MSc in Business Administration: Leadership and Management MASTERS THESIS FINAL VERSION
How do women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality, fear of backlash
and altruistic citizenship behavior explain workplace well-being?
Name: Pomme van Maren
Student number: 10547533 Thesis supervisor: T. Hentschel Due date: 22-06-2018
1 Statement of originality
This document is written by Student Pomme van Maren who declares to take full responsibility for the contents of this document. I declare that the text and the work presented in this document are original and that no sources other than those mentioned in the text and its references have been used in creating it. The Faculty of Economics and Business is responsible solely for the supervision of completion of the work, not for the contents.
2 Abstract
This study focused on the extent to which women subject themselves to prescriptive stereotypes, and how these might influence workplace behavior and individual outcomes. Prescriptive self-stereotypes are the ideas that people might have of how they should be. I argue that these can be influential in deciding to engage in stereotype-congruent workplace behavior. This research proposed that women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes are positively related to altruistic citizenship behavior, and that this relationship is explained by fear of backlash. Also, this research examined how this mechanism was related to women’s workplace well-being. Through an online survey, data was collected from 214 people. The results show that women have stronger prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality than men and that women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality are related to altruistic citizenship behavior. However the results indicate that fear of backlash does not explain this relationship. Furthermore, the results of this study indicate that there is no relationship between women’s altruistic citizenship behavior and workplace well-being. These results provide an initial understanding of the possible influence of women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes on workplace behavior. However, more research is necessary to examine the persistence of these prescriptive self-stereotypes. Therefore, I conclude with a discussion of the theoretical and practical implications of my findings and with suggestions for future research.
3 Table of content Introduction 4 Theoretical framework 7 Gender stereotypes 7 Self-stereotypes 9
Prescriptive self-stereotypes and altruistic citizenship behavior 11
Fear of backlash 14
Altruistic citizenship behavior and workplace well-being 16
This research 19
Method 20
Participants 20
Materials and procedure 20
Measurements 21
Results 23
Discussion 27
Strengths, limitations and suggestions for future research 32
Practical implications 35
Conclusion 36
Reference list 37
4 Introduction
In the past 30 years, gender roles have changed dramatically. Despite the fact that women are increasingly more active in the workforce (The World Bank, 2018), there is still an underrepresentation of women in top management functions, as men are more likely to occupy leadership positions (Catalyst, 2016). Even though women and men have the same knowledge (Eurostat, 2018), women still seem to encounter obstacles towards gender equality in the workplace (Heilman, 2012).
These obstacles can be a result of gender stereotypes, as these are argued to play a role in gender inequality (Eagly & Sczeny, 2009; Heilman, 2012). Gender stereotypes are defined as culturally shared assumptions about men and women (Cuddy et al., 2015). Within these stereotypes, the distinction can be made between descriptive and prescriptive stereotypes. Descriptive gender stereotypes are associated with the image of what men and women are like (Eagly & Sczeny, 2009), whereas prescriptive gender stereotypes are associated with the norms and expectations of how men and women should be (Prentice & Carranza, 2002). Men’s stereotypes are focused on agentic traits and behavior, like being dominant and controlling, while women’s stereotypes consist of more communal qualities, like being kind and caring (Heilman, 2012).
There has been a lot of attention in the literature on stereotypes that people hold of others and how these affect attitudes and evaluations (Pennington, Heim, Levy, & Larkin, 2016). However, there has been little attention in gender research on the stereotypes that men and women might subject themselves to. The limited research that exists on gender self-stereotypes is focused on the descriptive aspect of how men and women describe themselves. It is shown that these descriptive self-stereotypes play a role in behavior, as men and women are more likely to engage in behavior that is congruent to their gender stereotypes (Wood & Eagly, 2009). On top of the descriptive aspect, I argue that self-stereotypes also consist of a
5 prescriptive component, which provides the norms for how a person thinks they should behave. This means that women might feel that they should behave in a communal way, because of the stereotypes they subject themselves to. A first aim of this study is therefore to examine the difference between men and women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes, and to see if this relates to women’s communal behavior.
Moreover, I argue that women might show behavior that is congruent to their gender stereotype, in order to avoid backlash effects, which are defined as the possible negative social consequences (e.g. being disliked) that could arise from the engagement in counter-stereotypical behavior (Moss-Racusin, Phelan, & Rudman, 2010). More specifically, the fear of backlash might influence the decision to engage in certain behavior. For example, it is argued that women refrain from certain agentic behaviors such as negotiating and self-advocating, because they believe this will lead to negative consequences (Amanatullah & Morris, 2010). I argue that, because of women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes, women feel they should engage in communal workplace behavior, in order to avoid possible backlash effects. A second aim of this study is therefore to examine the role of fear of backlash in the relationship between women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes and communal workplace behavior.
A specific type of communal workplace behavior that received a lot of attention in the literature is altruistic citizenship behavior, which is an aspect of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). This behavior is focused on helping, supporting, and encouraging other employees (Van Dyne & LePine, 1998). Even though altruistic citizenship behavior is beneficial for organizations, it is not always beneficial for the individual’s career-related outcomes, such as performance ratings (Bergeron, 2007) and workplace well-being (Bolino, Hsiung, Harvey, & LePine, 2015). Therefore, a third aim of this study is to understand the
6 relationship between women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes, altruistic citizenship behavior and individual workplace well-being.
This research is relevant, as it makes the following contributions. First of all, this research will contribute to our understanding of women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes as it is one of the first studies to research this concept in relation to women’s workplace behavior. Secondly, because of these self-stereotypes, women might unintentionally engage in behavior that holds them back in their career advancement. Therefore, this research might shed a light on why women are less likely than men to climb the organizational ladder towards top-management positions (Allen, 2006). Lastly, this research is relevant, as it looks at women as key actors in working towards gender equality. By understanding how women subject themselves to stereotypes, and subsequently engage in gender-congruent behavior it might become clear how women contribute to the reinforcement of traditional gender stereotypes. This study will therefore focus on the following research question: Do women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality lead to more fear of backlash, making them more likely to engage in altruistic citizenship behavior? And does this mechanism, as a result, decrease their workplace well-being?
