Contesting gender stereotypes stimulates generalized fairness in the selection of leaders

Expectations of Leaders' Mental Health

Understanding the causes and consequences of varying mental health experiences in the workplace has gained significant research attention, yet little is known about the assumptions people hold about mental health at work, especially with regard to the expectations people may have of their leaders' mental health. Given people tend to romanticize organizational leaders and have expectations regarding prototypical leader attributes, we consider whether people also hold expectations of leaders' mental health. Drawing on implicit leadership theories, we propose that people will expect leaders experience better mental health compared to those occupying other organizational roles (e.g., subordinates). Using mixed methods, Study 1 (n = 85) showed that people expect that those in leadership roles enjoy higher well-being and experience less mental illness than those in non-leadership roles. Using vignettes in which an employee's health was manipulated, Study 2 (n = 200) demonstrated that mental illness is incongruent with leadership prototypes. Using vignettes in which organizational role was manipulated, Study 3 (n = 104) showed that compared to subordinates, leaders are perceived as having more job resources and demands, but people expect that it is leaders' greater access to organizational resources that facilitates their well-being and inhibits mental illness. These findings extend the occupational mental health and leadership literatures by identifying a novel attribute upon which leaders are evaluated. We conclude by considering the consequences of leader mental health expectations for organizational decision-makers, leaders, and employees aspiring to lead.

Using sport media exposure to promote gender equality: Counter-stereotypical gender perceptions and the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup

By relying on literature on counter-stereotypes and media contact, we investigated whether media exposure is associated with counter-stereotypical gender perceptions. Focusing on the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup, we recruited samples ( N = 2,228) from eight competing countries (China, France, Germany, Italy, Scotland, Spain, England, US) across three continents. We hypothesized that exposure to media coverage of the competition’s counter-stereotypical female exemplars would be associated with increased counter-stereotypical perceptions of women. Results revealed that media exposure was associated with greater communion and agency attributed to women. In turn, communion and agency were associated (negatively and positively, respectively) with attribution of stereotypically male abilities (abilities to engage in stereotypically male academic disciplines and jobs) to women compared to men. No effects emerged for perceptions of stereotypically female characteristics. Gender moderated these effects, with associations being stronger among male than among female respondents. Theoretical and practical implications of findings are discussed.

The Relationship Between Gender Self-Stereotyping and Life Satisfaction: The Mediation Role of Relational Self-Esteem and Personal Self-Esteem

Individuals voluntarily internalize gender stereotypes and present personality characteristics and behaviors that conform to gender role requirements. The aim of the current study was to explore the reasons people internalize gender stereotypes. We conducted surveys with 317 college students in China to examine the relationship between gender self-stereotyping and life satisfaction. We also analyzed the mediating roles of relational self-esteem (RSE) and personal self-esteem (PSE) and the moderation role of gender. The results of path analysis showed that gender self-stereotyping directly affected life satisfaction and indirectly affected life satisfaction through RSE and PSE in a serial pattern; however, the serial mediation model was only significant in the male sample. Higher gender self-stereotyping was associated with male participants’ higher level of RSE and PSE and further correlated with higher life satisfaction. This study addressed the questions: “What are the benefits of gender self-stereotyping?” and “What are the major barriers to counter-stereotyping?” The results enrich our understanding of these issues, especially relative to the collectivist culture in China, and may be used to create more effective interventions to help people break through the stereotypes.

Twenty years of gender equality research: A scoping review based on a new semantic indicator

Gender equality is a major problem that places women at a disadvantage thereby stymieing economic growth and societal advancement. In the last two decades, extensive research has been conducted on gender related issues, studying both their antecedents and consequences. However, existing literature reviews fail to provide a comprehensive and clear picture of what has been studied so far, which could guide scholars in their future research. Our paper offers a scoping review of a large portion of the research that has been published over the last 22 years, on gender equality and related issues, with a specific focus on business and economics studies. Combining innovative methods drawn from both network analysis and text mining, we provide a synthesis of 15,465 scientific articles. We identify 27 main research topics, we measure their relevance from a semantic point of view and the relationships among them, highlighting the importance of each topic in the overall gender discourse. We find that prominent research topics mostly relate to women in the workforce-e.g., concerning compensation, role, education, decision-making and career progression. However, some of them are losing momentum, and some other research trends-for example related to female entrepreneurship, leadership and participation in the board of directors-are on the rise. Besides introducing a novel methodology to review broad literature streams, our paper offers a map of the main gender-research trends and presents the most popular and the emerging themes, as well as their intersections, outlining important avenues for future research.

