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PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY2006, 59, 815846
MEN, WOMEN, AND MANAGERS: ARESTEREOTYPES FINALLY CHANGING?
EMILY E. DUEHR and JOYCE E. BONOUniversity of Minnesota, Twin
Cities
As the number of women in management roles increases and
organi-zations place a greater emphasis on diversity, a subsequent
change inperceptions of women as leader-like is expected. To test
this notion,we examined gender and management stereotypes of male
and femalemanagers and students. Results reveal considerable change
in male man-agers views of women over the past 30 years, as
evidenced by greatercongruence between their perceptions of women
and successful man-agers and stronger endorsement of agentic and
task-oriented leadershipcharacteristics for women. Stereotypes held
by male students changedless, remaining strikingly similar to
stereotypes held by male managers15 years ago. Across samples,
there was general agreement in the char-acteristics of managers but
less agreement about the characteristics ofwomen. We also found men
somewhat less likely than women to at-tribute successful manager
characteristics to women. Respondents withpositive past experiences
with female managers tended to rate womenhigher on management
characteristics.
In the United States, the number of women in the managerial and
pro-fessional ranks has steadily increased. According to Catalyst,
a researchand advisory organization committed to advancing women in
business,women now hold 51% of managerial and professional
specialty positions(Welle, 2004). Women also hold 51% of bachelors
degrees and 45% ofall advanced degrees (Eagly & Karau, 2002).
Although these numbers arelarger today than ever before, the
progression of women into executivepositions continues to be slow.
For example, among the Fortune 500 com-panies, only 16% of
corporate officers, 14% of board directors, 5% of topearners, and
just over 1% of CEOs are women (Welle, 2004).
Much research has focused on explaining the slow managerial
ad-vancement of women (e.g., Cleveland, Vescio, &
Barnes-Farrell, 2005;Stroh, Brett, & Reilly, 1992), ruling out
reasons such as lesser skills, edu-cation, and time out of the
workforce. One plausible explanation that hasnot been ruled out is
that women face subtle barriers in the corporate climb.In a recent
survey of 120 CEOs and 705 female executives drawn from the
Correspondence and requests for reprints should be addressed to
Emily E. Duehr, 75East River Road, Department of Psychology,
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN55455;
[email protected] C 2006 BLACKWELL PUBLISHING, INC.
815
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816 PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY
Fortune 1,000 companies (Wellington, Kropf, & Gerkovich,
2003), 72% ofCEOs and 51% of female executives perceived
stereotypes about womensroles and abilities to be an important
barrier to their advancement.
Clearly, gender stereotypes are salient in organizations as a
potentialbarrier to advancement; however, the degree to which
stereotypes persistin the 21st century is unclear. Thirty years
have passed since issues ofgender inequality in management and
leadership reached the public eye(e.g., Kanter, 1977), and in that
time women have become more commonin the boardroom. As the gender
balance in management changes, parallelchanges in hiring practices,
mentor availability, and eventually gender rolestereotypes should
follow (Kanter, 1977).
Over the course of the past several decades, there have also
beenchanges on the management front. Contemporary books and
articles onmanagement describe management work in qualities
traditionally definedas feminine (Fondas, 1997, p. 257), such as
helping and developing oth-ers, and building networks of
relationships. In the academic literature, anew genre of leadership
(i.e., charismatic and transformational leadership;Bass, 1985,
1998) has dominated recent research (Judge & Piccolo,
2004).There is also ongoing debate about whether women now hold a
leadershipadvantage (Eagly & Carli, 2003; Vecchio, 2002,
2003).
Given the changes in both womens work roles and models of
leader-ship effectiveness, the aim of our research is to assess
current perceptionsof men, women, and successful managers.
Specifically, the purpose of ourstudy is to assess management and
gender stereotypes today, comparingthem with those that existed in
the 1970s and 1980s (Brenner, Tomkiewicz,& Schein, 1989;
Heilman, Block, Martell, & Simon, 1989; Schein, 1973,1975).
Gender Stereotypes: Time for Change?
