Agentic women face backlash penalties that identical male counterparts do not

Evidence

From this perspective, to undermine gender hegemony, women need only present themselves as independent, competitive, and forceful creatures (i.e., “act like men”). Although this solution sounds simple, it has turned out to be untenable for women because agency is not only more expected of men, it is more accepted in men. For example, women who selfpromote, argue assertively, or defend themselves aggressively are viewed less favorably than identical male counterparts (see Rudman, 1998; Rudman & Fairchild, 2004, for reviews). Likewise, agentic women (but not men) are discriminated against when vying for leadership positions, even though agency is necessary for being viewed as competent and qualified (Rudman & Glick, 1999). — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 756

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to vault’s prejudice-psychology thread: the prescriptive aspect of sex stereotypes parallels Allport’s descriptiveness-vs-prescriptiveness tension for other outgroups.
• QUESTION: Whether the backlash effect generalizes across racial and cultural contexts is worth chasing given contact-theory scope conditions.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 756