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This chapter focuses on the implications of both the descriptive and prescriptive aspects of gender stereotypes for women in the workplace. Using the Lack of Fit model, we review how performance expectations deriving from descriptive gender stereotypes (i.e., what women are like) can impede women's career progress. We then identify organizational conditions that may weaken the influence of these expectations. In addition, we discuss how prescriptive gender stereotypes (i.e., what women should be like) promote sex bias by creating norms that, when not followed, induce disapproval and social penalties for women. We then review recent research exploring the conditions under which women experience penalties for direct, or inferred, prescriptive norm violations.

Using Schein’s Descriptive Index (SDI), this paper aims to first examine gender role stereotypes and requisite managerial characteristics among Irish business students over a 10-year period. Then, the paper investigates whether there have been changes in gender role stereotypes during this period and subsequently unpack the reasons behind any changes recorded.

In total, 1,124 students from the same business student population rated men, women and managers in general, using SDI. Data was collected first during the academic year 2008–2009 and again in 2018–2019 to determine stability or change in gender role stereotypes and requisite managerial characteristics. Intraclass correlation coefficients scores were computed to determine the relationship between gender and requisite managerial characteristics and identify differences and similarities between the two samples. To explore the content of gender stereotypes, an examination of the specific descriptive items was conducted by performing a factorial analysis using Duncan’s Multiple Range Test. Finally, the authors adapted the scales developed by Duehr and Bono (2006) to determine whether broad gender stereotypic characteristics with respect to communal and agentic, attributed to men, women and managers, differ by sample.

The overall findings indicate changes in the extent of gender role stereotyping of the managerial role among the male cohorts studied. The subsequent analysis of the descriptive items identified that the change among the male cohort is due to the levels of agency they perceive women to now possess.

The authors contribute to the literature on both gendered and managerial stereotypes by showing changes in the pro-male stereotype of the managerial role and contribute to the existing debate on a shift towards a more androgynous view of leadership.

These findings help understand the content of gender role stereotypes that recent graduates bring with them to their first job post-graduation. The observed changes in the level of agency ascribed to women by their male counterparts could prove to be an important step forward for women’s advancement to managerial positions.

The findings indicate that both male and female cohorts in Sample 2 perceived men and women in general to possess the same levels of communal and agentic traits as their managerial counterparts.

This paper aims to investigate cross-gender effects of gender stereotypes in advertising. More specifically, it proposes that the negative effects found in studies of women’s reactions to stereotyped female portrayals should hold across gender portrayal and target audience gender.

In two experimental studies, the effects of stereotyped portrayals (vs non-stereotyped portrayals) across gender are compared.

The results show that advertising portrayals of women and men have a presumed negative influence on others, leading to higher levels of ad reactance, which has a negative impact on brand-related effects across model and participant gender, and for gender stereotypes in terms of physical characteristics and roles.

Whereas previous studies have focused on reactions of women to female stereotypes, the current paper suggests that women and men alike react negatively to stereotyped portrayals of other genders.

The results indicate that marketers can benefit from adapting a more mindful approach to the portrayals of gender used in advertising.

The addition of a cross-gender perspective to the literature on gender stereotypes in advertising is a key contribution to this literature.

The extant literature on leadership in the Arab world reflects the traditional bias of leadership being a male domain. Arising out of a patriarchal social structure, men assume leadership in organizations while women are often confined to work at home. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the emergence of women leaders in UAE organizations by going beyond biological sex role biases to identify leadership as masculine or feminine gendered role stereotypes in organizations.

The data collected over two periods comprised two sets of Schein Descriptive Index (SDI) together with those of leadership intention and behaviour style; correlations thereof were computed to test hypotheses constructed from the literature.

The findings indicate that within organizations in the UAE, employee feedback highlights gender‐role stereotypes as defining leadership roles, rather than individual biological sex and their traditional family and social role. The findings reveal that in the UAE, gender stereotypes influence leadership intention and behaviour rather than individual biological sex and related traditions. Accordingly, women leaders having higher proportions of “agentic” characteristics of male gender stereotype together with lower proportions of “people orientation” of female gender stereotype, which makes successful leaders in the UAE break the proverbial “glass ceiling”. This explains the emergence of an increasing number of women leaders in the UAE.

Generalizability of the findings is limited by non‐representation of countries with high gender egalitarianism, as well as the geographical limitation of the study to the UAE only. In the context of traditional male‐dominated organizations in the UAE, the findings on gender‐role stereotypes of leaders in these organizations cannot only help organizations take informed decisions in choosing leaders without the “glass ceiling” biases, but can go further to identify and nurture potential leaders, including women leaders, within organizations. These findings are of considerable significance to the Middle East and the Arab world in general, in the wake of the developments witnessed there.

