Men are fine with high-status women in the workplace. It’s the powerful ones that make them uncomfortable
It’s no secret that women are judged more harshly at work than their male counterparts. And despite making meaningful representation gains in leadership roles over the past few years, women still face a host of confusing invisible obstacles when it comes to navigating the corporate world.
A new study illuminates the nuances of what some of those challenges actually boil down to—particularly in terms of biases from their male coworkers
In a new study set to be published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Sonya Mishra, an assistant professor of management at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, presented a group of 500 people with two imaginary newspaper articles. The first was about women achieving gender equality through status, gaining more “respect,” and “admiration.” The second was about women getting equity through power, and controlling “the same amount of valuable resources as men.”
When the group of readers was asked to judge the articles, their opinions split along gender lines. Women mostly rated both articles as beneficial. But while men had mostly good feelings about women gaining status, they were more likely to say it was a negative thing for them to secure more control over valuable resources.
“When they see a woman gaining power, they think something is being taken away from them—as if a man has to be dethroned for a woman to gain power,” Mishra told my colleague Brit Morse. “And they don’t feel this way about status.”
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That’s an important difference for business leaders to keep in mind as they try to engineer healthy workplaces. Performance review and promotion frameworks, for example, are famously vulnerable to exploitation.
As women climb the corporate ladder, the men around them are likely to have feelings about it—and that can be a problem for everyone.
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- Azure Gilman , Fortune’s Deputy Leadership Editor
Mental Health Advocate and Speaker @ NAMI | Building Stigma-Free Communities Through Advocacy, Education & Storytelling | Entrepreneur
3dThis is why building emotional intelligence in the work place is so important. Because it creates empathy and better communication. I think the point I found most compelling was the feelings around the issue.
OK Boštjan Dolinšek
Brandful.net, NameDrop.us, SportsUnion, and AltClub.io
2wGood read. I would also like to point out that a lot of the comments (not all) about this article are alarming and epitomize the point that the article is making.
Senior IT Management CIO,CTO,CISO
2wOur daughters and granddaughters deserve MUCH BETTER
SENIOR MANAGEMENT LEADER - FINANCE, OPERATIONS, STRATEGY. Board Director, CFO, author.
2wAre resources limited? If one group gains more, does another lose? That’s often the case with tangible resources - but what about intangible ones like "respect" and "admiration"? If someone gains admiration or respect, does it mean others lose it? Or can respect be earned and expanded rather than redistributed? Perhaps this discussion is less about gender and more about how power and status function in any group dynamic - be it socioeconomic, regional, political, generational, cultural, religious, list goes on and on . . . Is power as a zero-sum game, how about respect? Both power and respect come through actions that drive the result. Both dichotomies are susceptible to pro-con arguments. And they aren’t mutually exclusive -respect and admiration can translate into power, just as power can be utilized to earn admiration. Thoughts?