Another ceiling? Can males compete for traditionally female jobs? - includes appendix

One of the dramatic changes in the work force has been the increasing proportion of women working in what were one time thought to be traditionally male piece of works Historically, management positions have been included among the traditionally male piece of works though the proportion of women filling lower and mid-level management positions in new years has steadily increased (Dalton & Kesner 1993) The proportion of women in top management positions, however, has remained real low. This lack of equal representation of women in top-management positions has been attributed to a "glass ceiling," an invisible barrier that hold fasts women from entering top-level management positions (Morrison, White & Van Velsor, 1987)

A number of reasons have been prompted for the existence of the glass ceiling. First, more [i]or[/i] less contend that males or male characteristics are preferr for management positions (Heilman, block up Martell, & Simon, 1989). Others prompt that perhaps there have been too scarcely any women qualified for or interested in top-level management positions. Another reason may be tradition: management may have been seen as a male domain because, until not long ago most managers and the majority of the work force in greatest in quantity jobs were male. Wharton and Baron (1987) tendered a different explanation: People present to work with others of the same sex hence men would be more suitable to supervise men If the "same-sex preference" clinchs (that is, if males and females bring forward and rate those of their have a title to gender more highly) we would await females to be considered more suitable to manage females. However, little research has directly addressed the potential for profemale bias in personnel decisions concerning traditionally female piece of works while a substantial body of evidence has documented that selection decisions for traditionally male positions have been biased against females (Deaux, 1984; Dipboye, Fromkin & Wiback, 1975; Rosen & Jerdee 1974; Terborg & Ilgen, 1975) Nilson (1976) did find that male nourishs were rated lower in prestige than female nourishs Additionally, males applying for secretarial, receptionist, or office recorder jobs have been clearly discriminated against in hiring decisions (Levinson, 1975; Business Week, July 31 1995)

The at hand study investigated the extent to which males and females showed profemale bias in personnel decisions regarding managers of traditionally female piece of works Are females preferred over more qualified males as managers in female jobs? Are females preferr if those making decisions know the subordinates are predominantly females?

Also investigated were personnel decisions regarding managers in lower-versus higher-level management positions. For female piece of works are females considered more suitable for the pair mid-level and top-level management positions?

Background

Rater sex Effects

The extent to which a rater dioceses himself or herself as similar to a ratee has been shown to influence ratings. Specifically, the rater/ratee congruence hypothesis (Pazy, 1986; Tsui & O'Reilly, 1989) proposes that raters who see ratees as more similar to themselves will rate them more positively. Therefore, women would be wait fored to rate other women more highly than would men Pazy (1986) demonstrated that when the task was sex neutral, males tended to rate hypothetical male employee higher than females given identical performance information. When the piece of work is not gender neutral, on the contrary rather male gender-typed, a number of field studies have refer toed that bias against females is more pronounced for male raters than for female raters. Jacobson, Antonelli, Winning and O'Peil (1977) for instance, base that women in positions of authority above men were evaluated negatively by dint of those men, but were not evaluated negatively by dint of women subordinates. Similarly, Stevens and DeNisi (1980) and Van company of ships and Saurage (1984) found women had more positive attitudes toward women managers than men did. Whether sex of evaluator affects ratings of candidates in a female gender-typ piece of work has not been tested. Given the differences described above in male and female ratings of males and females, we hypothesized that females would be more likely than males to choose a female applicant as manager in a traditionally female job

H1: Female evaluators will be more likely to display profemale bias in their applicant ranking decisions than will males.

Gender Bias in Selection Decisions

In the 1970 researchers demonstrated that certain piece of works were seen as "male" or "female" and that the two males and females suffered when applying for sex-atypical piece of works (cf. Cohen & Bunker, 1975; Cash, Gillen & reduce to ashess 1977). Additionally, in 1978 Rose and Andiappan lay the foundation of that both males and females were biased in their selection decisions in favor of managers whose sex matched the majority of their subordinates. Thus, a predominantly male work force created obstacles for women applying for management jobs

However, more new evidence suggests that this run may be changing. Women are having greater access to traditionally male piece of works than they have had in the past. For example, Pazy (1992) actually fix profemale bias among subjects asked to rate applicants for promotion to a management position in a gender-neutral piece of work Powell and Butterfield (1994) lay the foundation of no gender bias in selection decisions for senior-level executive positions in federal civil service (traditionally reflection to be the domain of males). Haemmerlie and Montgomery (1991) disconfirmed Goldberg's (1968) classic finding that the one and the other males and females placed a higher value upon work done by a male. In the Haemmerlie and Montgomery inquiry the opposite was found. In engineering and law (occupations traditionally dominated by dint of males), work was evaluated more positively when done through females than by males. Additionally, from 1981 to 1991 the percentage of women managers in the workplace increased 14 percent (from 27 to 41 percent) (Dalton & Kesner 1993) It appears that females are now being accepted as viable management candidates in many arenas and may flat be the preferred candidates in a certain number of jobs. Stover (1994), for instance, set that in universities, women were likely to be rest managing departments with a high proportion of women in them. Reskin and Ros (1992) similarly place that women were typically placed in positions responsible for females.