Gender stereotypes are categorical beliefs regarding the traits
and be-havioral characteristics ascribed to individuals on the
basis of their gender.They serve as expectations about the
attributes and behaviors of individualgroup members (Cleveland,
Stockdale, & Murphy, 2000) and are consid-ered one of the
direct antecedents of discrimination at work (Dovidio &Hebl,
2005). Typically, women are stereotyped as more communal andmen as
more agentic. Communal characteristics are primarily concernedwith
the welfare of other people, including attributes such as
compas-sionate, kind, sentimental, helpful, and generous. Agentic
characteristicsdescribe a more assertive, dominant, and confident
tendency, includingattributes such as aggressive, ambitious,
independent, and self-confident.Agentic characteristics have
traditionally been aligned with leadershiproles (Eagly, 1987; Eagly
& Karau, 2002).
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EMILY E. DUEHR AND JOYCE E. BONO 817
Gender stereotypes have been documented for decades. Although
someresearch suggests that stereotypes are not quick to change,
even in the wakeof changing social influences (e.g., Lueptow,
Garovich-Szabo, & Lueptow,2001), it is clear that the social
environment with respect to women hasbeen changing. The past
several decades have included changes in thelegal environment
(e.g., Civil Rights Act of 1964, affirmative action) andassociated
changes in the extent to which organizations focus on
equalopportunity employment practices, both as a function of legal
guidelinesand as a movement toward fostering diversity as a
business goal (Rynes &Rosen, 1995). Changes in attitudes toward
women have also been docu-mented (Twenge, 1997a). These
environmental changes suggest two pos-sible reasons why gender
stereotypes may be changing, especially forwomen in management. The
first possibility is that a gradual change ingender stereotypes may
be occurring due to changing social roles (e.g.,more women at work
and in management and executive positions). Thesecond possibility
is change due to organizational interventions, such asdiversity
training aimed at decreasing gender stereotypes and other
preju-diced attitudes. Both possibilities are discussed in the next
section.
According to social role theory (Eagly, 1987), agentic and
communalcharacteristics are differentially attributed to men and
women because un-equal distribution into occupations and families
fosters such expectations(Diekman & Eagly, 2000). As the
distribution of men and women intosocial roles shifts, perceptions
of the characteristics of men and women(i.e., stereotypes) should
also change; however, change cannot be expectedto occur quickly
(Lueptow et al., 2001). Recently, Diekman and Eagly(2000) found
evidence of changing conceptions of women, reporting
thatstereotypes of women have shifted toward more masculine or
agentic char-acteristics. In a meta-analysis, Twenge (1997b)
reported that womensself-reported masculinity scores were rising
over time and proposed thatthis increase resulted from the changing
social climate for women. Con-trary to Twenge (1997b), Lueptow et
al.s (2001) reviewwhich exam-ines gender stereotypes based largely
on self-report personality and directcomparisons of men and
womensuggested that gender stereotypes haveremained stable over
time with a possible increase in the perceived femi-ninity of
females. Although neither of these streams of research focuses
ongender and management, they do suggest that whether or not
stereotypesare changing is an unsettled issue.
A decidedly different reason to expect changing gender
stereotypes isdue to the increased focus on diversity in
organizations, including spe-cific interventions (e.g., diversity
training) designed to foster this goal. Itis now estimated that
organizations spend $8 billion annually on diver-sity training, and
in a recent survey of Fortune 1,000 companies, 88%reported
providing diversity training on gender (Jayne & Dipboye,
2004).
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818 PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY
Diversity training can be aimed at increasing awareness and
appreciationof differences between individuals or decreasing
stereotypes held by or-ganizational members. When focused on
gender, the aim is typically toidentify stereotypes and promote
inclusion, rather than highlighting dif-ferences between men and
women (Jayne & Dipboye, 2004). Researchon schema change shows
that once schemas are established, they are veryresistant to
change, even in the face of disconfirming evidence (Epitropaki&
Martin, 2004; Labianca, Gray, & Brass, 2000). Epitropaki and
Martin(2004) stated that unless specific interventions and
conscious efforts bymanagement for schema change happen in an
organization, organizationalmembers schemas are likely to remain
stable (p. 295). We suggest thatdiversity training is precisely the
type of intervention and conscious effortneeded to promote changes
in gender stereotypes.
