Gender, Expertise and Authority: The effect of gender and specialized knowledge on the perception of authority

Abstract

The experiment reported here belongs to a larger research project which aims at analyzing the effects of gender representation and expectation on the perception of the authority of experts in their organization. In this experiment, an episode was presented to 118 managers of both sexes. The situation on the episode concerned the implementation of a technological change in a department of an anonymous firm. Two independent variables were manipulated in the identification of the actor that have been chosen by the administration to lead the process – the actor’s sex and his/her college degree (business administration, engineering and none). After reading the episode subjects were asked to evaluate the difficulty of the task, to attribute causes for this difficulty and for the choice of that person by the administration. Results will be discussed within the framework of gender stereotypical roles, as well as power and knowledge.