Advancing women in healthcare leadership: A systematic review and meta-synthesis of multi-sector evidence on organisational interventions

BACKGROUND

Women are underrepresented in healthcare leadership, yet evidence on impactful organisational strategies, practices and policies that advance women's careers are limited. We aimed to explore these across sectors to gain insight into measurably advancing women in leadership in healthcare.

METHODS

A systematic review was performed across Medline via OVID; Medline in-process and other non-indexed citations via OVID; PsycINFO and SCOPUS from January 2000 to March 2021. Methods are outlined in a published protocol registered a priori on PROSPERO (CRD42020162115). Eligible studies reported on organisational interventions for advancing women in leadership with at least one measurable outcome. Studies were assessed independently by two reviewers. Identified interventions were organised into categories and meta-synthesis was completed following the 'ENhancing Transparency in REporting the synthesis of Qualitative research' (ENTREQ) statement.

FINDINGS

There were 91 eligible studies from 6 continents with 40 quantitative, 38 qualitative and 13 mixed methods studies. These spanned academia, health, government, sports, hospitality, finance and information technology sectors, with around half of studies in health and academia. Sample size, career stage and outcomes ranged broadly. Potentially effective interventions consistently reported that organisational leadership, commitment and accountability were key drivers of organisational change. Organisational intervention categories included i) organisational processes; ii) awareness and engagement; iii) mentoring and networking; iv) leadership development; and v) support tools. A descriptive meta-synthesis of detailed strategies, policies and practices within these categories was completed.

INTERPRETATION

This review provides an evidence base on organisational interventions for advancing women in leadership across diverse settings, with lessons for healthcare. It transcends the focus on the individual to target organisational change, capturing measurable change across intervention categories. This work directly informs a national initiative with international links, to enable women to achieve their career goals in healthcare and moves beyond the focus on barriers to solutions.

Advancing the social identity theory of leadership: A meta-analytic review of leader group prototypicality

This research advances a social identity approach to leadership through a meta-analysis examining four novel hypotheses that clarify the nature and impact of leader group prototypicality (the extent to which a leader is perceived to embody shared social identity). A random-effects meta-analysis ( k = 128, N = 32,834) reveals a moderate-to-large effect of prototypicality that holds across evaluative and behavioral outcomes. The effect is stronger (a) when prototypicality is conceptualized as the ideal-type rather than the average group member, (b) for stronger prototypes (indexed by group longevity), and (c) for group members in formal rather than nonformal leadership roles. The effect is not contingent on group prototypicality entailing differentiation from other (out)groups. Additionally, results provide meta-analytic evidence of widely examined key factors: follower group identification (which enhances the relationship) and leader group-serving behavior (which attenuates the relationship). Building on these findings, we outline the implications for the next wave of theoretical and empirical work.

The Mediating Role of Cognitive Flexibility in the Influence of Counter-Stereotypes on Creativity

The aim of this study is to explore the relationship between counter-stereotypes and creativity, and further explore the mechanism underlying the impact of priming counter-stereotypic information on individual creativity. More importantly, here we have proposed cognitive and emotional dual processing pathways, which may mediate the influences of counter-stereotypes on creativity. Two experiments examined how counter-stereotypes impacted creativity through the dual processing pathways. A total of 152 university students were recruited to test their creativity performance. In Experiment 1, we replicated results of past studies. Participants were randomly allocated to different priming conditions (stereotype or counter-stereotype), in which descriptions of male governors and female nurses served as priming of stereotypes, whereas descriptions of male nurses and female governors served as priming of counter-stereotypes. Measurements of creativity were based on the poster paradigm. The poster paradigm required participants to design a poster for a college fellowship party. In Experiment 2, we recruited 104 participants to examine the mediating roles of emotions and cognitive flexibility. The procedure of Experiment 2 was similar to that of Experiment 1, except for the measurement of creativity, which was Chinese idiom riddle test. Participants who selected more creative answers were more creative, based on the criteria of our experimental design. Also, we included measurements of emotions (i.e., surprise and delight) and cognitive flexibility (using the Cognitive Flexibility Scale) after priming of stereotypes and counter-stereotypes in Experiment 2. We also verified the credibility of our counter-stereotype measurements. The results of Experiment 1—which replicated previous studies—demonstrated that priming of counter-stereotypes promoted creative performance compared with priming of stereotypes in the poster paradigm. However, our proposed dual processing pathways were not fully verified by Experiment 2. The results of this experiment showed that neither surprising nor delighted emotion mediated the influence of counter-stereotypes on creativity, whereas cognitive flexibility did. In conclusion, our current study reveals a mechanism of creative performance in terms of cognitive flexibility, and further inspires us to focus on the positive influence of counter-stereotypes on creativity.