7 Theoretical framework
Gender stereotypes
There are multiple factors that play a role in gender inequality in the workplace. A lot of research has been done on identifying the underlying processes that might explain the different career-related outcomes for men and women. One factor that appears to be very influential in sex discrimination and subsequent gender differences in the workplace are gender stereotypes (Eagly & Sczesny, 2009; Heilman, 2012). As is shown in a survey among 705 female executives of Fortune 1000 companies, 72% of these women feel that stereotypes are a barrier to women’s advancement to top management positions (Wellington, Kropf, & Gerkovich, 2003). Not only do gender stereotypes give women a disadvantage to be hired for certain positions, it also influences their advancement within their careers (Heilman, 2001).
Traditional gender stereotypes can be differentiated between agentic qualities for men and communal qualities for women (Heilman, 2012). Agentic qualities are often referred to as masculine as they are seen as more aggressive. These are associated with dominating qualities, such as exerting control, taking initiative, and being ambitious (Eagly & Sczeny, 2009). Communal qualities are often referred to as feminine, as these characteristics are softer and warmer. These qualities are focused on interpersonal qualities, such as being kind, supportive and helpful (Heilman, 2012). Stereotypes can be beneficial, as they serve a cognitive function, in which they give people the possibility to categorize the world and make generalizations to improve efficient decision making (McGarty, Yzerbyt, & Spears, 2002). However, stereotypes can create a bias, because these generalizations often do not apply to the whole group. Especially gender stereotypes are subject to a great deal of bias, because a person’s gender is noticed right away, which makes these stereotypes easily triggered (Eagly
8 & Sczesny, 2009). Even if people personally feel that the stereotype is not correct, they are still influenced by it (Devine, 1989).
Gender stereotypes can be descriptive or prescriptive (Burgess & Borgida, 1999), where descriptive stereotypes explain how men and women are, and prescriptive stereotypes provide norms of how women should be (Cialdini & Trost, 1998; Prentice & Carranza, 2002). As descriptive and prescriptive stereotypes are congruent to the overarching idea of communality for women, this means that descriptive stereotypes indicate that women are communal (Eagly & Sczeny, 2009), and prescriptive stereotypes explain that women should be communal (Heilman, 2012). Both aspects of these stereotypes appear to have an influence on the career advancement of women (Heilman, 2012).
One of the first theories that explained the development of these gender stereotypes is the social role theory (Eagly, 1987). By understanding this theory, it becomes easier to explain differences and similarities that occur within men and women in the workplace. The rationale of this theory is that gender stereotypes are a result of the distribution of men and women in traditional roles (e.g. women as teachers and men as business leaders). As these roles require different behavior, this theory argues that the observation of men and women in these gender roles results in the different gender stereotypes (Koenig & Eagly, 2014). For example, women are seen as communal because they engage in helpful behavior as teachers, whereas men are seen as agentic because they engage in dominant behavior as business leaders (Wood & Eagly, 2002). As a result of this distribution of men and women throughout different roles, women might have been experiencing negative effects on their careers. Because most of the leadership positions are occupied by men (Eagly & Sczeny, 2009), the traditional stereotypes about leaders and good management are predominantly based on agentic characteristics (Heilman, 2001). As a result of these stereotypes, women are
9 perceived to be less suitable for these positions, which result in several disadvantages in hiring and promotion evaluations (Eagly & Karau, 2002).
In the last years, these traditional gender roles have changed a lot. Women are becoming increasingly active in the workforce, and they also occupy more managerial roles than 15 years ago. In 2000 only 21% of the Dutch women were in management positions, whereas this number increased to 28% in 2012 (The World Bank, 2018). As social role theory assumes that gender stereotypes result from the roles in which men and women work, it has been argued that gender stereotypes should have changed alongside these roles (Rudman, Moss-Racusin, Glick, & Phelan, 2012). Indeed, attitudes towards women have changed towards a more feminist perspective (Twenge, 1997), where it has become increasingly more acceptable for women to express masculine traits (Twenge, 1997). Also, women rate themselves as more agentic than before (Spence & Buckner, 2000), which provides support for this argumentation. However, sex segregation is still very apparent in the labor market, which means that the share of women that work in communal jobs and roles has remained more or less the same (England, 2017). This might be an indication that gender stereotypes do not change at the same rates as gender roles have changed (Eagly & Sczesny, 2009). As these gender stereotypes still seem to be so persistent in implicit thoughts and behavior (Eagly & Karau, 2002; Koenig & Eagly, 2014), it is important to understand which mechanism contributes to the reinforcement of these stereotypes.
Self-stereotypes
It could be argued that gender stereotypes are still so persistent, because women internalize them into their self-concept and therefore engage in stereotype-congruent behavior. This as a result, reinforces the stereotype, even though the roles are changing (Wood & Eagly, 2015). It is shown that people use gender stereotypes to characterize oneself
10 (Bem, 1974). In this process, stereotypes are internalized and become a part of how people view themselves. Self categorization theory (Turner & Onorato, 1999) explains how this internalization process results in the development of the self-concept. This theory proposes that people develop their self-concept by categorizing themselves into different groups (Hornsey, 2008). Gender identity is an important self categorization, in which people identify with men or women and incorporate this identification into their self-concept (Wood & Eagly, 2015). Children already have gender stereotypes of themselves when they are in second grade (Cvencek, Meltzoff, & Greenwald, 2011) and these develop throughout their lives. Moreover, it appears that women are more susceptible for gender stereotypes when they describe themselves, compared to when they describe women as a group (Hentschel, Heilman, & Peus, 2013). Furthermore, Cross and Madson (1997) show that the conceptualization process of the self-concept differs between men and women and that this difference may account for the gender differences in behavior. This finding is supported by Oswald and Lindstedt (2006) as they show that gender self-stereotypes can influence behavior.
Even though scholars have argued that gender self-stereotypes play a role in behavior of men and women, there has been little attention to this construct in the literature (Oswald & Lindstedt, 2006), as most research is focused on gender stereotypes that people hold of others (Eagly & Sczesny, 2009). These studies evolve around understanding how gender stereotypes of others are formed and how these have an effect on career-related outcomes, such as performance expectations, hiring decisions and team performance (Heilman, 2012). In order to enlarge the understanding of gender self-stereotypes, this research will focus on gender self-stereotypes of women.