A recent study by Rudman, Ashmore, and Gary (2001) examined
theimpact of diversity education on stereotypes and prejudices, and
foundthat training can reduce these biases at multiple levels. Not
only did diver-sity education lead to a decrease in directly
reported, explicit stereotypes,but such education also reduced
implicit stereotypes, which occur on anautomatic, unconscious level
(Greenwald & Banaji, 1995). Implicit stereo-types are thought
to be more stable and enduring associations because theyhave been
learned through years of environmental influences (Kawakami&
Dovidio, 2001). If such associations can be unlearned through
diversitytraining, and diversity training is common in todays work
organizations,then it is possible that gender stereotypes may be
changing as a resultof direct interventions. If diversity training
is a key factor influencingstereotype change, we would expect to
see greater change among thoseindividuals with more time and
experience in the workplace, due to theirincreased participation in
such training.
Research Using the Schein Descriptive Index
A crucial consideration when examining gender stereotypes in
workorganizations is the extent to which these stereotypes affect
perceptionsof managers. Research within the Schein paradigm focuses
on the rela-tionship between gender and management stereotypes,
reflecting the ex-tent to which men and women are viewed as
leader-like. In 1973, Scheindeveloped the Descriptive Index to
assess the extent to which men andwomen were perceived to have the
requisite personal characteristics ex-pected for management
positions. Using a broad list of adjectives, Scheinfound that the
characteristics of successful middle managers were muchmore similar
to the characteristics commonly ascribed to men in gen-eral and not
at all like the characteristics attributed to women in
general.Schein (1975) replicated these results with a sample of
female managers,
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EMILY E. DUEHR AND JOYCE E. BONO 819
demonstrating that it was not only males who held gender
stereotypes in theworkplace.
In a key extension of the Schein paradigm approximately 15 years
afterthe original research, Heilman et al. (1989) examined the
extent to whichgender stereotypes persisted in organizations.
Heilman et al. (1989) repli-cated Scheins (1973) original work and
found stereotypical views aboutthe characteristics of men in
general, women in general, and success-ful managers at a level that
closely paralleled Scheins (1973) findings,suggesting little change
in the stereotypes of male managers over time.Heilman also extended
Scheins research by comparing successful man-agers to male and
female managers and to successful male and femalemanagers, finding
considerably weaker gender stereotypes when more in-formation was
provided about the managerial success of women (e.g.,female
managers or successful female managers).
Concurrent research with female managers yielded slightly
differentresults. Brenner et al. (1989) replicated the original
Schein studies usingboth male and female management samples. They
found no evidence ofchanging stereotypes among male managers;
however, female managersrated both men and women as similar to
successful managers. This dispar-ity between male and female
respondents was due largely to differencesin their view of women,
not in their view of successful managers.
Since 1989, researchers have continued to use the Schein
paradigm toidentify gender stereotypes, but nearly all of this
research has used studentsamples. Although some researchers have
argued that college studentswould be less likely to report gender
stereotypes due to a more egalitariansocial context (Lueptow et
al., 2001), research using the Schein paradigmhas repeatedly shown
that college students hold strong gender stereotypes,especially the
male students (Schein & Mueller, 1992). Similar resultshave
been reported among students in Germany, Great Britain, Japan,and
China (Schein, Mueller, & Jacobson, 1989; Schein, Mueller,
Lituchy,& Liu, 1996). This pattern of findings led Schein
(2001) to conclude,In the United States many people believed that
as women moved intomanagement, managerial sex typing would
diminish. And it did, amongwomen. But men have continued to see
women in ways that are not com-plimentary vis-a`-vis succeeding in
positions of authority and influence(p. 684).
This discouraging statement on gender and management
stereotypesmay not apply uniformly to all men. Results derived from
student sam-ples may not generalize to employees in work
organizations, especiallymanagers, who experience both increased
exposure to women leadersand direct interventions such as diversity
training. Key replications ofthe Schein paradigm with managers took
place in the late 1980s, at atime when women were fast increasing
their presence in organizations
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820 PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY
(Heilman et al., 1989), but since that time the number of women
in lead-ership positions has continued to grow (Welle, 2004).
Therefore, afteranother 15-year period, the time is ripe to examine
whether gender stereo-types held by managers have changed. It is
not sufficient to rely solelyon student samples to address this
question. Therefore, we included bothmanagers and students in our
research to provide a more thorough portraitof current gender and
management stereotypes.
