Double Binds: Women sometimes have to choose between being seenas competent and being seen as likable. Those who are perceived as competent are not liked, and those who are perceived as likable are not seen as competent.
Sanctions for Self-Promotion: When women receive push-back for self promotion, reflecting traditional expectations that women should be modest and self-effacing. Studies show that women who use hedges and disclaimers (“Do you think?” “I’m no expert, but…”) are often seen more positively than those who speak directly and with confidence.
Hostile Prescriptive Bias: Hostility expressed toward women who do not behave according to traditional expectations (i.e. the way a woman “should” behave.) For example, one professor reported being told to “…stop worrying about tenure; just go home and have more babies.”
Double Jeopardy: When gender stereotypes differ by race/ethnicity, such as when African-American women may be seen as “angry black women” and Asian-Americans as “dragon ladies.” When Latina women are assertive, they may trigger stereotypes of the “fiery, hot-blooded Latina.”
Frigid Climate for Fathers: Fathers who signal caregiving responsibility may trigger hostile prescriptive stereotyping (reflecting the assumption that men don’t belong in caregiving roles.)
Gender Wars: When gender bias against women produces conflict among women. Conflict sometimes emerges among women when they sense that there are only a limited number of spots for women at the top. Gender wars can also emerge when women who behave in traditionally feminine ways may find women who behave in traditionally masculine ways off-putting, and vice versa.
Maternal Wall: The strongest form of workplace gender stereotyping, which reflects negative competence and commitment assumptions triggered by motherhood.
Attribution Bias: When maternal wall stereotypes that mothers are less committed and competent drive interpretations of behavior (e.g., when a delay in completing a task is attributed to a mother’s lack of commitment instead of unexpected intellectual challenges).
Role Incongruity: Bias stemming from a clash between gender stereotypes and workplace norms, e.g. the “good mother” who is always available to her children and the “ideal worker” who is always available for work.
Prove it Again!: Due to assumptions about the “typical” woman, women often are held to higher performance standards than men.
Leniency Bias: Objective rules may be applied rigidly to women and leniently to men. For example, at one law school, the rule was that candidates were not considered for visiting professor positions unless they had a permanent faculty position elsewhere. This rule was applied consistently to women and minorities, but was abandoned when a white male candidate emerged who had significant political support.
Recall Bias: When people tend to remember stereotype-consistent information better than stereotype-inconsistent information. For example, colleagues would be more likely to remember the colleague who speaks frequently and assertively in meetings (a stereotypically “male” behavior) if that person is a woman rather than a man.
[1] Rudman, Laurie A. “Self-Promotion as a Risk Factor for Women: The Costs and Benefits of Counterstereotypical Impression Management.” J. of Personality and Soc. Psychol. 74 (1998): 629-45; See also Glick, Peter and Susan T. Fiske. “An Ambivalent Alliance: Hostile and Benevolent Sexism as Complementary Justifications of Gender Inequality.” American Psychologist 56 (2001): 109-18, 116.
[1] Eagly, Alice H. and Steven J. Karau. “Role Congruity Theory of Prejudice Toward Female Leaders.” Psychol. Rev. 109 (2002): 573-98, 573, 574; Rudman, Laurie A. “Self-Promotion as a Risk Factor for Women: The Costs and Benefits of Counterstereotypical Impression Management.” J. of Personality and Soc. Psychol. 74 (1998): 629-45.
[1] Schneider v. Northwestern University, 925 F. Supp. 1347 (N.D. Ill. 1996).
[1] Fiske, Susan T. et al. “A Model of (Often Mixed) Stereotype Content: Competence and Warmth Respectively Follow from Perceived Status and Competition.” J. of Personality & Soc. Psychol. 82 (2002): 878-902, 878, 885-88; see also Nishi, Setsuko M. “Perceptions and Deceptions: Contemporary Views of Asian Americans,” in A Look Beyond the Model Minority Image: Critical Issues in Asian America, edited by Grace Yun, 3, 6. New York: Minority Rights Group 1989.
[1] Nishi, Setsuko M. “Perceptions and Deceptions: Contemporary Views of Asian Americans,” in A Look Beyond the Model Minority Image: Critical Issues in Asian America, edited by Grace Yun,6. New York: Minority Rights Group 1989.
[1] Taylor, Shelley E. “A Categorization Approach to Stereotyping” in Cognitive Processes in Stereotyping and Intergroup Behavior, edited by David L. Hamilton, 83-84. Hillsdale: Erlbaum Associates, 1981.
[1] Kobrynowicz, Diane and Monica Biernat. “Decoding Subjective Evaluations: How Stereotypes Provide Shifting Standards.” J. Experimental Soc. Psychol. 33 (1997): 579-601, 579, 587.
[1] Blair-Loy, Mary and Amy S. Wharton. “Mothers in Finance: Surviving and Thriving.” ANNALS of Amer. Acad. of Pol. and Soc. Sci. 596 (2004): 151-71.
[1] Huang, Penelope. “Breaking Through the Glass Ceiling and the Maternal Wall: Summary of Focus Group conducted at the 2007 Grace Hopper Conference” (2007).