Gender self-stereotypes can be divided into the descriptive and the prescriptive aspect as well. The descriptive self-stereotype is based on being a “typical man or woman”, whereas
11 the prescriptive self-stereotype is focused on being an “ideal man or woman” (Prislin & Wood, in Wood & Eagly, 2015). This means that prescriptive self-stereotypes indicate how people think they should be in order to act in congruence to their gender group. These prescriptive self-stereotypes are thought to be consistent to gender stereotypical traits (Prentice & Carranza, 2002), as it is shown that men and women differ in their self-concept, such that women score higher on communal characteristics, and men score higher on agentic characteristics (Guimond, Chatard, Martinot, Crisp, & Redersdorff, 2006). This might mean that women have stereotypical expectations about themselves, which makes them think they should behave in a more communal way, by helping out others, being kind, and being caring. On the other hand, men’s prescriptive self-stereotypes are expected to be less communal and more focused on agentic traits, which means they might think they should be ambitious, hardworking and assertive.
The literature on self-stereotypes, and especially prescriptive self-stereotypes is very limited. Therefore, this research will focus on prescriptive self-stereotypes and which role this plays in the different behaviors women show. Therefore, a first aim of this study is to identify the differences of prescriptive self-stereotypes between men and women. The expectation is that women have stronger prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality than men as the focus of traditional gender stereotypes lies on communal traits for women.
Hypothesis 1: Women have stronger prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality than men
Prescriptive self-stereotypes and altruistic citizenship behavior
Next to understanding the difference between women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes and men’s, it is interesting to see whether these self-stereotypes are related to workplace behavior. The focus for this study will lie specifically on women’s prescriptive
self-12 stereotypes in relationship to behavior and career-related outcomes, as it is expected that these might relate to the obstacles that women might encounter in their careers. As previously argued, self-stereotypes are internalized into the self-concept. Therefore, I assume that these stereotypes are always present and therefore activated. Several researchers have studied how the activation of stereotypes can have effects on task performance and behavior. For example, Levy (2003) argues that the internalization of self-stereotypes can have an effect on cognitive functioning, as aging stereotypes of memory can actually affect memory performance at an older age. Furthermore, Wheeler and Petty (2001) discuss that the activation of self-stereotypes through priming makes people aware of their self-stereotypes. Consequently, they are more likely to engage in behavior that is in congruence to these self-stereotypes. Moreover, Seibt and Förster (2004) showed that the activation of gender self-stereotypes influences task performance. They found that women work faster, but make more errors when they are presented with a positive stereotype, which states that “women are better at this than men.” They argue that this could be because women want to live up to this stereotype. In sum, these researches show that self-stereotypes can have an influence on behavior, therefore it is interesting to see how these relate to workplace behavior.
Workplace behavior can be divided between in-role behavior and extra-role behavior. In-role behavior are the official job descriptions that employees are required to follow. These include all the expectations and performances that are established when an employee is hired. These in-role behaviors are linked to the organization’s reward system, so when employees fail to show these behaviors, they might risk losing their job (Van Dyne & LePine, 1998). On the contrary, extra-role behaviors are not formally specified in the job description. As these behaviors are voluntary and discretionary, there are no rewards or punishments linked to these behaviors, which means that there are often no negative consequences for the employees when these behaviors are not performed (Borman & Motowidlo, 1997; Kidder,
13 2002). As employees do not have a lot of influence on the in-role behaviors that they have to perform, I assume that prescriptive self-stereotypes might not have an influence on these behaviors. However, extra-role behaviors are voluntary, so employees are able to choose if, and the degree to which, they will engage in these behaviors. Therefore, I expect that prescriptive self-stereotypes will play a role in the decision to engage in extra-role behavior.
This research will focus on a specific form of extra-role behavior that has received a lot of attention in the literature, namely organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) (LePine, Erez, & Johnson, 2002). This behavior consists of helping, supporting, and encouraging colleagues (Organ, Podsakoff, & MacKenzie, 2005). In work groups where there is a high sense of OCB, employees are volunteering to take on extra tasks and voicing new ideas and opinions (Bolino et al., 2015). OCB consists of a lot of dimensions (Van Dyne & LePine, 1998), but Vey and Campbell (2004) identify two dimensions of OCB that are most likely to be seen as extra-role behavior, namely altruism and civic virtue. As the main focus of this study is to identify extra-role behavior, only these two dimensions will be discussed.
The first dimension, altruism, can be defined as altruistic citizenship behavior (Heilman & Chen, 2005), in which employees help out others with work-related problems (Organ, 1997; Podsakoff, Mackenzie, Paine, & Bachrach, 2000). Behaviors include: volunteering for extra tasks, helping colleagues when they have a lot of work to do, and filling in co-workers when they have been absent (LePine et al., 2002). This dimension of OCB is more communal (Heilman & Chen, 2005), as it emphasizes interpersonal harmony (Van Dyne & LePine, 1998) The second dimension, civic virtue, is more focused on challenging behavior. This emphasizes the communication of ideas to improve the work situation and could therefore be referred to as voice behavior (Graham, 1991; Van Dyne & LePine, 1998). Voice behavior can be described as consciously expressing suggestions, opinions and ideas to improve business processes (Li, Liao, Tangirala & Firth, 2017). This
14 behavior often challenges the status quo and can therefore be seen as agentic behavior (Van Dyne & LePine, 1998).
As previously argued, women’s prescriptive stereotypes are part of their self-concept. Therefore, women might be more likely to engage in stereotype-congruent behavior. In terms of extra-role behavior, this might mean that women will be more likely to engage in altruistic citizenship behavior, because this is in line with their prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality. The study of Lovell et al. (1999) show that women are more likely to engage in the altruistic dimension of OCB. Also, the results of Kidder (2002) show that individuals that had a strong female identity performed more altruistic citizenship behavior. As these results indicate that women are more likely to engage in altruistic citizenship behavior, this study will examine whether women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes will relate to this behavior. Therefore, a second aim of this study is to test whether there is a positive relationship between women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality and altruistic citizenship behavior.