Since the first Schein (1973) study of gender and management
stereo-types, there have been many advances in the literature with
respect to theconceptualization and measurement of stereotypes, and
adjective check-lists, such as the Schein Descriptive Index, have
been criticized. Devineand Elliot (1995) distinguished between
ratings of stereotypes and rat-ings of personal beliefs. According
to their distinction, the Schein Indexfocuses on personal beliefs,
which may or may not be congruent witheither knowledge or
endorsement of stereotypes (see Kunda & Spencer,2003). However,
by aggregating the personal beliefs of male and femalemanagers and
students, as we do in this research, we can examine thegender and
management stereotypes held by groups of individuals (e.g.,male
managers).
Recent stereotype research has also demonstrated differences
betweenexplicit and implicit stereotypes (e.g., Rudman et al.,
2001; Ziegert &Hanges, 2005). Implicit stereotypes are the
introspectively unidentifiedtraces of past experience that mediate
attributions of qualities to membersof a social category (Greenwald
& Banaji, 1995, p. 15). Additional re-search has focused on the
difference between descriptive (i.e., consensualexpectations about
what men and women actually do) and prescriptive (i.e.,consensual
expectations about what men and women should do) stereo-types
(e.g., Eagly & Karau, 2002; Heilman, Wallen, Fuchs, &
Tamkins,2004). We recognize both the complexity of stereotypes and
their mea-surement and the possible role that implicit and
prescriptive stereotypesmay play in the advancement of women in
management. However, as thepurpose of our study was to compare
views of men, women, and man-agers over time, it was necessary for
us to use an explicit measure, whichdue to its reliance on
adjective descriptors of men, women, and managers,assesses
descriptive gender stereotypes.
A second concern raised by Devine and Elliot (1995) was the use
of out-dated adjectives, which may provide a limited description of
men, women,and managers. Given the changing leadership paradigms
over the past30 years, we felt it was crucial to add adjectives
reflecting a broader range ofleadership styles. In particular,
adjectives describing relationship-orientedand transformational
leadership were absent from the original Descrip-tive Index,
whereas task-oriented leadership characteristics were
well-represented. Task-oriented leadership behaviors emphasize
group output;
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EMILY E. DUEHR AND JOYCE E. BONO 821
such as establishing objectives and goals, structuring tasks,
and evaluat-ing work quality. In contrast, relationship-oriented
behaviors emphasizesupportive personal relationships, a willingness
to develop employees anddemonstrations of respect and warmth
(Bales, 1954; Bowers & Seashore,1966; House & Aditya,
1997). Although task and relationship-orientedleadership have a
long history in the leadership research, recent researchhas focused
more on transformational leadership behaviors (Judge &
Pic-colo, 2004). Transformational leaders inspire and motivate
followers withoptimism and commitment to a compelling vision. They
link work goalsto worker values, challenge established practices,
and attend to the indi-vidual growth needs of followers (Bass,
1985, 1998). Given that recentmeta-analyses have highlighted the
positive effects of both relationship1(Judge, Piccolo, & Ilies,
2004) and transformational (Judge & Piccolo,2004) leadership
behaviors on employee attitudes and motivation, groupperformance,
and leader effectiveness, we added adjectives describingthese
behaviors to the index.
Most past research using the Schein Index examined each of the
92 ad-jectives individually. In order to make comparisons over
time, we deemedit important to use the original adjectives, but we
also combined the adjec-tives to form several scales. In order to
assess broad gender stereotypes,agentic and communal scales were
formed. In addition, we combined ad-jectives to form scales for
task-oriented leadership, relationship-orientedleadership, and
transformational leadership to better link this researchto current
models of effective leadership (Judge & Piccolo, 2004; Judgeet
al., 2004).
