{"id":9634,"date":"2017-07-24T01:47:19","date_gmt":"2017-07-24T01:47:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=9634"},"modified":"2017-07-27T02:29:31","modified_gmt":"2017-07-27T02:29:31","slug":"how-a-job-acquires-a-gender-and-less-authority-if-its-female","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/how-a-job-acquires-a-gender-and-less-authority-if-its-female\/","title":{"rendered":"How a job acquires a gender (and less authority if it&#8217;s female)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/profiles\/sarah-thebaud-152794\">Sarah Thebaud<\/a>, <em><a href=\"http:\/\/theconversation.com\/institutions\/university-of-california-santa-barbara-1350\">University of California, Santa Barbara<\/a><\/em> and <a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/profiles\/laura-doering-382976\">Laura Doering<\/a>, <em><a href=\"http:\/\/theconversation.com\/institutions\/mcgill-university-827\">McGill University<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m not bossy, I\u2019m the boss.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>So proclaims Beyonc\u00e9 in a video in support of the <a href=\"http:\/\/banbossy.com\">#banbossy<\/a> campaign. The campaign highlights how when little boys take charge, they\u2019re often praised for being a \u201cleader.\u201d But when little girls do, they\u2019re more likely to be scolded for being too \u201cbossy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And it matters for grownups, too. Research and media stories <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/07\/21\/sunday-review\/women-ceos-glass-ceiling.html\">abound<\/a> with <a href=\"http:\/\/fortune.com\/2014\/08\/26\/performance-review-gender-bias\/\">examples<\/a> of how gender stereotypes disadvantage women leaders. A woman manager is <a href=\"http:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1111\/0022-4537.00234\/abstract\">less likely<\/a> to be taken seriously by the people who work for her. <\/p>\n<p>When men direct others, they\u2019re often assumed to be assertive and competent. But when women direct others, they\u2019re often disliked and labeled <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/pii\/S0022103111002514\">abrasive<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gsb.stanford.edu\/insights\/can-women-be-strong-leaders-without-being-labeled-bossy\">bossy<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Our <a href=\"http:\/\/journals.sagepub.com\/doi\/abs\/10.1177\/0003122417703087\">new study<\/a> puts a twist on this narrative. Gender bias doesn\u2019t merely disadvantage women, it also can disadvantage men. The reason? We don\u2019t just stereotype men and women. We stereotype jobs.  <\/p>\n<figure>\n            <iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"440\" height=\"260\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/6dynbzMlCcw?wmode=transparent&amp;start=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<h2>Firefighters and nurses<\/h2>\n<p>Many jobs in the economy are gender-stereotyped. Firefighting is thought of as a man\u2019s job, whereas nursing is thought of as women\u2019s work. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.oxfordscholarship.com\/view\/10.1093\/acprof:oso\/9780199755776.001.0001\/acprof-9780199755776\">Previous<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/gender.stanford.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/thegenderrevolution.pdf\">studies<\/a> have shown that these stereotypes \u2013 which shape our expectations about whether a man or a woman is a better \u201cfit\u201d for a given job \u2013 are powerful because they can bias a whole host of employment outcomes. For instance, they influence the chances that a man or a woman will apply for the job, that he or she will be hired, the pay each would receive and even performance evaluations that determine promotions. <\/p>\n<p>But how quickly do these gender stereotypes get attached to jobs in the first place? And, to what extent might such stereotypes affect the level of authority and respect that people are willing to give the  man or woman who works in that job?<\/p>\n<h2>How a job gets stereotyped<\/h2>\n<p>To answer these questions, <a href=\"http:\/\/journals.sagepub.com\/doi\/abs\/10.1177\/0003122417703087\">we studied<\/a> a job that is ambiguously related to gender: a microfinance loan manager in Central America. <\/p>\n<p>In this region, the microfinance loan manager job is new and gender-balanced in its composition. Unlike firefighters or nurses \u2013 jobs that are already strongly gender-stereotyped \u2013 loan managers at the microfinance bank we studied are about 50\/50 men and women. <\/p>\n<p>The nature of commercial microfinance makes managers\u2019 positions more gender-ambiguous. Microfinance is associated with the financial industry, which is traditionally masculine. But microfinance also has a legacy of social service and poverty alleviation, which are female-stereotyped activities. <\/p>\n<p>Additionally, in the context we studied, the loan manager job had been around for less than 10 years, making it even less likely that clients would have strong preconceptions about whether it was a \u201cman\u2019s job\u201d or a \u201cwoman\u2019s job.\u201d  <\/p>\n<p>Loan managers at the bank we focused on are frequently reshuffled from one borrower to another. This quasi-random reshuffling allowed us to observe how borrowers\u2019 repayment patterns differed when they were paired with male and female loan managers. For example, a borrower might be paired with a male manager initially and then transferred to a female manager. This switching process allowed us to examine how clients\u2019 repayment rates varied when the only thing that changed was their managers\u2019 gender. <\/p>\n<figure class=\"align-center \">\n            <img alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.theconversation.com\/files\/179351\/width754\/file-20170723-28505-os61qb.jpg\"><figcaption>\n              <span class=\"caption\">Borrowers are less likely to make their payments on time if the loan manager is a woman.