The paper explains women leadership in organizations in the UAE, a part of the Arab world of the Middle East, from the perspective of gender‐role stereotypes, as opposed to traditional sex‐role biases, to bring women leaders there into the mainstream gender literature.

Stereotypes are simplified and widely shared visions held by a social group regarding a place, object, event or recognizable set of people united by certain characteristics or qualities. They are “dangerous” mental models because they are widely disseminated, devious and capable of acting even unconsciously in individuals, social groups and organizations altering the rationality of assessments and choices and producing discrimination and prejudice. Stereotypes acritically extend from a characteristic of a significant percentage of a category to the totality of individuals. The process of generalization triggered by a stereotype produces the error of discrimination and prejudice. There are numerous forms of stereotypes, but this study takes into account gender stereotypes because they act pervasively, often subtly, to reduce “productivity”. People who are aware of being discriminated perceive an unsatisfactory fulfillment of their motivations, which reduces their incentive to improve their performance. Since productivity measures the efficient use of energy from working in production processes, the author believes that wherever gender stereotypes are at play, there is a productive “waste of energy”, an inefficiency in work activity with harmful effects for organizations of all kinds, including families.

The work aims to demonstrate that wherever gender stereotypes are at play, a “waste of energy” manifests itself in terms of productivity, representing an inefficiency in work activity with harmful effects for organizations of all kinds, including families. To describe the negative effects stereotypes produce in organizations, some models are presented based on the methods and language of systems thinking. These models, although typically qualitative, are capable of exploring the most accepted theories in the literature: tournament theory, the Pygmalion effect, the Galatea effect, self-fulfilling prophecies, the Queen bee syndrome, the role congruency theory, the glass ceiling theory (“think manager, think male” and “family responsibilities wall”). The paper follows a predominantly organizational and corporate approach, although the copious literature on stereotypes belongs largely to the area of social psychology and organization studies.

The paper does not consider the psychological origin of stereotypes but highlights their use as routines-shortcuts for evaluations and decisions demonstrating that, when adopted in social systems and within organisations, stereotypes produce different forms of discrimination: in social rights, in work, in careers and in access to levels of education and public services, reducing performance and limit potential. The paper also examines some ways gender and culture stereotypes can be opposed, presenting a change management strategy and some concrete solutions proposed by the process–structure–culture model for social change (PSC model).

The main limitation of the work is that it focuses on gender stereotypes, choosing not to consider the “intersection effect” of these with other stereotypes: racial stereotypes, religious stereotypes, color stereotypes, age stereotypes, sex and sexual orientation stereotypes, and many others, whose joint action can cause serious inefficiencies in organizational work.

As stereotypes are a component of social culture and are handed down, by use and example, from generation to generation, the maintenance over time of stereotypes used by individuals to evaluate, judge and act can be seen as an effect of the typical action of a combinatory system of diffusion, which can operate for a long time if not effectively opposed. Il PSC model indicates the strategy for carrying out this opposition.

With regard to gender stereotypes, it should be emphasized that in organizations and social systems, “gender diversity” should be considered an opportunity and not as a discriminating factor and thus encouraged by avoiding harmful discrimination. In fact, this diversity, precisely because of the distinctive characteristics individuals possess regardless of gender, can benefit the organization and lead to an increase in organizational and social performance. The United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (2020) Goal 5: Achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls is examined in this context.

This study views the action of gender stereotypes as especially harmful “mental models”, highlighting the distortions they cause in the allocation of productive energy in society, groups and organizations. The paper follows a predominantly organizational and corporate approach, although the copious literature on stereotypes belongs largely to the area of social psychology. Using the “logic” and “language” of systems thinking, theories and models that describe and interpret the distorting effects of organizational choices based on stereotypes rather than rational analysis are highlighted. The action of stereotypes and their persistence over time can also be described using combinatory systems theory. With this paper, the author hopes that by acting on the three wheels of change highlighted by the PSC model, through legal provisions, control tools and actions on the culture operated by educational and social aggregative institutions, it should not be impossible to change the prevailing culture so that it becomes aware of the harmful influence of gender stereotypes and other discriminatory mental models and come to reject them. The author hopes this paper will help to understand the need to make this change.

The purpose of this paper is to examine gender‐related management stereotypes, perceived gender bias and evaluations of actual managers, and to directly compare stereotypes and ratings of actual managers.

Questionnaires were distributed to employees in the bank and insurance sector, and 240 participants rated their actual managers and stereotypes of male and female managers.

Men evaluated the female manager stereotype more positively on communal attributes, and the male manager stereotype more positively on agentic attributes. Women evaluated the female manager stereotype more positively on both communal and agentic attributes, but perceived a higher degree of gender bias in favor of male managers than men did. Actual male and female managers were rated similarly. Still, ratings of actual male managers corresponded more with stereotypes of male than female managers, and ratings of actual female managers corresponded more with stereotypes of female than male managers.