Hypothesis 2: Prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality are positively related to altruistic citizenship behavior
Fear of backlash
An important aspect of this research is to understand why women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality might play a role in behavior. As previously argued, prescriptive stereotypes function as norms that provide guidelines for which behavior is appropriate in groups (Cialdini & Trost, 1998). When people engage in counter-stereotypical behavior, they violate these group norms, which can result in negative evaluations (Williams & Tiedens, 2016). This backlash effect might explain why women are more likely to conform to their
15 group norms, by engaging in behavior that is congruent to women’s stereotypes (Rudman & Phelan, 2008). A backlash effect is defined as the social and economical penalty that men and women may experience when they engage in behavior that is counter stereotypical for their gender (Rudman & Phelan, 2008). An example of a backlash effect can be found in the research of Brescoll and Uhlmann (2005), in which they demonstrate that stay-at-home fathers and employed mothers were viewed more negatively than parents in traditional parenting roles.
In this research, the focus lies on the backlash effect for women. On the one hand, backlash for women exists when they display behavior that is overly agentic, such as being ambitious, self-promoting or self-competent (Rudman & Glick, 2001; Rudman & Phelan, 2008). It is argued that agentic women are more often disliked (Heilman, 1995), and they are evaluated differently from men that engage in the same behavior (Bowles, Bacock, & Lai, 2007; Williams & Tiedens, 2016). But more importantly, women also run the risk of backlash when they are not as communal as is expected of women (Heilman & Chen, 2005). Being communal for women can be compared to a hygiene factor in Herzberg’s motivator and hygiene theory. This theory states that some factors will not be able to increase motivation of workers, however they will be able to decrease motivation when they are not present (Herzberg, 1987). The same reasoning can be applied to communal behavior for women. Acting communal will not increase the likeability of women, however refraining from communality will elicit negative evaluations (Prentice & Carranza, 2002).
It is the anticipation or the fear of these backlash effects that can play a role in the behavior of women. Fear of backlash is the fear of negative outcomes when one does not act in accordance with stereotypes (Moss-Racusin & Rudman, 2010). Some researchers argue that this anticipation of negative outcomes plays a role in behavior (Williams & Tiedens, 2016). For example, women seem hesitant to express their interest in having a powerful
16 working role, because they already expect that this role will not be beneficial for their interpersonal relations (Lips, 2001). Also, women are unlikely to behave aggressively in negotiations, because they feel that the social costs that aggressive behavior could have for them do not outweigh the economic benefit that they could achieve by negotiating (Amanatullah & Morris, 2010). As women have dealt with conforming to gender stereotypes in order to avoid backlash effects already from a very young age (Rudman et al., 2012), it is expected that the fear of backlash is a process that might explain women’s behavior.
Therefore, I argue that women might experience fear of backlash for altruistic citizenship behavior. This means that women might anticipate negative consequences if they fail to show altruistic citizenship behavior, as this is a form of communal behavior (Heilman & Chen, 2005). Due to women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality, women might feel that they have to engage in altruistic citizenship behavior, as they otherwise risk being seen as counterstereotypical. This fear of backlash might explain the relationship between women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes and altruistic citizenship behavior. A third aim of this study will therefore be to examine the role of fear of backlash in the relationship between women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes and altruistic citizenship behavior.
Hypothesis 3: The relationship between prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality and altruistic citizenship behavior is mediated by fear of backlash
Altruistic citizenship behavior and workplace well-being
In this research, I argue that women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality will lead to more altruistic citizenship behavior, because of fear backlash. Next to addressing the potential mechanism that could explain this relationship, it is also interesting to look at the individual consequences that could result from engaging in altruistic citizenship behavior.
17 Mostly altruistic citizenship behavior is seen as positive from an organization’s perspective as it contributes to a proactive work force (Van Dyne & LePine, 1998) and it initiates a positive social and psychological climate (Podsakoff, Whiting, Podsakoff, & Blume, 2009). However, it is argued that engaging in altruistic citizenship behavior is not always beneficial for the person itself or for their own career (Organ & Ryan, 1995). First of all, engaging in altruistic citizenship behavior can be very time consuming, which might go at the expense of the time spent on in-role tasks (Bergeron, 2007). This means that task performance of an individual might go down, due to altruistic citizenship behavior (Bergeron, Shipp, Rosen, & Furst, 2012). As most reward systems are focused on in-role task performance (and not on extra-role behavior), individuals that engage in altruistic citizenship behavior are at risk of receiving lower performance ratings (Bergeron, 2007). Second of all, it is argued that engaging in altruistic citizenship behavior can have a negative influence on workplace well-being. This is explained by the depletion-based perspective (Lam, Wan & Roussin, 2016). This perspective proposes that by engaging in altruistic citizenship behavior, individuals make use of personal resources, which can be depleted. This means that employees might help out others during work, while at the same time wearing themselves out. This can lead to more citizenship fatigue (Bolino et al., 2015), and more role overload and job stress (Bolino & Turnley, 2005).
While these findings suggest that engaging in altruistic citizenship behavior has negative outcomes for the individual, it can also be argued that altruistic citizenship behavior can have positive outcomes for the individual (Allen & Rush, 1998). Firstly, Lam et al. (2016) also propose an enrichment-based perspective, which describes how individuals might feel more energized after engaging in altruistic citizenship behavior. It is argued that altruistic citizenship behavior can give a greater sense of meaningfulness of work, which results in increased job satisfaction. These positive feelings might overshadow the negative
18 consequences that altruistic citizenship might have and result in more workplace well-being (Bolino & Turnley, 2005). Secondly, research shows that employees that engage in altruistic citizenship behavior are more likely to receive good performance ratings of their managers (Allen & Rush, 1998; Podsakoff et al., 2009). This is because these employees are seen as motivated and committed to the organization as they appear to be very engaged with the organization (Shore, Barksdale & Shore, 1995). However, the relationship between altruistic citizenship behavior and performance evaluations appears to be different between men and women. Research shows that even though women engaged in more altruistic citizenship behavior than their male colleagues, they did not get higher performance ratings (Lovell et al., 1999). An explanation for this difference might be that altruistic citizenship behavior is expected of women, which makes it less likely that they will be rewarded for engaging in this behavior. On the contrary, men who engage in altruistic citizenship behavior are more likely to be rewarded for this behavior, as this behavior is not required for men (Allen, 2006).
