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Rosen and Jerdee found that women were thought to be out-of-role when they took a threatening approach in filing a job grievance. These same authors (Rosen and Jerdee) found that employees’ requests for released time from work because of family problems were perceived to be more acceptable coming from a woman than a man. There also is some evidence that the sex of a manager influences how descriptions of different managerial styles are evaluated (Bartol and Butterfield; Rosen and Jerdee). Generally, these studies suggest that both women and men are evaluated more favorably when their leadership activities consist of sex-appropriate behaviors, e.g., a female manager showing consideration and a male manager initiating structure. Evidently, conformity to traditional sex role standards is regarded favorably in work as well as in other settings.
Most jobs that carry with them authority and responsibility are thought to require behavior that is explicitly male. What are the consequences for women who take such jobs? How do others react to them and how might their performance be affected by these reactions? What are the implications of these reactions for their careers?
Costrich, Feinstein, Kidder, Maracek, and Pascale investigated the reactions to women’s out-of-role behavior in a series of laboratory studies utilizing three different experimental procedures. The results indicated that women who violate norms of feminine passive-dependency were penalized by the undergraduates serving as subjects. They were rated both as less popular and as more poorly adjusted than women who abided by the behaviors appropriate to their sex. These findings’ suggest that, paradoxically, women in nontraditional fields may be evaluated negatively if they do their jobs well.
Such reactions, if they occur in work settings, can impair the advancement opportunities of women. There have been a number of field studies that examined the reactions to females in previously male-dominated roles; however, they have focused on the reactions of subordinates to female and male supervisors. Although the reactions of subordinates clearly are not as critical for our purposes as are the reactions of those who have the power to take personnel actions, these studies are nonetheless instructive in understanding the by-products of incongruence between sex and job in actual organizational settings.
Two separate research investigations (Petty and Lee; Petty and Miles), investigated the correlations between subordinate perceptions of leader behavior and subordinate satisfaction. Both in the nonacademic divisions of a university and in a social service organization, the correlation between consideration behaviors and satisfaction with supervisors was greater for female supervisors than for male, In the social service organization study the correlation between initiating structure behaviors and satisfaction also was greater for male supervisors than for female. In fact, men with women supervisors had negatively correlated satisfaction scores and ratings of initiating structure. Satisfaction was thus found to be linked with perceptions of sex-role-consistent behavior.
Rousell conducted a field study in which, as Terborg has pointed out, greater care was taken to control adequately for factors in addition to sex, thus allowing for a more precise statement about supervisor sex and subordinate reactions than in the Petty studies. The effects of department-head sex on teacher ratings of department climate in ten high schools were investigated. The teachers were randomly selected from the four largest departments in each school. The twenty-five men and fifteen women department heads had few differences in background and virtually no differences in teacher ratings of professional knowledge, aggressiveness, or power—all potentially confounding variables. Results indicated that departments headed by men were rated as having a far more favorable climate than those headed by women.
The data from these studies have several pertinent implications. First, they suggest that women in supervisory positions are limited in the extent to which they can adapt a variety of supervisory styles to do their jobs effectively. Their flexibility is constrained and their ultimate performance may suffer. Second, they suggest that negative reactions to women in non-traditional roles are confined not only to the woman herself but influence the perceptions (and perhaps the realities) of the climate of the work setting. Each of these can have costly consequences for the woman striving to move up in the organizational ranks.
An additional and not unimportant point is the fact that the anticipation of negative reactions by organization members can prevent decision makers from placing women in nontraditional positions. Results of a 1965 Harvard Business Review survey of 1,000 men and 900 women executives indicated that over two-thirds of the men and almost 20% of the women said they would not feel comfortable working for a woman. Very few of either sex (less than 10% of the men and approximately 15% of the women) felt that men employees feel comfortable working for a woman. Beliefs of this sort make the prospect of placing women in high-level jobs seem risky. Surely this must enter into decisions about who to put in what position and who to put in charge of whom.
In reviewing the literature pertinent to on-the-job sex discrimination, it again is apparent that sex stereotypes are the basis for the differential treatment of men and women. There is indication that if a woman were to perform well on the job her success might not be acknowledged or even if it were, it might be interpreted as a result of temporary conditions. There also is indication that a woman, simply by her presence in an out-of-role position, can create low morale and dissatisfaction among others at the work place, thereby limiting her effectiveness and others’ perceptions of her potential. It seems clear that when competing with men in the work world, women face a tremendous disadvantage.
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