Gender Stereotypes

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Gender Stereotypes Career Aspirations
Implications for Careers in Computing

• Shelley J. Correll
• Cornell University

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?
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TestosteroneBrain laterality
Small test score differences Varies cross-
nationally
Large differences
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• But how?
• Stereotypes impact task performance and the
  standard we use to evaluate performance
  information.

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How do stereotypes impact performance?
(Stereotype threat)

• Main finding is that negative stereotypes lead to
  decreased task performance.
• When salient, stereotypes interfere with working
  memory capacity.
• The effects are larger for higher performers.
• When high-powered people fail
• Working memory and chocking under pressure in
  math. Beilock and Carr, 2005

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How do stereotypes impact performance?
(Stereotype threat)

• The effects often occurs out of awareness.
• Neural basis of stereotype-induced shifts in
  womens mental rotation performance. Wraga,
  Helt, Jacobs and Sullivan, 2006
• Stereotype threat, inquiring about test takers
  ethnicity and gender and standardized test
  performance. Stricker Wood, 2004

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How do stereotypes impact performance?
(Stereotype threat)

• The effects are situationalwhen beliefs that are
  salient change, so do performance outcomes.
• Stereotype susceptibility Identity salience and
  shifts in quantitative performance. Shih,
  Pittinsky Ambady, 1999
• Signaling threat how signaling cues affect
  women in math, science and engineering settings.
  Murphy, Steele and Gross, 2007

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Stereotype threat summary

• Negative stereotype about ones own group, when
  salient, leads to lower performance, controlling
  for actual ability level.

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How do stereotypes impact self-assessments?

• Stereotypes also impact the standard we use to
  decide whether our performance indicates that we
  have sufficient ability.
• Central idea is that when you know that others do
  not expect people like you to be good at a
  given type of task, you judge your own
  performance by a harsher standard.

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Constraints into preferences(Correll, 2004
American Sociological Review)

• 80 undergraduates40 males, 40 females
• Bogus task (test of contrast sensitivity
  ability)
• Performance feedback held experimentally constant
• Dependent variables
• Ability standard
• Self-assessment of task competence
• Future aspirations
• Key independent variable
• Gender belief associated with task

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Stereotypes and ability standards(Correll, 2004
American Sociological Review)
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How do stereotypes impact self-assessments?

• If you judge your performance with a harsher
  standard, you will make lower assessments of your
  own task ability.

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Stereotypes and self-assessments(Correll, 2004
American Sociological Review)
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Self-assessments emerging aspirations
(Correll, 2004)

• Male participants reported significantly higher
  aspirations for paths requiring ability on the
  experimental task in conditions where they had
  heard that men have more task ability.
• No gender differences in aspirations were found
  in conditions where participants heard that
  gender was unrelated to task ability.
• Situationalwhen beliefs in setting change, so do
  ability standards, self-assessments, and
  aspirations.

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Why a laboratory experiment?Why a bogus task?

• Rules out competing supply-side explanations
  that women simply have less task ability and that
  women naturally are less interested.

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Problems with aptitude and interest
explanations

• Aptitude explanations are either incorrect,
  limited and/or intractable.
• Interest explanations ignore the fact that
  situational factors influence individuals
  interests.
• They suggest no avenues for change.

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Back to the real worldAn application to the
path to math

• Using nationally representative data from over
  16,000 students in the U.S., we compare how boys
  and girls with equal mathematical ability assess
  their own mathematical competence.
• Gender and the career choice process. Correll,
  2001

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An application to the path to math (Correll
2001)

• Mathematics is stereotyped as a masculine domain.
• Consistent with previous study, male students
  were found to assess their mathematical ability
  higher than their equal ability female
  counterparts did.
• Situationalfemale students were found to assess
  their verbal ability higher than their equal
  ability male counterparts.

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An application to the path to math (Correll
2001)

• Higher self-assessments of mathematical ability
  increased the odds that students enrolled in high
  school Calculus and chose a college major in
  science, math or engineering.

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Implications

• If left unchecked, gender stereotypes will
  contribute to the under-representation of women
  in technical fields.

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What can be done? Underlying principles to keep
in mind

• Stereotypic biases often occur out of
  consciousness.
• Biases are more extreme in uncertain settings.
• The impact of stereotypes change when beliefs in
  the local setting change.

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What can be done? What doesnt work?

• Must change gender beliefs about gender and task
  competence that exist in an organization not just
  individual womens beliefs (i.e., avoid fixing
  women approaches), because the biasing effect of
  stereotypes has a demand-side counterpart.

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What can be done? Organizations need to

• Control the message What are the gender beliefs
  that are operating in the organization? How does
  the organization present itself?
• Make performance standards clearer and
  communicate them clearly.
• Hold gatekeepers accountable for gender
  disparities.