These different arguments indicate that it is unclear whether altruistic citizenship behavior has positive or negative effects for the person engaging in this behavior. However, for women, altruistic citizenship behavior will most likely have a negative on workplace well-being, as women appear to experience certain work stressors differently from men. Especially work stressors that might result from altruistic citizenship behavior seem to have a greater impact on women than men. This is shown by Vagg and Spielberger (1998), who identify that women perceive the stressors “covering work for other employees” and “performing tasks that are not in their job descriptions” as more severe and occurring. Moreover, it is shown that women are more likely to experience work stress (Michael, Anastasios, Helen, Catherine, & Christine, 2009) and lower workplace well-being than men (Danna & Griffin, 1999). By taking all these arguments together, I argue that the
depletion-19 based perspective will be more applicable for women. Therefore, I expect that for women, altruistic citizenship behavior will have a negative relationship with workplace well-being.
To conclude the argumentation of this research, Figure 1. shows the conceptual model of all the proposed relationships that have been reasoned for in this theoretical framework. The proposed research model will answer the following question: Do women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality lead to more fear of backlash, making them more likely to engage in altruistic citizenship behavior? And does this mechanism, as a result, decrease their workplace well-being?
Hypothesis 4: The negative relationship between women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality and workplace well-being is mediated by fear of backlash and altruistic citizenship behavior.
Figure 1. Conceptual model
This research
Using a sample of working adults, I test this model with data that I collected through an online survey. The constructs will be measured through self-reports. A serial mediation analysis will be used to test this model in SPSS.
20 Method
Participants
The total sample (N = 213) for this study consisted of men (N = 69, Mage = 34.38, SE = 14.40) and women (N = 144, Mage = 31.86, SE = 12.68) in the age range from 16 - 68 years. Participants were mostly Dutch (89%) and highly educated (62% a university degree and 22% a college degree). They had, on average, 11.38 years of work experience, mostly in the services (45%), public (30%), and information (19%) sector in small and medium-sized enterprises (61%). Of this sample 26% was currently in a leadership position and 26% held a leadership position in the past. As the main focus of this research is on women, these descriptives were compared between men and women to see if these differed. All descriptives appear to be quite similar for each gender, only leadership experience differed between men and women as only 19% of the women currently held a leadership position.
Materials and procedure
The data for this research was collected through an online survey. Convenience sampling was used as a sampling strategy to reach as much respondents as possible (Yu & Cooper, 1983). The two students that were responsible for the data collection sent the survey to different companies in their network, which distributed the survey among their colleagues. Furthermore, the link of the survey was posted on Facebook, LinkedIn and several business websites during a time period of three weeks. An overview of were the survey link was distributed and the recruitment text that was used, can be found in the Appendix. The online survey consisted of multiple self-report scales in English, and it took approximately 10 to 15 minutes to fill out. The participants were told that the study focused on workplace behaviors and that by participating in this study they would help two students with their Master’s thesis.
21 Initially, 428 people participated in the survey. However, only 262 completed the survey, which gives a completion rate of 61%. Two control questions were included in the survey, in order to make sure that participants would read all the questions. Only the data of the participants that answered both these questions correctly were included in the analysis. Due to the first control question, 16 participants had to be excluded, who did not answer with “strongly disagree” to the following question: I have never used a computer. Secondly, 33 participants had to be excluded after they did not respond with “strongly disagree” to the following question: To make sure all statements are read, please click “strongly disagree” for this statement. This resulted in a total sample of 213 participants for hypothesis 1. For the analysis of hypothesis 2, 3 and 4 the sample was filtered for gender, as these hypotheses only focused on women. Therefore, the sample for these hypotheses consisted of 144 women.
Measurements
Prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality (α = .85) were measured by 5 items that were selected from the Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ: Runge, Frey, Gollwitzer, Helmreich, & Spence, 1981). These items were answered on a 7-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree). The participants answered the question “I think I should be...”, followed by five communality characteristics (1) ...kind, (2) ...helpful, (3) ...understanding, (4) ...supportive, and (5) ...sensitive to others needs.
Fear of backlash (α = .86) was measured on a 7-point Likert scale (1 = not at all, 7 = very much) by using 2 items based on the research of Moss-Racusin and Rudman (2010). These items were: (1) I worry about being viewed negatively if I do not volunteer to help out other work group members, and (2) I am concerned that I might be disliked if I do not volunteer to help out other work group members.
22 Altruistic citizenship behavior (α = .72) was measured on a 7-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree) by 4 adapted items that Van Dyne and LePine (1998) identified. These items were: (1) I volunteer to do things for my work group, (2) I help orient new employees in my work group, (3) I assist others in my work group with their work for the benefit of the group, and (4) I help others in my work group with their work responsibilities.
Workplace well-being (α = .84) was measured on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = never, 5 = always) by 5 items that Warr (1990) proposed to measure workplace well-being. These items were: “Thinking of the past few weeks, how much of the time has your job made you feel...: (1) ...tense, (2) ...calm, (3) ...relaxed, (4) ...enthusiastic, and (5) ...stressed. After the items 1 and 5 were reverse-coded, reliability was tested. This analysis showed that the corrected item-total correlation of the item “enthusiastic” was very low (r = .196). Also, reliability would increase from α = .78 to α = .84 if this item would be removed. After looking into the item content, it can be argued that enthusiastic draws upon a different aspect of workplace well-being. Therefore, this item was removed from the workplace well-being scale.