Boosting Creativity, but Only for Low Creative Connectivity: The Moderating Effect of Priming Stereotypically Inconsistent Information on Creativity

Previous researchers have documented that priming inconsistent stereotypic information boosts creativity. The current study further examined the moderating role of creativity connectivity—which is the degree to which people perceive a social group or professional role to be relevant to creativity—in the priming of information related to the boosting effects of creativity. Study 1 adopted a 2 (stereotypically inconsistent target gender: male vs. female) × 2 [priming types: stereotypically consistent information (SCI) priming vs. stereotypically inconsistent information (SICI) priming] group design in which 89 college students from Wuhan were enrolled to complete a priming paradigm and a poster-advertising-design task. As a result, we found that the activation of inconsistent stereotypic information boosted creativity compared with that of consistent stereotypic information, which replicated previous findings. Study 2 also adopted a 2 (creativity-domain connectivity: high vs. low) × 2 (priming types: SCI priming vs. SICI priming) group design in which 85 college students from Wuhan were enrolled to complete the same tasks as in Study 1. The results of Study 2 indicated that when information with low relevance to creativity such as “a nurse” was primed, creativity was then significantly boosted by inconsistent stereotypic information such as “a male nurse” compared with the stereotypic one such as “a female nurse.” Conversely, when information with high relevance to creativity such as “a poet” was primed, there were no significant creativity-boosting effects between inconsistent stereotypic information such as “a dull poet” and the consistent one such as “an eccentric poet.” In sum, this study (i) replicated the previous findings in Chinese culture and (ii) further explored the moderating role of creativity connectivity of the inconsistent stereotypic information.

Intergroup Contact as an Agent of Cognitive Liberalization

Intergroup contact is widely recognized as one of the most validated methods of improving attitudes toward out-groups. Yet what is intergroup contact "good for" beyond this function? To answer this question we take a panoramic view of the literature, beginning with the recognition that contact is multifaceted in both form (e.g., face-to-face, indirect, simulated) and outcome (e.g., attitudes, cognition, behavior). Taking this highly inclusive view of what contact is and what contact does suggests that it plays a fundamental role in the shaping of human cognition. An increasingly diverse body of research demonstrates that contact exerts a generalizing reaction across target out-groups, making respondents less inward looking and more open to experiences. Contact shapes ideology regarding how the world ought to operate (i.e., ideologies about social hierarchy or regulation); over time, it can promote new ways of problem-solving, enhance cognitive flexibility, and foster creativity. For these reasons, we believe that contact is a key liberalizing agent that shapes human cognition and experience; consequently, contact theory should now share the stage with other prominent theories (e.g., cognitive dissonance) that speak to a broader understanding of human nature.

Women and Leadership in the United States: Are We Closing the Gender Gap?

Women in the United States are making historic progress in business leadership, with research linking women's leadership representation to positive outcomes. However, men still dominate US leadership, raising several key questions. Is the United States closing the leadership gender gap? What organizational barriers perpetuate the gap? What facilitates women's leadership? We synthesized and extended US literature to develop a multilevel organizational model of Barriers And Facilitators of Female Leader Empowerment, called the “BAFFLE” Female Leadership Model to highlight the baffling complexities and limited success in solving the US leadership gender gap. The review found that literature narrowly focuses on barriers and offers limited insights about how to facilitate female leader empowerment while simultaneously addressing systemic, entrenched organizational barriers. We also used the World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Gender Gap Index to provide global perspective on the US leadership gender gap. Finally, we summarize findings and implications for practice and scholarship.

Counter-Stereotypes and Feminism Promote Leadership Aspirations in Highly Identified Women

Although women who highly identify with other women are more susceptible to stereotype threat effects, women's identification might associate with greater leadership aspirations contingent on (1) counter-stereotype salience and (2) feminist identification. When gender counter-stereotypes are salient, women's identification should associate with greater leadership aspiration regardless of feminism, while when gender stereotypes are salient, women's identification would predict greater leadership aspirations contingent on a high level of feminist identification. In our study US-based women (N = 208) attended to gender stereotypic (vs. counter-stereotypic) content. We measured identification with women and identification with feminism, and, following the manipulation, leadership aspirations in an imagined work scenario. The interaction between identification with women, identification with feminism, and attention to stereotypes (vs. counter-stereotypes) significantly predicted leadership aspirations. In the counter-stereotypic condition women's identification associated with greater leadership aspirations regardless of feminist identification. In the stereotypic condition women's identification predicted leadership aspirations only at high levels of feminist identification. We conclude that salient counter-stereotypes and a strong identification with feminism may help high women identifiers increase their leadership aspirations.