, bias against males has been demonstrated when the majority of subordinates to be supervised were female (Rose & Andiappan, 1978). However, the study by Rose and Andiappan was done a number of years ago and the bias may no longer exist.

Because the "males are managers" stereotype appears to be changing and the bias against women decreasing, we believed the gender-type of the job (i.e., Social Work) would have more influence on selection decisions than the managerial nature of the job. Consistency theory and "lack of fit" both would suggest that females would be seen as more suitable for traditionally female jobs. However, because the gender type of the top-management job might be unclear, (i.e., Social Work is female but top managers are male), we expected less bias in decisions favoring females for a top-level female gender-typed job than in decisions for a mid-level management job.

H2A: Male and female evaluators will show profemale bias in applicant rankings for top-level management positions in traditionally female jobs.

H2B: Male and female evaluators will show profemale bias in applicant rankings for mid-level management positions in traditionally female jobs.

H2C: Male and female evaluators will show more profemale bias in applicant rankings for mid-level than top-level management positions in a traditionally female job.

H3: In applicant ranking decisions for managers of traditionally female jobs, profemale bias will be more pronounced when it is clear that the majority of the subordinates are females than when the number of female subordinates is unknown.

Rater Experience

Familiarity with supervisor-subordinate interaction as it relates to gender could also affect the rater's rankings of applicants. For example, raters who had prior management experience may have witnessed situations where matching manager and subordinate genders resulted in better performance, or less conflict. Consistent with the rater/ratee congruence hypothesis, prior research has demonstrated that subordinates tend to rate their supervisors more positively if the supervisor and subordinate are of the same gender (cf. Jacobson, Antonelli, Winning & O'Peil, 1977; Van Fleet & Saurage, 1984). Observation of better working relationships between same sex supervisor/subordinate dyads would also support the "lack of fit" model and promote stereotypes that females should supervise females. Also, those with prior management experience have likely been exposed to more training in diversity and affirmative action, and thus may be more sensitized to the value of selecting females for management jobs. As a result, we hypothesized the following.