Page 186 - Discrimination at Work The Psychological and Organizational Bases

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7. GENDER DISCRIMINATION
turn attention to prejudice, noting how individual differences in prejudice
may exacerbate or attenuate stereotype-based judgments and behaviors
and also noting how prejudice toward women is unique. Then we conclude
with a consideration of situational factors that influence the magnitude of
gender discrimination effects.
The perception of others in terms of visually apparent and socially mean­
ingful categories, such as sex, is presumed to happen immediately and out­
side of awareness. More specifically, stereotypes provide perceivers with
expectations about the kinds attributes and ranges of behaviors that mem­
bers of a particular group will exhibit, influencing judgment in one of
two ways (Biernat & Vescio, 2002). First, stereotype-based expectations
can serve as interpretive frames that guide the encoding and processing
of information, resulting in assimilative (or stereotype consistent) judg­
ments of individuals who belong to stereotyped groups (e.g., women are
judged less competent than men; Heilman, 1984). Second, stereotype-based
expectations sometimes provide standards against which members of a
given group are compared and contrasted (e.g., Vescio & Biernat, 1999).
When stereotype-based expectations are low, as for negatively stereotyped
groups, comparison of an individual to the stereotype of the group to which
one belongs often results in counter-stereotypic appraisals of the individ­
ual (e.g., a woman judged more favorably than a similar man). This repre­
sents a sort of "wow" effect, or a demonstration surprise that a woman, for
example, has surpassed low stereotype-based performance expectations.
Therefore, such judgments have an implicit qualifier: "She's great—for a
woman."
Being "excellent for a woman," however, is not the same as being "excel­
lent." Such gender-based evaluations have an implicit qualifier (e.g., "ex­
cellent for a woman"), send mixed messages, and can contribute to the neg­
ative work environments many women experience. The "wow" response
women sometimes receive from important others when they perform up
to the standards expected for their male colleagues is patronizing in nature
(p. 195) and may marginalize high-performing females (Foschi, 1992). In
other words, the positive evaluations given to women who surpass ex­
pectations about how women should perform represent the perception
that this woman is performing well for a woman, rather than perform­
ing well by common standards applied to set of actors, both men and
women.
Prejudice toward women also differs from prejudice toward racial out­
groups in ways that may exacerbate the patronizing nature of behaviors
in stereotypically masculine work environments. First, most "new racism"
models of racial prejudice assume both that White Americans (a) sym­
pathize with Black Americans as victims of injustices (e.g., Katz & Hass,