Future research needs to determine the direction of association between stereotypes and evaluations of actual managers, and the relative importance of agentic over communal attributes.

While women appeared biased in favor of their own gender, men may underestimate the difficulties that female managers encounter. Managers and human resource practitioners should notice these different views, and recognize that gender equality is not achieved in Sweden.

The present study contributes with data from an egalitarian society with a positive view of female managers, and a direct comparison of stereotypes and workplace evaluations.

In Brazil, over 4.7 million women enrolled in university in the year 2017. However, Brazilian women have been consistently overrepresented in humanities and care majors and underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Given that observed gender differences in math-intensive fields have lasting effects on gender inequality in the labor market, and that observed gender variations do not necessarily associate with differences in innate ability, in this paper we explore the paths of societal gender bias and gender differences in a Brazilian university.

We conduct a social experiment at a University in Southeastern Brazil, applying the gender-STEM Implicit Association Test.

We found that women in STEM are less likely to show gender-STEM implicit stereotypes, compared to women in humanities. The results indicate a negative correlation between implicit gender stereotyping and the choice of math-intensive majors by women.

The stereotype-congruent results are indicative of the gender bias in Brazilian society, and suggest that stereotypes created at early stages in life are directly related to future outcomes that reinforce gender disparities in Brazil, which can be observed in career choices.

This study aims to explore how the COVID-induced exogenous shock changed the prevalent occupational gender stereotypes in entrepreneurship in urban Turkey and presented an opportunity to some Turkish women to start their own business. Furthermore, this study investigated how women entrepreneurs’ social networks helped them to clear the gendered hurdles that hindered their entrepreneurial endeavors in the times of COVID-19.

Highly personal topics like gender stereotypes are complex and nebulous, as is entrepreneurship as lived experience. Moreover, the COVID-induced crisis complicates the context further, which is why the addressal of questions about gendered stereotypes in the process of entrepreneurship, and the role of social networks in that process, warrants a qualitative research approach. Consequently, this study relied on in-depth semistructured interviews for investigating the study’s research questions.

The findings suggest that research participants used the COVID-induced crisis conditions as an opportunity to beat the existing occupational gender stereotyping in entrepreneurship in the context of urban Turkey that opened a window of opportunity for the women participants to enter into entrepreneurship. In addition, social networks significantly helped the women entrepreneurs to acquire resources, and provided the leverage needed to clear the gendered hurdles that hindered the women’s entrepreneurial endeavors.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is among the first that generates insights into occupational gender stereotyping in entrepreneurship within the context of a developing country in the times of COVID-19 crisis. Hence, this study can help to understand the broader implications of the crisis like COVID-19 for gender-related beliefs and attitudes toward women entrepreneurship within the context of developing countries.

This study explores the effect of gender stereotyping and issue advocacy on consumer sentiment toward advertising and brands.

Drawing from the literature, the study hypothesizes about the impact of gender stereotyping and consumer advocacy on consumer sentiment. A behavioral experiment tests the hypotheses and provides support for the main conclusions.

Results indicate that issue advocacy can cancel the negative effect of traditional female stereotyping. The results also show that demographics are not necessarily the reason why a person favors or condemns stereotyping and advertising; on the contrary, any reaction is far more linked to personal disposition.

The findings of this research have implications for marketing and advertising practice. While the use of issue advocacy is currently trending up, there is still a lack of understanding about its effect on consumers. Gender stereotyping is also being frequently used, but has caused huge backlashes in recent ad campaigns. Marketing and advertising managers can use insights from this research to shape advertising messages that use these two stimuli in order to enable a brand to better connect with its audience and achieve a more desirable outcome.

The paper contributes to the academic discussion about the effectiveness of using gender stereotyping and issue advocacy to drive advertising outcomes. It challenges the idea that the combination of these two advertising approaches is either detrimental or beneficial to the brand.

Even though researchers have discussed gender stereotype change, only a few studies have specifically projected outcomes or consequences. Hence, the main purpose of this study is to examine the impact of gender stereotype change concerning the different outcomes.

In achieving the purpose, the authors searched and reviewed current empirical knowledge on the outcomes of gender stereotype change in the Scopus and EBSCOhost databases from 1970 to 2020. The entire process was conducted through a systematic literature review methodology. The article selection criteria were executed using the PRISMA article selection flowchart steps, and 15 articles were included for the review.

The findings reveal that the outcomes from gender stereotype change research can be categorized mainly under the themes of “family and children,” “marriage” and “equality and women's employment.”

The co-occurrence network visualization map reveals gaps in the existing literature. There may be more possible outcomes relating to the current realities, and more cross-cultural research is needed.

These outcomes provide some implications for policymakers.

Even though researchers have discussed gender stereotype change on its various outcomes or consequences, research is less. Hence, this study provides a synthesis of consequences and addresses the gaps in the area.