Gender and management: Stereotypes and attributions for a sucessful career

Abstract

The experiment reported here belongs to a larger research project, which aims at analyzing the effects of gender representation and expectations on the perception of managerial power and success. In this experiment 240 high school students of both sexes received a short description of a successful manager. The actor’s sex, marital status (married/divorced) and sector of activity of the organization (electronics/health) where the manager currently worked were manipulated in this description, but the 8 versions included the information that the organization was going through a particularly successful period since the actor has taken over as manager. Subjects were then asked to report their impressions of the actor in a list of traits, to attribute causes to the position currently reached by the actor in (his/her) career and to estimate to what extent they would like to reach a similar position in their future professional careers. Results will be discussed within the framework of gender and management representations, as well as gender identities.