Individual Differences in Beliefs About Men, Women, and
Managers
Although the primary purpose of our research is to examine
stereotypesheld by groups of individuals (e.g., male managers,
female students), verylittle is known about the characteristics of
individuals who predict theirbeliefs about men, women, and
managers. Most existing research usingthe Schein Descriptive Index
has used either student or managerial sam-ples, preventing direct
comparison among these groups. Moreover, whencomparing the
stereotypes of managers and students, it is not clear
whetherdifferences in stereotypes between these groups are due to
the effects ofage, years of work experience, experience with female
managers, or hold-ing a managerial role. Therefore, an additional
aim of our research is to
1The Judge et al. (2004) meta-analysis uses the label
consideration instead ofrelationship-oriented leadership. These
categories refer to comparable and concurrent pro-grams of
research. The labels have frequently been used interchangeably in
research (e.g.,Eagly & Johnson, 1990; Sczesny et al.,
2004).
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822 PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY
tease apart the source of differences between individuals in
their beliefsabout men, women, and managers by examining personal
characteristics(i.e., age, gender, education) and organizational
experiences (i.e., havinga female supervisor, being satisfied with
a female supervisor).
Summary of Research Questions
Given the continued movement of women into management posi-tions
and changes in dominant leadership paradigms over the past
severaldecades, the time is ripe to examine whether anything has
changed withrespect to management and gender stereotypes. To that
end, we addressfive specific research questions.
(1) Research Question 1. Have management and gender
stereotypesheld by male and female managers changed relative to 15
and 30years ago?
(2) Research Question 2. Have management and gender stereotypes
heldby male and female students changed, and how do they compare
tothe stereotypes of male and female managers?
(3) Research Question 3. If gender stereotypes have changed,
what isdriving that change? Have views of managers changed, have
viewsof men and women changed, or have both changed?
(4) Research Question 4. Do the broad gender stereotypic
(agentic, com-munal) and leadership-specific (task-oriented,
relationship-oriented,transformational) characteristics attributed
to men, women, andmanagers differ by sample?
(5) Research Question 5. Do individual differences in education,
age,management experience, and experiences with female
supervisorspredict beliefs about men, women, and managers?
Method
Participants and Procedures
We used four distinct samples in this research: male managers,
femalemanagers, male students, and female students. Managers (n =
620) whoparticipated in this research were drawn from a variety of
public and privatesector organizations and came from a variety of
job types (e.g., account-ing, human resources, law enforcement,
public works, etc.). All managerswere enrolled in voluntary
leadership development programs. Data werealso collected from
undergraduate students (n = 688) at a large publicuniversity.
Students were enrolled in a variety of psychology courses
andreceived credit for their participation. They represented a
broad array of
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EMILY E. DUEHR AND JOYCE E. BONO 823
TABLE 1Sample Characteristics for This Study
Sample N Sample characteristics Summary statisticsMale managers
333 Age M = 48 years, SD = 8.8
Education 81% BA or higher# Direct reports x = 9, SD =
13Race
Caucasian 85.2%African American/Black 3.1%Hispanic 1.7%Asian
1.7%
Female managers 287 Age M = 46 years, SD = 9.2Education 78% BA
or higher# Direct reports x = 9, SD = 10Race
Caucasian 88.7%African American/Black 4.0%Hispanic 0%Asian
1.3%
Male students 221 Age M = 21 years, SD = 3.8Managerial
experience 25% had been managersRace
Caucasian 79.6%African American/Black 5.0%Hispanic 1.4%Asian
9.5%
Female students 467 Age M = 20 years, SD = 3.6Managerial
experience 15% had been managersRace
Caucasian 78.6%African American/Black 2.4%Hispanic 1.3%Asian
13.3%
academic majors, including economics, journalism, business, and
psy-chology. Demographic information regarding participants age,
race, edu-cation, and number of direct reports (for managers) is
provided in Table 1.The age of the managers in our samples is
comparable to Schein (1973,1975) and Heilman et al. (1989).
Surveys were administered to managers as an optional component
ofa survey used in leadership development programs. Surveys were
dis-tributed during orientation and completed prior to the start of
any formalprogram activity. The research portion of the survey was
clearly identifiedas distinct from the leadership assessment, which
was for developmentalpurposes only and not provided to the managers
organization. Therefore,
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824 PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY
managers were encouraged to provide honest responses throughout
thesurvey as the results would be used for research purposes only.
The re-search portion of the survey was confidential and anonymous
and wasreturned in postage-paid envelopes to the authors. Among the
managerswho completed a leadership development survey, 82% also
completed aresearch survey. Surveys were distributed to student
samples in severalsmall group sessions. Student surveys were
anonymous.
