Women’s historical perception as non-agentic shapes expectations about their success

Evidence

By contrast, gender stereotype research has more directly targeted beliefs about women as a group. Compared with men, women have historically been perceived as less intelligent, competent, independent, and ambitious – in a word, agentic (Bakan, 1966). The putative absence of female agency underscored the (once prominent) misconception that women lacked intrinsic motivation to succeed (Horner, 1972). Later research has clarified that women do not “fear success” so much as they avoid the appearance of deviance (as do men; Cherry & Deaux, 1978). Women are also likely to strive to succeed in areas in which they are culturally supported (Eccles, 1987). Because men and women have traditionally been socialized to assume different roles in society, with men serving as breadwinners and women as homemakers, expectations for their behavior differ (Eagly, 1987). As a result, agency continues to be more associated with men than with women (Rudman & Kilianski, 2000; Spence & Buckner, 2000). — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 752

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in how group status is encoded in expectations — parallels social capital and reputation literatures already in the library.

Related

• Role expectations derived from gendered social roles sustain agency as a male-associated trait (similarity 0.94)
• Perceived low female agency forces women to disconfirm stereotypes to obtain leadership roles (similarity 0.84)
• Benevolent stereotypes produce a backlash effect against agentic women (similarity 0.84)
• Agentic women face backlash because agency is accepted only in men (similarity 0.83)
• Women must disconfirm gender stereotypes to be considered for leadership roles (similarity 0.82)
• Implicit beliefs that women are nice but weak suppress their advancement. (similarity 0.82)
• Agentic women face backlash penalties that identical male counterparts do not (similarity 0.79)
• Implicit but not explicit stereotyping predicts backlash against agentic women candidates (similarity 0.79)