Neutralizing Sexism in Mixed-Sex Groups: Do Women Have to Be Better Than Men?

Interaction and the Conservation of Gender Inequality: Considering Employment

“…Multiple experiences are required, especially for people who benefit from gender status beliefs because their self interest makes them more cognitively resistant to disconfirming information. When structural changes (e.g., economic, technological, or widespread social organizational changes) cause a decline in the original distributional inequalities, people will have more frequent disconfirming interactional experiences-for example, interactions in which a woman has resource advantages large enough to override gender status so that she becomes men's actual superior in situational power and prestige (Pugh and Wahrman 1983). Yet, unless structural change produces a rapid outright reversal in the inequalities (i.e., from favoring most men to favoring most women), the rate at which change produces such reversal interactions may not provide enough people with enough disconfirmations to permanently erode their status beliefs except over a long period.…”

How Privatization and Corporatization Affect Healthcare Employees' Work Climate, Work Attitudes and Ill-health: Implications of Social Status

“…One possible interpretation of these findings is based on the differences in social status between women and men. That status differences exist between the genders has been observed in many different contexts (D. Bergman et al, 2009;Ridgeway, 1991Ridgeway, , 2001Ridgeway & Bourg, 2004;Rothman, 2002;Pugh & Wahrman, 1983) as well as that social status is closely related to access to resources and opportunities for control (Adler et al, 1994, Geyer et al, 2006, Lynch et al, 2000Marmot, 2004). It is therefore possible to assume that, because of different social status, women and men have different levels of access to resources and opportunities for control (cf.…”

“…Competence is closely related to power in that the ones who are perceived as more competent are listened to more, implement their proposals with greater ease and have more influence (Ridgeway, 1991). This is particularly evident in a group composed of women and men that needs to solve a task together, which is common in the working context (Pugh & Wahrman, 1983). A higher competency also legitimizes gaining greater rewards and access to more resources (Ridgeway & Correll, 2004).…”

“…The demands for women and men working at the same hierarchic level should be comparable, but there are results suggesting that "all things being equal", requirements are higher for women than for men (Pugh & Wahrman, 1983). Women often perceive that they have to perform better at work than men to be judged as equally good (Frankenhaeuser et al, 1989;Karambayya, 1998;Muhonen, 1999).…”

“…Other studies have shown that women's and men's situations do differ even when they are working at a similar level (Lundberg & Frankenhaeuser, 1999;Torkelson et al, 2007). This could be due to the lower social status of women (Ridgeway, 1991) who therefore have higher demands to show their competence (Pugh & Wahrman, 1983) while also having less access to resources such as influence and power (Miller & Clark, 2008).…”