There were seven versions of our survey, each one representing a
dif-ferent target condition. The seven conditions were (a)
successful middlemanagers, (b) women in general, (c) men in
general, (d) women managers,(e) men managers, (f) successful women
managers, and (g) successful menmanagers. The first condition
(successful middle managers) is the controlcondition and Conditions
2 through 7 are gendered conditions that rangein level of
specificity (e.g., from women in general, to women managers,to
successful women managers). Participants were randomly assigned
toone of seven conditions. All seven surveys included the same list
of de-scriptive adjectives and instructions but differed with
respect to the targetgroup. For example, some respondents were
asked to report the extent towhich each adjective was reflective of
women in general, whereas oth-ers were asked to report the extent
to which each adjective was reflectiveof successful men managers.
Therefore, each participant responded toonly one target condition.
The number of participants responding to eachtarget condition
varies by sample and is reported in Table 2.
Measures
Gender stereotypes. A revised version of the Descriptive
Index(Schein, 1973), including the original 92 items plus 26
additional newitems (described below), was used to measure gender
stereotypes andcharacteristics of successful middle managers.
Despite widespread use ofthe Descriptive Index, there is very
little information published regardingits psychometric properties.
Based on the suggestion of anonymous re-viewers, we collected some
post hoc data to address this concern. Amonga student sample (n =
30), we found the 2-week testretest reliability tobe .90,
suggesting relatively stable ratings for a given target condition.
Wealso examined whether ratings would differ if the control
condition waslabeled successful manager rather than successful
middle manager.Among a student sample (n = 97), we found these
ratings to be highlycorrelated (r = .98), indicating similar
perceptions of the characteristicsof managers (more generally) and
middle managers.
We added 26 new items to the Descriptive Index to address
concernsabout outdated adjectives (Devine & Elliot, 1995) and
to better repre-sent current styles of leadership. We added 13 new
adjectives to describe
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EMILY E. DUEHR AND JOYCE E. BONO 825
TABLE 2Sample Breakdown by Condition of the Descriptive
Index
Sample Condition NMale managers 1. Successful middle managers
57
2. Women in general 503. Men in general 404. Women managers 395.
Men managers 516. Successful women managers 387. Successful men
managers 58
Female managers 1. Successful middle managers 362. Women in
general 353. Men in general 364. Women managers 355. Men managers
486. Successful women managers 507. Successful men managers 47
Male students 1. Successful middle managers 322. Women in
general 283. Men in general 364. Women managers 315. Men managers
336. Successful women managers 367. Successful men managers 25
Female students 1. Successful middle managers 652. Women in
general 723. Men in general 704. Women managers 775. Men managers
586. Successful women managers 607. Successful men managers 65
transformational leaders. The new items were based on the most
widelyused measure of transformational leadership, the Multifactor
LeadershipQuestionnaire (MLQ; Avolio, Bass, & Jung, 1995). Each
author separatelyreviewed the MLQ and developed a list of
adjectives that were reflectiveof transformational leadership,
resulting in 13 items to be added to theinventory (see Appendix A).
Additional items were added to reflect man-agement characteristics
that are relationship oriented, as such adjectiveswere largely
unrepresented among the original 92 items of the Descrip-tive
Index. Participants responded to all 118 items using a 5-point
ratingscale ranging from 1 not characteristic to 5 characteristic.
Survey instruc-tions were modeled after Schein (1975) and asked
participants to rate eachadjective according to what they think the
target group is like.
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826 PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY
TABLE 3Intercorrelations Among Gender and Leadership Scales in
This Study
Scale 1 2 3 4 51. Agentic .782. Communal .33 .733. Task .69 .06
.804. Relationship .03 .68 .39 .875. Transformational .16 .60 .50
.89 .94
Note. Combined sample = 1,363. Scale alphas are presented on the
diagonal.p < .05. p < .01.