<\/span><br \/>\n              <span class=\"attribution\"><span class=\"source\">Kittisak Jirasittichai\/Shutterstock.com<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n            <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>We examined borrowers\u2019 missed payment rates as a measure of the authority they afford their managers. Making a payment on time signals that the borrower views the manager as someone whose authority is legitimate and whose directives should be followed. In contrast, missing a payment signals that the borrower feels he or she can approach his or her responsibilities to the manager more laxly. When borrowers miss payments, it suggests the manager lacks the ability to secure compliance and therefore lacks authority.<\/p>\n<p>We found that it took only one interaction before clients assigned a gender to the job and began to treat anyone in that role (man or woman) based on that stereotype, which meant less authority if the loan manager position was seen as a \u201cwoman\u2019s job.\u201d So if a client\u2019s first manager was a woman, they would tend to miss more payments on their loan \u2013 even if later transferred to a male manager \u2013 compared with one who was initially paired with a man. These effects persisted even when we accounted for other factors that might affect repayment, like income and loan size. <\/p>\n<p>Male managers whose clients perceived the job as a \u201cwoman\u2019s job\u201d experienced an especially large disadvantage compared to male managers whose clients perceived the job as a \u201cman\u2019s job.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>When men stepped in to work with a client who had initially worked with another male loan manager, the client was highly compliant with his directives. But when men stepped in to work with a client who had initially worked with a female loan manager, the client afforded them much less authority. They were much less compliant than they would have been if they had initially worked with a male loan manager. <\/p>\n<figure class=\"align-center \">\n            <img alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.theconversation.com\/files\/179350\/width754\/file-20170723-28512-ordhff.jpg\"><figcaption>\n              <span class=\"caption\">Former Yahoo president and CEO Marissa Mayer has accused the media of gender bias in how it reports on her work.<\/span><br \/>\n              <span class=\"attribution\"><span class=\"source\">AP Photo\/Eric Risberg<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n            <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h2>Gendered jobs harm us all<\/h2>\n<p>When gender stereotypes get attached to a job, it biases the authority that people attribute to the man or woman who happens to work in that position. In this way, men experience negative bias when working in positions that others associate with women.<\/p>\n<p>Our findings show that, when men work in a managerial job that people associate with a man and male stereotypes, they are able to wield a substantial amount of authority over clients. But when the very same managerial job happens to be associated with a woman, men who work in that position are viewed as significantly less legitimate sources of authority.<\/p>\n<p>In other words, our study suggests that stereotyping a job as \u201cwomen\u2019s work\u201d and societal biases that grant women less authority than men harm us all.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/counter.theconversation.edu.au\/content\/79164\/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic\" alt=\"The Conversation\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" \/>Ideally, we want to live in a world where we perform the work that is best suited to our abilities and where an individual in a position of authority receives the same respect, regardless of gender. If we all can support both men and women who work in gender-atypical roles, perhaps we can become less likely to devalue some workers on the basis of arbitrary and old-fashioned gender stereotypes.<\/p>\n<p><span><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/profiles\/sarah-thebaud-152794\">Sarah Thebaud<\/a>, Associate Professor, Sociology, <em><a href=\"http:\/\/theconversation.com\/institutions\/university-of-california-santa-barbara-1350\">University of California, Santa Barbara<\/a><\/em> and <a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/profiles\/laura-doering-382976\">Laura Doering<\/a>, Assistant Professor of Strategy and Organization, <em><a href=\"http:\/\/theconversation.com\/institutions\/mcgill-university-827\">McGill University<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>This article was originally published on <a href=\"http:\/\/theconversation.com\">The Conversation<\/a>. Read the <a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/how-a-job-acquires-a-gender-and-less-authority-if-its-female-79164\">original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sarah Thebaud, University of California, Santa Barbara and Laura Doering, McGill University \u201cI\u2019m not bossy, I\u2019m the boss.\u201d So proclaims Beyonc\u00e9 in a video in support of the #banbossy campaign. The campaign highlights how when little boys take charge, they\u2019re often praised for being a \u201cleader.\u201d But when little girls do, they\u2019re more likely to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":9635,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,277],"tags":[2103,2476,1184,2474,1181,2812,1728,1753],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9634"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9634"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9636,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9634\/revisions\/9636"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}