Abstract
One hundred sixty female and 160 male undergraduates provided performance evaluations and attributions for a poor-performing stimulus employee depicted as male or female, and as either single or married with three preschool-aged children. No significant differences were detected for ratings given by male and female evaluators. The results did however, reveal a significant interaction of employee sex by marital/parental status conveying that of the four employee groups, married mothers were evaluated the most favorably, while single females were the least favorably evaluated. The differential performance evaluations were interpreted by attributional responses indicating that raters perceived external, uncontrollable factors as causes of the married mother's poor performance, while internal, controllable factors were seen as primary reasons for the poor performance of the other employees, particularly the single female's. Implications of the findings were presented.
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Russell, J.E.A., Rush, M.C. The effects of sex and marital/parental status on performance evaluations and attributions. Sex Roles 17, 221–236 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00287627
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00287627