Uniqueness as a token woman substitutes for genuine ambition in professions.

Evidence

This is not, here, a question of ambitious women having chosen personal aims and using men to reach them—as did Mme de Staël and the princesse des Ursins—but rather of women animated by a wholly subjective desire for importance, with no objective aim, trying to appropriate for themselves the transcendence of another. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1823 (#expands, via linked claim)

Although women make up 46 percent of the workforce, they are underrepresented in positions of power and prestige (Eagly & Diekman, ch. 2 this volume). Gender prejudice helps to perpetuate this fact, as backlash research makes clear. However, women’s own choices (i.e., self-selection bias) may also be an important factor. Compared with men, women tend to shy away from positions that carry the highest rewards, both social and economic (Pratto, Stallworth, Sidanius, & Siers, 1997). — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 767 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

In a certain sense fashion gives woman a compensation for her lack of position in a class based on a calling or profession. The man who has become absorbed in a calling has entered a relatively uniform class, within which he resembles many others, and is thus often only an illustration of the conception of this class or calling. On the other hand, as though to compensate him for this absorption, he is invested with the full importance and the objective as well as social power of this class. To his individual importance is added that of his class, which often covers the defects and deficiencies of his purely personal character. The individuality of the class often supplements or replaces that of the member. This identical thing fashion accomplishes with other means. Fashion also supplements a person’s lack of importance, his inability to individualize his existence purely by his own unaided efforts, by enabling him to join a set characterized and singled out in the public consciousness by fashion alone. Here also, to be sure, the personality as such is reduced to a general formula, yet this formula itself, from a social standpoint, posssesses an individual tinge, and thus makes up through the social way what is denied to the personality in a purely individual way. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 732 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: A low self-expectation leads women to treat earning a living itself as sufficient achievement. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1939; Some women appropriate another’s transcendence rather than pursue objective aims — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1823; Fashion substitutes for class and profession as a source of individual differentiation. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 732 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Some women appropriate another’s transcendence rather than pursue objective aims #expands (0.82) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1823
• Women self-select away from the highest-reward positions, sustaining gender hegemony #corroborates (0.80) — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 767
• Fashion substitutes for class and profession as a source of individual differentiation. #corroborates (0.75) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 732