Women can face internal identity conflict in the workplace
Women can face internal identity conflict in the
workplace
September 1,
2013
Women in the workplace can face
internal identity conflict when it comes to competing
against their co-workers, a University of Canterbury (UC)
researcher says.
Associate Professor Maroš
Servátka researched the issue in a new study along with
Ontario’s University of Guelph professor Bram Cadsby and
Toronto’s Ryerson University professor Fei Song. Their
findings have been published in the latest issue of the
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization.
``Our research argues that gender stereotypes
originate from the social roles that men and women have
traditionally occupied in a society,’’ Professor
Servátka says.
``Stereotypes are learned early in
life, become part of one’s cultural understanding and are
internalised as implicit beliefs and endorsed values. People
extend stereotypes to develop implicit self-concepts, which
are evidenced by automatic associations between the self and
stereotypical personality traits, abilities and roles.
``Such stereotypes are likely closely related to
the differing competitiveness demonstrated by men and women.
Employing a behavioral experiment, researchers show that,
for women, identity priming significantly affects
willingness to participate in competition and to take risky
gambles.
``Such priming has significantly
different effects on males from the same population. This
contrast suggests an identity conflict for the female
professionals in our study that was absent for the
males.’’
Professor Servátka’s research
found women often experience conflicting role identities: a
professional identity that is highly competitive, competent
and ambitious and a gender/family identity that is warm,
supportive and caring.
``We found that female
students would face identity conflicts when it came to
choosing which reward model they preferred.
``Many
females would pick the piecemeal-reward model unless they
were primed by the professional survey, where they would
then pick the competitive model. Many males would pick the
competitive-reward model regardless of which survey they
answered. This suggests that, unlike males, females face an
internal conflict when it comes to being competitive in the
workplace.
``Men’s competitiveness did increase
after the gender-family survey, but being competitive was
something we saw after all three types of surveys, so it’s
not a big shift.
``The main finding is that female
identity priming significantly affects a woman’s
willingness to participate in competitive tournaments, take
risky gambles and pick a tournament pay
scheme.
``Although such priming effects may be
short-term in nature, these results suggest that life-cycle
events such as marriage, pregnancy and parenthood could have
very substantial and long-lasting effects on the activation
of family identities with their consequent effects on
attitudes toward competition.
``The decision to
avoid or minimise competition made by many women in
professional careers may be driven not by lack of ability
but rather by the increased salience of the gender/family
identity, based on stereotypical beliefs, attitudes and
ideals over time,’’ Professor Servátka
says.
ENDS