Page 190 - Discrimination at Work The Psychological and Organizational Bases

7. GENDER DISCRIMINATION
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gender roles. Integrating this suggestion with our previous review of the
content of gender stereotypes, for example, "iron maidens" (Kanter, 1977),
who are respected for their competence but disliked because of their lack
of human qualities, may be subjected to hostile sexism (Fiske et al., 2002).
Powerful Men and the Construal of Their Goals
Whereas power, masculine contexts, and female underrepresentation en­
hance the degree that women are stereotyped in work environments, Vescio
and her colleagues (Vescio, Snyder, & Butz, 2003; Vescio, Gervais, Snyder,
& Hoover, 2004) recently demonstrated that powerful men may be encour­
aged to construe goals and ideas about subordinates' ability to enhance
goal strivings in ways that eliminate stereotyping tendencies. Tradition­
ally masculine domains often encourage adversarial processes that focus
attention toward the weaknesses that employees may possess, which may
impair goal strivings (e.g., the so-called corporate "up or out" policy). In
such situations, gender stereotypes provide information of relevance, or
point out the dimensions along which women have critical shortcomings
(e.g., illogical, irrational, weak) and low power women are treated in pa­
tronizing ways (e.g., receive fewer valued resources, but are praised more)
and exhibit performance decrements (e.g., Vescio et al., 2004). However,
stereotypes of women are uninformative when powerful men are encour­
aged to construe goals in approach-related terms and to attend to those
strengths that subordinates have that may enhance goal strivings. Stereo­
types of women provide information about the attributes that women pos­
sess (e.g., caring, nurturing), but these attributes are irrelevant to masculine
domains and do not inform the goal striving of strength-focused power­
ful men (i.e., did not provide information about how subordinate women
would enhance goal strivings). Importantly, stereotyping does not occur
in such situations. Therefore, when workers belong to negatively stereo­
typed groups, stereotyping can be eliminated by having those in positions
of authority seek information about workers in attempts to address the
question of whether a given subordinate possesses strengths or skills that
will enhance, rather than weaknesses that will inhibit, goal strivings.

A PERSON X SITUATION APPROACH
TO UNDERSTANDING DISCRIMINATION

Integrating the above considerations, we suggest that gender stereotyp­
ing should occur in organizations when cultural stereotypes of women are
(a) endorsed and internalized by decision makers, (b) contextually relevant