Female leaders who try to act in ways typically associated with male leaders—assertive, authoritative, directive—are seen far more negatively than males. In the modern world, we’d like to think ourselves above such base stereotypes. But that doesn’t mean that discrimination goes away; it means that it shifts from the explicit to the implicit realm. “It’s the idea of second-generation feminism,” Bowles says. “We have these culturally ingrained ideas about what we consider attractive or appropriate, ideas of what’s O.K. for men or women. And when women violate it, people have an aversive response.” The result is that discrimination becomes more nuanced: we can’t point to overt things like women not having the right to vote. We can, it’s true, point to things like pay gaps—but, because they are inherently more ambiguous, it’s much more difficult to say that discrimination has taken place. Maybe she really didn’t push hard enough. Maybe she is a bit less qualified. Many women (and men) who ask for raises, after all, just aren’t quite good enough to get them. Maybe he did make a better case.
Posted on: Fri, 20 Jun 2014 17:46:56 +0000
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