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Undergraduates regard deviation from occupational gender stereotypes as costly for women

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Abstract

Studies from the 1970s have shown deviation from norms defining the gender-appropriateness of occupations to be costly for both women and men. Two hundred thirty undergraduates wrote open-ended stories and rated a stimulus person, Anne or John, who was described at the top of his/her class in medicine or one of four persistently gender-skewed fields: nursing, day care, electrical engineering, and electrician. Across all five occupations, negative imagery in stories about Anne and John in gender-incongruent occupations disappeared. However, when Anne succeeded in the two currently female-incongruent fields, raters treated her as a personal and social deviate by distancing themselves and by denigrating her role behaviors and personal traits, including her femininity. Parallel costs were not found for John nor were Anne's work-related qualities undermined. Undergraduates expect deviation from occupational gender-types in the 1990s to be personally costly for women, but not for men.

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  1. Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin — Milwaukee, Garland Hall, P.O. Box 413, 53201-0413, Milwaukee, WI, USA

    Janice D. Yoder & Thomas L. Schleicher

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  1. Janice D. Yoder
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  2. Thomas L. Schleicher
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Yoder, J.D., Schleicher, T.L. Undergraduates regard deviation from occupational gender stereotypes as costly for women. Sex Roles 34, 171–188 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01544294

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