Women "Take Care," Men "Take Charge:" Stereotyping of U.S. Business Leaders Exposed
Women “Take Care,” Men “Take Charge:” Stereotyping of U.S. Business Leaders Exposed marks the first in a series of studies Catalyst is undertaking to examine and address the most formidable barriers to women’s advancement in the workplace. The study presents evidence of gender stereotyping in senior managers’ evaluations of women and men leaders.
Impetus: Prior Catalyst research reveals that women and men senior executives have the same ambition and employ similar success strategies; yet, the gender gap in business leadership persists. Why? Women executives report that they face an additional layer of cultural and environmental barriers to their achievement, which men only infrequently experience. Chief among these barriers is stereotyping. Catalyst launched this study, the first in a series on stereotyping, to help companies address this a particular barrier to women’s advancement in the workplace.
Methodology:
The 296 corporate leaders who participated in this study (128 men, 168 women) are part of a panel of senior leaders participating in a learning project run by Dr. Theresa Welbourne at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan.
Eighty-five percent of respondents were either CEOs or within two reporting levels of the top position.
The leaders represented a variety of industries including Manufacturing, Consulting, and Information Technology.
A majority of both women and men respondents were over 44 years old.
The survey, conducted via email, first asked participants to estimate, based on their own experiences, the percentage of women who performed each of ten different leader behaviors. In a separate task, respondents were asked to estimate the percentages of men that they believed to be effective at the same ten leader behaviors.
Analyses are based on the average differences between the percentage estimates respondents gave for women and men on each behavior.
Findings: The study reveals that gender-based stereotyping persists in the workplace. This stereotyping can misrepresent the true talents of women leaders, potentially undermining women’s leadership and posing serious challenges to their career advancement.
Analytical reviews of more than 40 previous studies on gender differences in leadership demonstrate that men and women often lead in very similar ways. Yet Women “Take Care,” Men “Take Charge” reveals that perception often trumps reality in evaluating the leadership capabilities of both women and men, turning both into stereotypes. Both women and men senior executives surveyed perceive sharp gender differences in women and men leadership, reporting that more women than men are effective at “take care” skills such as rewarding and supporting and that more men than women are better at “take charge” skills such as delegating and influencing upward.
However, women and men were sharply divided in their assessment of problem-solving, arguably the most important leadership behavior and the hallmark trait of a CEO. Women perceive women to be better problem-solvers; men perceive men to be better problem-solvers. Because men far outnumber women in top management positions, this male-held stereotype likely dominates current corporate thinking and may contribute to the fact that although women hold more than 50 percent of all management and professional positions, they make up less than 2 percent of Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 CEOs.
Often unrecognized and unchecked, stereotyping can have devastating effects on women in the workplace. Unfortunately, simply hiring more women will not alleviate the problem, the study concludes. Often those people with the most exposure to women leaders hold even more stereotypical views. The study, therefore, recommends that organizations educate managers and executives about the often latent influence of stereotyping and ways to override automatic tendencies to stereotype.
Sponsor: General Motors Corporation
