Obituaries of Female and Male Leaders From 1974 to 2016 Suggest Change in Descriptive but Stability of Prescriptive Gender Stereotypes

Abstract

We analyzed 1415 newspaper obituaries of female and male leaders published in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland from 1974 to 2016, covering a time-span of 42 years, to investigate change in descriptive and prescriptive gender stereotypes. The obituaries’ content was condensed to four categories: agency, competence, and communion were used to investigate changes in descriptive stereotypes. The category likability was used to infer changes in prescriptive stereotypes. Consistent with theories claiming changeability of stereotypes, our results indicate changes in descriptive stereotypes. Female leaders were described as increasingly agentic over time, but not as increasingly competent. Descriptions regarding communion remained unchanged. In contrast, the description of male leaders remained relatively stable at first, followed by changes in recent years, where men were described as decreasingly competent and increasingly communal. Simultaneously, our results support theories suggesting stability of stereotypes over time indicating unchanged prescriptive stereotypes. Accordingly, increases in female leaders’ agency were associated with decreases in likability. In male leaders, increases in communion were associated with decreases in likability. Overall, our results reconcile divided theories regarding the changeability of gender stereotypes. Furthermore, our results emphasize that research and praxis need to enhance attention on prescriptive stereotypes to facilitate female leadership.

Leadership During Crisis: An Examination of Supervisory Leadership Behavior and Gender During COVID-19

“…While we were unable to directly compare leader behaviors before and during the pandemic, we note that the prepandemic literature shows the persistence of prescriptive stereotypes of women as more communal and men as more agentic (e.g., Duehr & Bono, 2006;Eagly et al, 2019;Zehnter et al, 2018) despite little differences in behavior (Eagly & Johnson, 1990) as well as backlash toward agentic women (Rudman, 1998;Rudman & Glick, 2001), in line with findings here. This may seem contrary to the suggestions of the glass cliff literature regarding a preference for women as leaders in crisis; however, glass cliff studies often do not disentangle agency and communality from leader sex, focus more on choosing a leader than how the leader acts once in the role, and are primarily about top-level leaders.…”

“…Men's traditional gender role encourages them to display agentic traits such as assertiveness and self-confidence, while women are expected to engage in communal behaviors such as being kind and showing concern for others (Eagly, 1987). Research supports that prescriptive gendered stereotypes regarding agency and communion have endured into the 21 st century (Duehr & Bono, 2006;Eagly et al, 2019;Zehnter et al, 2018).…”

Obituarios académicos y homenajes póstumos: legados científicos para el campo de la Cienciometría

“…Los análisis de obituarios son frecuentes en distintas áreas del conocimiento realizados por medio de estudios orientados por los abordajes de la Sociología Bielsa, 2007), Periodismo (Starck, 2008, Hanusch, 2010, Lingüística (Florea, 2010), Literatura (Demoors, 2005), Psicología (Zenther;Olsen;Kirchler, 2018) y Medicina (Soowamber et al, 2016), entre otras. Vale observar que los enfoques sociológicos de la ciencia también contribuyen al estudio de los obituarios, ya que exponen sistemas de valores y méritos que integran una disciplina, comunidad o campo científico (Merton, 1968(Merton, , 1973Bourdieu, 1988Bourdieu, , 1996.…”

The conflict between social role expectations and entrepreneurial role demands among women entrepreneurs in sub-Saharan Africa: empirical study from Ethiopia

“…In social role theory, women are stereotypically defined as friendly, warm, unselfish, sociable, interdependent, family-focused and relationship-oriented (Eisenchlas, 2013). These stereotypic views challenge women's involvement in roles socially prescribed to men: such as leadership (Zehnter et al, 2018) or entrepreneurship. Women may even face social sanctions when they behave contrary to SREs (Heilman and Okimoto, 2007), for instance, by portraying masculine attributes typically associated with entrepreneurship (Hechavarria and Ingram, 2016).…”

“…Social role expectations (SREs) are the prescriptive gender role stereotypes as they portray the attributes ascribed to women in a given society (Zehnter et al, 2018). For instance, in SSA, the social roles expected of women is that they should be selfless, put family roles first, and generally be conservative (Skapa, 2005).…”