We also used the original and new Descriptive Index adjectives
toform scales. Scales were chosen a priori and a judgmental sort
wasundertaken by the authors. This method was preferable to an
empiricalsort (i.e., factor analysis) because specific scales were
selected based ontheir theoretical relevance to gender and
management stereotypes (Eagly,Johannesen-Schmidt, & van Engen,
2003; Eagly & Johnson, 1990; Eagly& Karau, 2002). The
selection of adjectives to form each scale was guidedby previous
research. More specifically, with respect to broad
genderstereotypes, we formed agentic and communal scales using
adjectivesor direct synonyms described by Eagly and Karau (2002).
Furthermore,an effort was made to include agentic and communal
adjectives with bothpositive and negative connotations, as in
Diekman and Eagly (2000). Thisprocess identified 14 adjectives from
Scheins original 92 to reflect agenticand communal characteristics.
With respect to leadership-specific scales,we formed task and
relationship-oriented scales based on recent researchby Sczesny
(2003) and Sczesny, Bosak, Neff, and Schyns (2004), whoclassified
attributes into highly reliable task and person-oriented
scales.Whenever possible, we matched exact adjectives or synonyms
from theDescriptive Index to form these scales; however, several
new adjectiveswere included in the relationship-oriented leadership
scale as these itemswere underrepresented among the original items
of the Descriptive Index.We used the 13 new transformational
leadership items to form a transfor-mational leadership scale.
All gender and leadership scales and associated items are listed
in Ap-pendix A. Scale alphas and intercorrelations are presented in
Table 3. Therelatively high intercorrelations reported between some
scales were notsurprising. Notably, the correlation between the
agentic and task-orientedscales (r = .69) is in line with the
stereotypic notion of task-orientedleadership as more masculine,
and the correlation between the commu-nal and relationship-oriented
scales (r = .68) reflects the more feminineassociations with this
style of leadership (Cann & Siegfried, 1990; Eagly&
Johnson, 1990). A high correlation between relationship-oriented
and
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EMILY E. DUEHR AND JOYCE E. BONO 827
transformational leadership was also anticipated, although the
associationbetween our transformational and relationship-oriented
scales (r = .89) issomewhat higher than previous meta-analytic
estimates of this relationship(Miliffe, Piccolo, & Judge,
2005). Given the strong, positive correlationsbetween
transformational and relationship-oriented leadership
behaviors,Judge et al. (2004) called for research aimed at
assessing the extent towhich they represent distinct types of
leadership behavior, but to date lit-tle empirical work has fully
addressed this issue (see Seltzer & Bass, 1990for an
exception). Therefore, consistent with existing leadership
literature,we treat relationship-oriented and transformational
leadership behaviorsas distinct constructs.
Individual differences. To address our goal of understanding
better theindividual differences in characteristics that predict
individuals beliefsabout men, women, and managers, we asked a
limited number of back-ground items at the end of the survey.
Participants were asked to reporttheir age, gender, and level of
education on a 5-point scale correspondingto: high school, 1 =
associates degree 2 = BA/BS 3 = MA/MS 4 = orPhD 5 =. Managers were
also asked to indicate the number of persons whoreported directly
to them. Students were asked if they had ever been a man-ager. A
small portion (15%) of the students reported having been a
managerfor an average of 1.9 years. Due to the large discrepancy in
experience andage between students and the manager sample, we
retained students withmanagement experience in the student sample.
In addition to these items,we assessed participants experiences
with female supervisors, via twoquestions: Have you ever had a
female supervisor (yes or no)? and Ifyes, on average how positively
would you rate the experience (from 1 =poor to 5 = excellent)?
Participants were instructed to provide an averageif they have had
multiple female supervisors.
Results
In reviewing our results, it is important to keep in mind that
we have foursamples and seven conditions. Thus, in some cases we
will be presentingresults of 28 different comparisons for a single
research question. Table 2,which describes the four samples and
seven conditions in our study, maybe a helpful guide in following
our results.
