Lecture 5 - Antisocial Behaviours - Gender Discrimination

Question 1

What does Gender or Sex Discrimination or sexism refer to?

Answer 1

Any negative behaviour (including harassment) directed toward an individual because of their gender or sex.

Question 2

What does the Sex Discrimination Act (1984) (try do) do?

Answer 2

a) Promote equality between men and women;
b) Eliminate discrimination on the basis of sex, marital status or pregnancy and, with respect to dismissals, family responsibilities; and
c) Eliminate sexual harassment at work, in educational institutions, in the provision of goods and service, in the provision of accommodation and the administration of federal programs.

Question 3

What is the glass ceiling?

According to Melamed, 1995

Answer 3

“a solid but invisible barrier which blocks womens’ progress to higher managerial levels and creates a wage-gap between the two sexes”

Question 4

What did Naff (1994) find?

Answer 4

• Sex discrimination at work has shifted to jobs in upper levels of management
• only 1/10 executives are women.
• Even when length of experience and education are equal amongst male and female employees, women still receive fewer promotions

Question 5

What did the Karpin Report find? 1995

Answer 5

“Despite some progressive organisations, the glass ceiling for women in upper management has been maintained for some time, arguably to the detriment of Australia’s enterprise and economic performance….the limited success of women in accessing senior management and executive positions, despite a long period of publicity and legislation, was an additional argument for the most concentrated focus to be placed here”

Question 6

What are the 3 explanations for the glass ceiling effect?

Answer 6

1. Intragroup similarity and prototypicality (Ryan & Haslam, 2007)
2. Stereotypes (Eagly & Karau, 2002; Ryan & Haslam, 2007)
3. Organisational Structures

Question 7

What does the Social Identity approach suggest (as the reason for the glass ceiling effect)?

Answer 7

inequalities in the number of male and female leaders could arise in part because women are seen by those who appoint them (mainly men) to be less protoptypical of the groups they are expected to lead than are men.

Question 8

(Ryan & Haslam, 2007).

Answer 8

Women are less likely to be seen to define the leaders prototype (because they do not maximise intragroup similarity), and are less likely to be doing the defining

Violating either of these stereotypes (gender or leadership) can then result in negative evaluations of women and their performance

Question 9

Eagly and Karau (2002)

Answer 9

argued that the incongruity between what means to be female and what is seen to be managerial can produce two forms of prejudice:

less favourable evaluation of the potential for women to take on leadership roles compared to men, and
less favourable evaluations of the actual behaviour of female leaders.

Due to the noted automatic associations between masculinity and management observers are less likely to ‘spontaneously categorise’ women as leaders or potential leaders.

Question 10

Dipboye, Smith and Howell (1994)

Answer 10

note that organisational barriers include, sexist wording on performance appraisals

Question 11

(Smith, Olson & Falgout, 1991)

Answer 11

differences in tasks assigned; training opportunities and mentoring relationships

Question 12

What is the ‘glass cliff’?

Answer 12

Research has more recently demonstrated that female leaders are more likely to be appointed
i) in a time of poor performance, or
ii) when there is an increased risk of failure, and
as such, their leadership positions can be seen as more precarious than those of men (Ryan & Haslam, 2009).