As all constructs are measured through self-report scales, common method bias might be a concern for this study. Therefore Harman’s single-factor test was conducted (Podsakoff & Organ, 1986). By doing an unrotated factor analysis on all items of the four scales, it could be determined how many factors account for the variance between these items. Podsakoff and Organ (1986) argue that common method bias might be less of a concern when this test does not give one general factor. The results of this principal axis analysis show that there are four distinct factors with eigenvalues greater than one. Together, these four factors account for 66.28% of the variance. The first factor in this analysis had an eigenvalue of 3.535 and only accounted for 23.57% of the variance, while the other factors accounted for an additional
23 42.71%. These results show that these four scales draw upon different factors and there was no general factor that accounted for the majority of the variance. Therefore, common method bias does not appear to be a great concern for this study (Podsakoff & Organ, 1986).
Results
Table 1 shows the mean, standard deviations and correlations of the variables. The correlation analysis shows that women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality are significantly positively correlated to altruistic citizenship behavior r = .29, p < .001. Also, fear of backlash is significantly negatively correlated with workplace well-being r = -.18, p = .037. Contrary to what was expected, there are no significant correlations between women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality and workplace well-being r = -.08, p = .499, prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality and fear of backlash r = -.08, p = .327, and between altruistic citizenship behavior and workplace well-being r = .12, p = .157.
Table 1. Means, standard deviations and correlations
Variables M SD 1 2 3
1. Women's prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality 6.15 .58
2. Fear of backlash 3.29 1.36 -.08
3. Altruistic citizenship behavior 5.61 0.79 .29** -.08
4. Workplace well-being 4.14 0.85 -.06 -.17* .12
Note. N = 144
**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). *. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).
First of all, hypothesis 1 was tested. An independent samples t-test was conducted to compare prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality of men and women. There was a significant difference in the scores of prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality between
24 men (M = 5.75, SD = .852) and women (M = 6.15, SD = .584); t(211) = -3.99, p < .001. These results support hypothesis 1 and suggest that women report higher prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality than men.
Table 2. Analysis of serial mediation
In order to test hypothesis 2, 3 and 4, a serial mediation analysis (Model 6 in PROCESS) was conducted. The results of the analysis can be found in Table 2. and in Figure 2. Firstly, the results show that the relationship between women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality and altruistic citizenship behavior is significantly positive (a2 = .387, p < .001). This supports hypothesis 2 and shows that women with stronger prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality report significantly higher on altruistic citizenship behavior.
Secondly, the mediating effect of fear of backlash in the relationship between women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes and altruistic citizenship behavior was tested. The results of the serial mediation analysis indicate that there is no mediation effect, as there is no significant relationship between women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality and
25 fear of backlash (a1 = -.183, p = .350) and between fear of backlash and altruistic citizenship behavior (a3 = -.035, p = .460). Therefore, these findings show no support for hypothesis 3, which means that fear of backlash does not explain the relationship between women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality and altruistic citizenship behavior. Also, a bias-corrected bootstrap confidence interval for this indirect effect (ab = .006) based on 5,000 bootstrap samples was not entirely above or below zero (.008 to .068), which indicates that there was no significant mediation.
Lastly, hypothesis 4 was tested, as the whole model was tested. The results show that the direct effect of women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality on workplace well-being is negative but insignificant c’ = -.159, t(141) = -1.266, p = .208. The results of the three indirect effects of the model will now be discussed. The first indirect effect of women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality on workplace well-being through fear of backlash was tested. The results show that women with stronger prescriptive self-stereotypes do not experience more fear of backlash as the relationship between women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality and fear of backlash is not significant (a1 = -.183, p = .350). However, women with more fear of backlash do show significantly lower workplace well-being (b1 = -.107, p = .040), independently of their levels of altruistic citizenship behavior. This indirect effect is not significant because the bootstrap confidence interval is not entirely above or below zero (indirect effect 1 = .020, SE = .028, CI: -.014 to .106). The second indirect effect explains the effect of women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality on workplace well-being, through fear of backlash and altruistic citizenship behavior in serial. This serial mediation was not significant (indirect effect 2 = .001, SE = .003, CI: -.001 to .018), because fear of backlash was not significantly positive related to altruistic citizenship behavior (a3 = -.037, p = .432). Also, contrary to what was expected, altruistic citizenship behavior was positively related to workplace well-being, however this relationship was not
26 significant (b2 = .155, p = .095). The third indirect effect shows the specific effect of women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality on workplace well-being through altruistic citizenship behavior. Women with stronger prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality showed significantly higher levels of altruistic citizenship behavior (a2 = .387, p < .001), but this was not significantly related to workplace well-being (b2 = .147, p = .115). This mediation effect was not significant (indirect effect 3 = .057, SE= .048, CI: -.012 to .193). All in all, these results show no support for hypothesis 4, thus the proposed model was not supported.
Figure 2. Path model
27 Discussion
In the past years, gender inequality has been a major subject of interest within the literature, as there are still a lot of differences between men and women in the workplace (Heilman, 2012). Gender stereotyping is a widely acknowledged concept in the research on gender inequality (Eagly & Sczesny, 2009). While there is a lot of evidence that people hold gender stereotypes of others and that these can have negative effects for individual workplace outcomes (Eagly & Karau, 2002), the concept of the internalization of these stereotypes (Hornsey, 2008) and the resulting self-stereotypes have not received a lot of attention in the literature yet (Oswald & Lindstedt, 2006). The idea of this thesis was that these prescriptive self-stereotypes give rise to a different argumentation in which it is possible that women submit themselves to their communal gender stereotypes and therefore engage in more communal workplace behavior, such as altruistic citizenship behavior (Heilman & Chen, 2005). Subsequently, this workplace behavior might have an influence on individual career-related outcomes.
The first aim of this study was to understand how men and women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes differ from each other in terms of communality. The second aim was to research how women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality relate to altruistic citizenship behavior, and how fear of backlash plays a role in this relationship. Lastly, this study focused on the relationship between altruistic citizenship behavior and workplace well-being. Moreover, this study tried to answer the following research question: Do women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality lead to more fear of backlash, making them more likely to engage in altruistic citizenship behavior? And does this mechanism, as a result, decrease their workplace well being?
