Gender Stereoptypes with Professor Alice Eagly.
Inspired by a keynote by Professor Eagly at the Behavioural Approach to Diversity conference in September 2018.
Let’s start with a well trodden, often dismissive response to the inclusion agenda - “I just treat people as people, why can’t everyone else do the same?”. The research behind gender stereotypes should make us all think twice. Its lessons aren’t always comfortable but they offer a challenging and contrarian lens for gender equality at home and at work.
Think of a stereotype like an expectation.
When we talk about gender stereotypes, we’re talking about how we expect women and men to think and behave. These expectations are ingrained in us from an early age and often operate unconsciously. They influence the decisions we make about ourselves and others, silently shaping who we become and how we treat those around us.
We all face pressure to conform to gender stereotypes. When women or men step outside of these expectations - a female leader or a working father for instance - they’re more likely to experience prejudice and discrimination. It’s here where Professor Eagly views stereotypes as ‘taking on a life of their own and supporting inequality and segregation’.
What stereotypes do we hold about men and women?
Drawing on data from over 70 years of opinion polls in the US, Professor Eagly and her co-researchers classified behaviours into three groups. As you read them below, consider whether they have any gender implications for you and the broader population. How do you think these opinions might have changed over the decades?
Three groups of behaviour we associate with women and men.
Communal - affectionate, compassionate, emotional, nurturing, romantic, unselfish.
Agentic - aggressive, ambitious, arrogant, calm in emergencies, confident, courageous.
Competent - innovative, intelligent, level-headed, logical, organised.
At the BAD conference, Professor Eagly showed how these expectations have changed over 70 years. Perhaps unsurprisingly, our collective belief that men are more agentic has remained consistent over time. Her other insights may defy your assumptions:
The stereotype that women are more communal has steadily strengthened since the 1940’s - our association between women and affection, compassion etc. is at its peak.
Women have a growing advantage over men in competence – we believe that women are likely to be more innovative, intelligent, logical etc. than men.
Our belief in these stereotypes is consistent and shared across multiple demographic groups – have a look at the analyses below. The demographic of respondents is on the left. Blue represents the belief that men are more likely to exhibit the given behaviour and red represents women. Intelligence has been separated out for individual analysis:
Why are these stereotypes so firmly entrenched?
Imagine someone who acts in the opposite direction of the analyses above - an ambitious, assertive woman, or an affectionate, nurturing man. Would they be treated differently from someone acting in line with their stereotype?
The expectations we have of women and men are socially and self-regulated. We all play our part in upholding them. They exist in the ideals we are taught to aspire to and our feelings of self-worth when we don’t match up. As above, they’re also found in the gendered judgments we make of others - consciously or unconsciously - when they don’t conform to stereotype.
But as Professor Eagly had shown in her analysis, expectations can and have shifted alongside social progress. The change in our beliefs about male and female ‘competence’ go hand-in-hand with rapid and sustained improvements in US/UK education equality over the last 50 years. What would have happened if this had been matched in the home or the workplace?
We can only speculate. Because men still dominate the leadership of all our social institutions - corporate, legal, medical and political - and remain likely to be the main provider in families. Women are still more likely to be in occupations favouring social skills and social contribution and remain likely to be the main homemaker in families.
How can we make progress?
Despite a entrenched social context, organisations can still have an influence on gender stereotypes within their walls. Go back to the list of behaviours and re-imagine them as organisational values. If you build a culture obsessed with winning for its own sake - and over 25% of FTSE100 organisations have ‘excellence’, ‘winning’ or ‘being the best’ as a corporate value - then you are promoting agentic behaviour. Build a hierarchical, individualistic and competitive environment and you go further still.
Men will be further advantaged by gender stereotypes in this type of culture, particularly in leadership positions. Not because they outperform but because they force women into an impossible dichotomy: conform to expectation and be undervalued; break the stereotype and fight the disadvantage it brings. It leads to a hard truth that deserves to be faced head on:
“Leadership is a labyrinth for women”
Thank you for reading, and thank you to Professor Eagly for an inspiring keynote speech. As always, nothing will change if we change nothing. Get in touch if you’d like to explore behavioural solutions to a better, fairer workplace.