Original Items of the Descriptive Index
To determine the degree of correspondence between ratings of
suc-cessful middle managers and men and women, intraclass
correlation coef-ficients (ICCs) were used. ICCs were preferable to
Pearsons correlationsfor these analyses because ICCs consider both
the relative correspondenceand the absolute agreement between
ratings. As in past research, ICCs
-
828 PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY
were computed from randomized-groups analyses of variance where
thegroups, or classes, were the original 92 adjectives. The scores
within eachclass were the mean item ratings for each adjective,
provided separatelyfor each target condition and sample. ICCs were
computed between thecontrol condition (successful middle managers)
and each of the genderedconditions, which are treated as
independent samples.2 This process wasrepeated separately for each
of the four samples used in this study. Theresulting ICCs report
the similarity of participants ratings of successfulmiddle managers
to each of the six gendered conditions. A high correla-tion
reflects similar ratings for a particular set of comparison
conditions(e.g., successful middle managers and women managers).
The size of thecorrelation between any two conditions reflects the
degree to which thecomparison group (e.g., women in general or
successful male managers)is perceived to have characteristics
similar to those of successful mid-dle managers. If the difference
in the correlations between two sets ofconditions (e.g., successful
managers and men in general as compared tosuccessful managers and
women in general) exceeds .29, the difference isstatistically
significant (p < .05).3
Male and female managers. In Table 4, we present correlations
for oursamples, along with correlations from past research using
managementsamples for comparison. The row label indicates which of
the genderedconditions is being compared to successful middle
managers (i.e., Row1 compares women in general and successful
middle managers) and thecolumn label indicates which sample the
data is drawn from. Most ofthe correlations were significant,
indicating more than a chance level ofsimilarity between the six
gendered conditions and successful managers;however, the magnitude
of these relationships varies widely by conditionand sample.
The most notable change in results over time is in the
comparisonbetween perceptions of successful middle managers and
women in general.
2The current use of ICCs as a measure of correspondence is
comparable to a two-wayrandom effects model/absolute agreement in
reliability analyses where two raters rated92 objects. In our use
of the ICCs, the raters are analogous to the control and
genderedconditions while the objects are adjectives. We thank an
anonymous reviewer for providingthis illustration to aid in
understanding our analyses.
3In our analyses using the Descriptive Index, the sample size is
the number of adjec-tives (92), not the number of respondents in
each condition. Therefore, if the difference inthe correlations
between two sets of conditions exceeds .29, the difference between
thesecorrelations reaches statistical significance (p < .05). We
note that tests of statistical sig-nificance are heavily influenced
by sample size, and correlations should only be comparedif
variances are equal across samples (Cudeck, 1989). Because we do
not have variabilitydata for the Heilman et al. (1989) data and
variances in our data vary somewhat by sampleand target condition,
the .29 difference marking significance (p < .05) between
correlationsshould be used with some caution.
-
EMILY E. DUEHR AND JOYCE E. BONO 829
TAB
LE4
Intra
clas
sCor
rela
tion
Coeffi
cients
Acro
ssVa
riou
sSam
ples
an
dCo
nditi
onsf
orth
eO
rigin
al92
Adjec
tives
ofth
eSc
hein
Des
crip
tive
Inde
x
Sam
ple
Bre
nner
Hei
lman
Bre
nner
Sche
inSc
hein
Sche
inet
al.
etal
.Sc
hein
etal
.et
al.
etal
.(19
73)
(1989
)(19
89)
(1975
)(19
89)
(1989
)(19
89)
Gro
upsb
eing
mal
em
ale
mal
eM
ale
fem
ale
fem
ale
Fem
ale
mal
eM
ale
fem
ale
Fem
ale
com
pare
dm
anag
ers
man
ager
sm
anag
ers
man
ager
sm
anag
ers
man
ager
sm
anag
ers
stud
ents
stud
ents
stud
ents
stud
ents
Wo
men
and
man
ager
s.06
.01
.24
.63
.30
.52
.70
.11
.10
.43
.35
Men
and
man
ager
s.62
.72
.54
.61
.54
.59
.49
.70
.40
.51
.45
Wo
men
man
ager
san
dm
anag
ers
.58
.81
.96
.69
.91
Men
man
ager
san
dm
anag
ers
.86
.74
.61
.68
.78
Succ
essf
ulw
om
en
man
ager
san
dm
anag
ers
.93
.97
.98
.93
.98
Succ
essf
ulm
en
man
ager
san
dm
anag
ers
.98
.97
.95
.95
.95
Note
.D
ata
from
this
stud
yar
epr
esen
ted
inbo
ld,i
nda
taCo
lum
ns4,
7,9,
and
11.
p