The results of this research show some interesting findings. In the first place, this research shows that women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes are more communal than men’s
28 prescriptive self-stereotypes. Secondly, the findings in this study show that women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality are positively related to altruistic citizenship behavior. Contrary to what was expected, this study provides no support for the role of fear of backlash in the relationship between women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes and altruistic citizenship behavior. Also, this study found no relationship between altruistic citizenship behavior and workplace well-being. As not all the expectations of this research were supported by the results, it is necessary to explore these findings in order to explain why certain expectations were not met.
First of all, the results of this study show that women have stronger prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality than men. This means that women, more so than men, feel they should behave in a communal way, for example, they feel like they should be kind and helpful. In the literature it has been argued that descriptive self-stereotypes are congruent to gender stereotypes (Wood & Eagly, 2009), where women’s stereotypes are based on communal traits (Heilman, 2012). The results of this research show that women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes are also consistent to these stereotypes. Building on self categorization theory (Turner & Onorato, 1999), which proposes that people develop their self-concept by categorizing themselves through gender (Wood & Eagly, 2015), this finding indicates that not only descriptive aspects, but also prescriptive aspects of gender stereotypes are internalized into the self-concept (Guimond et al., 2006). This internalization process appears to result in prescriptive self-stereotypes that are congruent to the gender stereotype.
Second of all, this study shows that there is a positive relationship between women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality and altruistic citizenship behavior.This means that women who feel that they should be communal, will likely to behave in a communal way at work. As previously argued, women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes are likely to be internalized into a women’s self-concept (Guimond et al., 2006). On the basis of this finding,
29 I argue that women might engage in behavior that is congruent to their self-concept, because this behavior makes them feel good about themselves. Wood, Christensen, Hebl and Rothgerber (1997) show for example that women experience positive affect when they engage in communal behavior, as this behavior is in line with their self-concept. Thus, an explanation for the positive relationship between women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality and altruistic citizenship behavior might be that women will experience positive feelings about themselves as a result of behaving in congruence to their prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality.
Thirdly, the relationship between women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes and altruistic citizenship behavior was not explained by fear of backlash. Thus it appears that this could be either a direct effect, or a different underlying mechanism might explain this relationship. As previously argued, acting in congruence to the self-concept might make women feel good about themselves. Next to the positive feelings that women might experience about themselves, also positive reactions of others could play a role in this relationship. Therefore, building on the literature on impression management (Leary & Kowalski, 1990), I argue that it is not as much the fear of backlash that motivates women to engage in altruistic citizenship behavior, as it is the anticipation of positive feelings and evaluations that might make women more likely to help others at work. Impression management describes how people decide to engage in certain behavior, in order to be evaluated positively (Bolino, Long, & Turnley, 2016). Women benefit from engaging in communal impression management strategies, as these are congruent to women’s stereotypes (Smith et al., 2013). Therefore, I argue that women are aware of the positive reactions they will receive by engaging in altruistic citizenship behavior, and that this anticipation will give a possible better explanation of the relationship between women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality and altruistic citizenship behavior.
30 Lastly, it was expected that there was a negative relationship between women’s altruistic citizenship behavior and workplace well-being. However, the results of this study show no support for any relationship between these two constructs. This finding can be explained by focusing on the underlying motivation regarding the altruistic citizenship behavior. In this research, I argued on the basis of the depletion-based perspective (Lam et al., 2016) for a negative relationship between women’s altruistic citizenship behavior and workplace well-being. However, there is evidence that altruistic citizenship behavior can also have a positive effect on workplace well-being, depending on the underlying motivation for this behavior (Weinstein & Ryan, 2010).
In order to understand more about this motivation, it is important to explain the self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985), which describes how the internalization of certain behavior results in stronger versus weaker motivation (Ryan & Deci, 2000). Stronger motivation is autonomous, which exists when people feel they want to engage in the behavior. On the contrary, controlled motivation is weaker, and exists when people feel they have to engage in certain behavior and feel an external pressure to do so (Gagné & Deci, 2005). By distinguishing between these different motivations that women might feel to engage in altruistic citizenship behavior, different individual workplace well-being outcomes could be explained. It can be argued that, when women are autonomously motivated to engage in altruistic citizenship behavior, it could have positive effects on workplace being, whereas when they feel controlled motivation, it could lead to less workplace well-being. In this study the motivation to engage in altruistic citizenship behavior might have been more internalized, as it resulted from prescriptive self-stereotypes (which are internalized into the self-concept). Therefore, women in this study might have experienced more autonomous than controlled motivation for altruistic citizenship behavior.
31 Even though this underlying mechanism is not specifically tested, this argumentation can be explained in two ways. Firstly, Bolino, Turnley, Gilstrap and Suazo (2009) introduce the term citizenship pressure, which describes the pressure that people might feel to engage in altruistic citizenship behavior. In this sample, women might have experienced less controlled motivation for altruistic citizenship behavior, as the role of fear of backlash was not found. As women did not report any fear for negative consequences, this might mean that citizenship pressure was low in this sample. Subsequently, this could have weakened the relationship between altruistic citizenship behavior and workplace well-being. Secondly, women in this study might have experienced a more autonomous motivation for altruistic citizenship behavior. The way prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality are defined in this study imply that women with strong prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality would be more likely to have internalized the altruistic citizenship behavior as part of who they are/should be. This could have resulted in a more autonomous motivation for altruistic citizenship behavior. Indeed, Weinstein and Ryan (2010) show that altruistic citizenship behavior has positive effects on workplace well-being, only when motivation is autonomous. As it might be that the potential negative effects that altruistic citizenship behavior could have (e.g. time constraints and depletion of resources) were overshadowed by this autonomous motivation, it makes sense that the negative relationship between altruistic citizenship behavior and workplace well-being was not found in this study. As this research did not find a positive nor a negative relationship between altruistic citizenship behavior and workplace well-being, it might have been that the positive and the negative effects cancelled each other out. For future research it would be interesting to look at motivation as an underlying mechanism in this relationship, as this might explain the different positive and negative effects.
