The Importance Of Gender Stereotypes

CURRENT RESEARCHES:

Toni Schmader, Michael Johns, Marchelle Barquissau did a research in which two studies were designed to examine the costs of stereotype endorsement for women's self perceptions, career intentions and susceptibility to stereotype threat in the math domain. Study 1 contained a survey of women majoring in math-related fields, revealed that women who believe that status differences between the sexes are legitimate were more likely to endorse gender stereotypes about women's math abilities, which in turn predicted more negative self-perceptions of math competence and less interest in continuing study in one's field. In study 2, women who tended to endorse gender stereotypes were found to be more susceptible to the negative

Duehr & Joyce E. Bono did a research to study whether the stereotypes are changing regarding men , women and managers. When the number of women in management roles increases and organizations place a greater emphasis on diversity, a subsequent change in perceptions of women as leader-like is expected. To study this, the research examined gender and management stereotypes of male and female manager students. The results show that considerable change in manager's views of women over the past 30 years, as evidenced by greater congruence between their perceptions of women and successful managers and stronger endorsement of agentic and task oriented leadership characteristics for women. Stereotypes held by male students changed less, remaining strikingly similar to stereotypes held by male managers 15 years ago. Across samples, there was general agreement in the characteristics of managers but less agreement about the characteristics of women. They also found men are less likely than women to attribute successful manager characteristics to women. Respondents with positive past experiences with female managers tended to rate women higher on management characteristics. ( Personnel Psychology, Volume 59,

Gupta, Daniel B. Turban, S. Arzu Wasti and Arjit Sikdar did a research on the role of gender stereotypes in perceptions of entrepreneurs and intentions to become an entrepreneur. In the study they wanted to examine the role of socially created gender stereotypes in entrepreneurship and their influence on men and women's entrepreneurial intentions. Data on characteristics of males, females, and entrepreneurs were collected from young adults in three countries. The hypothesis was that entrepreneurs were perceived to have predominantly masculine characteristics. Additional results revealed that although both men and women perceive entrepreneurs and females as having similar characteristics to those of males(masculine gender-role stereotype), only women also perceived entrepreneurs and females as having similar characteristics (feminine gender-role stereotype). Further, though men and women did not differ in their entrepreneurial intentions, those who perceived themselves as more similar to males(high on male gender identification) had higher entrepreneurial intentions than those who saw themselves as less similar to males(low male gender identification). No such difference was found for people who saw themselves as more or less similar to females (female gender identification). The results were consistent across the three countries. Practical implications and directions for future research are