Gender, Interpersonal Power, and Social Influence

Abstract

This article reviews research on gender differences in power and their effect on social influence. Evidence indicates that men generally possess higher levels of expert and legitimate power than women do and that women possess higher levels of referent power than men do. These differences are reflected, to some extent, in the influence strategies used by men and women and, more clearly, in gender differences in social influence. Women generally have greater difficulty exerting influence than men do, particularly when they use influence that conveys competence and authority. These findings indicate that gender differences in influence are mediated by gender differences in power.How do women influence others? Are they disadvantaged as leaders? Are they less powerful than men are? These questions focus on a current and serious social issue, the relative inequities in social power between men and women. The issue of women's power, relative to men, is not merely academic. Gender differences in power have real consequences for women. For example, although women have made gains in the workplace, with more women working than in the past and women possessing approximately a third of all management positions (Colwill, 1993), women continue to experience wage discrimination, be excluded from the most powerful executive positions, advance more slowly in their careers, and experience fewer benefits from obtaining education or work experience (Federal Glass Ceiling Commission, 1995), and are included in fewer networks (Ragins & Sundstrom, 1989) and exert less authority (Colwill; Lyness & Thompson, 1997) than men in similar positions. A number of researchers have linked career advancement and access to benefits and resources within organizations to an effective use of power (Ely,

Witnessing wrongdoing: The effects of observer power on incivility intervention in the workplace

“…Names were intentionally androgynous so that we could match participants based on the sex of the actors in the video. We matched participant based on sex to control for power imbalance inherent in gender dynamics (Carli, 1999). Following Cortina et al's (2001) workplace incivility measure, the perpetrator ignores, doubts, and behaves condescendingly toward the target in the context of a 3-minute work interaction.…”

Working in a Context of Hostility Toward Women: Implications for Employees' Well-Being.

“…Research suggests that women generally hold less social power than men (Johnson, 1976), so women are often considered less deserving of status and respect in interpersonal interactions (Carli, 1999). More specifically, women tend to be ignored, treated condescendingly, and given little opportunity to participate in interactions (Ridgeway & Berger, 1986).…”

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“…For the researcher who both experimenters agree was the better, more consistent pencil dropper, women picked up more pencils, on average, than men in the high power condition, whereas men picked up more pencils, on average, than women in the low power condition. This significant relationship between gender and power may have occurred because being primed with power can reduce or promote action taking, (Galinsky et al, 2003), and provokes theories about power and societal gender roles (e.g., Carli, 1999;Carli & Eagly, 2001;Haines & Kray, 2005).…”

“…Societal power structures of gender influence experiences of power and decisions of whether and how to help others (Carli, 1999;Eagly, 2009;Haines & Kray, 2005;Keltner et al, 2003;Keshet, Kark, Pomerantz Zorin, Koslowsky, & Schwarzwald, 2006). Previous research on gender (defined as participants' classification as a man or woman) and prosocial behavior documents differences in how women and men help others (Eagly, 2009).…”

“…This helping behavior is often consistent with gender roles expectations; women tend to be prosocial in a caring, interdependent, communal way, but men tend to be prosocial in an agentic, independent, collective way (Eagly, 2009). Examinations of power and gender have mostly consisted of looking at dif ferences in men's and women's access to and types of social power (Carli, 1999) and their respective strategies of social influence related to gender expectations (Keshet et al, 2006). There has been research into how access to power can change women's explicit and implicit self concepts, in that self identification with terms such as dominant and masculine increased for women who had been randomly assigned to a socially powerful group (Haines & Kray, 2005).…”