32 Strengths, limitations and suggestions for future research
In this section the strengths and limitations of this research will be discussed. Also, some suggestions for future research will be given. First of all, a strength of this study is that it is one of the first studies to measure prescriptive self-stereotypes. These results can be used for future researchers to build on, as they give an initial idea of what women’s versus men’s prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality are. Secondly, the sample consisted of workers in a lot of different companies, which makes it representative for the workforce. Therefore, the findings of this study are likely generalizable to different organizational contexts and cultures. Thirdly, this study found a positive relationship between women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality and altruistic citizenship behavior. As this relationship has not been demonstrated by other researchers yet, these findings are the first to suggest that prescriptive self-stereotypes might play an important role in shaping women’s workplace behavior.
One of the main limitations of this research is the cross-sectional research design. As all constructs were measured at the same time, it is not possible to infer causality. Nevertheless, the findings in this study give an indication for future researchers on which aspects they should focus. Future research should establish causality by testing these constructs in an experiment. Moreover, a study with two measurement moments would also give a better indication of the relationship between prescriptive self-stereotypes and behavior. A second limitation is that all constructs are measured by self-reports, which means that common method bias might occur. Subsequently, this might lead to higher relationships between variables (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Lee & Podsakoff, 2003). Even though this might have an effect on the results of this study, prescriptive self-stereotypes need to be measured by self-report, as these cannot be observed by others. Also workplace well-being is often best measured by the person itself. However in future research workplace well-being could also be
33 assessed by a close person, such as the partner, or a friend. Furthermore, altruistic citizenship behavior is more easily to observe, therefore in future research a colleague or the supervisor could indicate the extent to which altruistic citizenship behavior is shown.
A third limitation might be that this research was based on convenience sampling. Participants had the opportunity to decide if they wanted to participate in this study. As the incentive to participate in this research was to help two students graduate, self-selection might have occurred, which could have resulted in a sample in which people are more inclined to engage in altruistic citizenship behavior. For future research it will therefore be interesting include people that are less likely to engage in altruistic citizenship behavior in the sample. This could be done by giving a different incentive to engage in the study (e.g. a monetary reward) or by performing the study within one company.
For future research it would also be interesting to look at the relationship between women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality and a different aspect of OCB, namely voice behavior. In contrast to altruistic citizenship behavior, voice behavior is seen as an agentic dimension of OCB (Van Dyne & LePine, 1998). Gender differences seem to appear for this behavior, as some studies indicate that men engage in more voice behavior than women (Detert & Burris, 2007; LePine & Van Dyne, 1998). It would be interesting to see if women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality and subsequently fear of backlash could explain this gender difference in voice behavior. As the engagement in agentic behavior has shown to elicit backlash effects for women (Rudman & Phelan, 2008; Moss-Racusin & Rudman, 2010), it is argued that fear of backlash might have an influence in the decision to engage in voice behavior. Therefore, future research should focus on the relationship between women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality, fear of backlash and voice behavior.
34 Another suggestion for future research is to identify the target to which OCB is directed, as this can have different implications for career-related outcomes. OCB can be directed towards individual colleagues (OCBI) or OCB can be directed towards the organization (OCBO). In this study the focus was solely on OCBI, as altruistic citizenship behavior can be seen as a form of OCBI (Lin, 2008; Podsakoff et al., 2009). For future research it would be interesting to look at the relationship between women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality and OCBO, as the influence of this type of OCB on career-related outcomes appears to be different for men and women (Allen, 2006). It is argued that the engagement in OCBO is more visible for managers, which could result in higher performance ratings and promotion rates. Interestingly, this relationship is stronger for men than for women (Allen, 2006). This gender difference might be explained by the finding of Kidder and McLean Parks (2011) that show that OCBO is seen as more appropriate for men than for women. This might mean that men have internalized the underlying characteristic of OCBO into their prescriptive self-stereotypes, whereas women might see this behavior as less suitable for themselves. Future research is therefore necessary to identify if women are more likely to engage in OCBI in comparison to OCBO because of their prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality.
A final suggestion for future research would be to take into account the organizational culture in which women are employed. As previously argued, citizenship pressure could have an influence on the motivation women might have to engage in altruistic citizenship behavior (Bolino et al., 2009). In organizations where women feel a lot of citizenship pressure, it could be that engaging in altruistic citizenship behavior is not caused by prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality, but more so by the expectation of this behavior within the company. Therefore, I would suggest to study the role of citizenship pressure in the
35 relationship between women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality and altruistic citizenship behavior.
Practical implications
Next to the theoretical implications of the findings of this research, this research also proposes some practical implications. First of all, the results of this research might shed a light on why women are less likely than men to climb the organizational ladder towards top-management positions (Allen, 2006). The concept of the glass ceiling has been researched extensively (Jackson & O’Callaghan, 2009) and explains that women encounter more disadvantages than men as they reach higher management positions (Cotter, Hermsen, Ovadia, & Vanneman, 2001). These disadvantages are argued to come from other people that perceive women to be less suitable for certain leadership positions (Finseraas, Johnsen, Kotsadam, & Torsvik, 2016). Even though the main idea in the literature is that these disadvantages are a result of the perception of others, this research shows that women themselves, and the prescriptive ideas that they subject themselves to, might play a role in this effect as well. Due to women’s own ideas of how they should behave, women might (unintentionally) hold themselves back in their career advancement. Therefore, results of this research imply that women themselves could be key actors in working towards gender equality in the workplace.
Moreover, women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes might even be one of the reasons why gender stereotypes seem to change so slowly (Spence & Buckner, 2000). As the results of this research show that women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes relate to stereotype-congruent behavior, I argue that this resulting behavior might reinforce traditional gender stereotypes. The observation of women that engage in communal behavior, will maintain these stereotypes, which will make it more difficult to reach gender equality. All in all, the
36 practical implications of this research are that women should be aware of the stereotypes they subject themselves to, as these could be one of the reasons that gender equality is still not reached in the workplace.
Conclusion
The concept of women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes sheds a different light on gender inequality. This research provides initial arguments that show that women are important actors in reaching gender equality, as the stereotypes they hold about themselves, might have an impact on career-related outcomes. The findings of this research show that women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes are more communal than men’s prescriptive self-stereotypes. Moreover, women’s prescriptive self-stereotypes of communality are positively related to altruistic citizenship behavior. More research is necessary to identify the underlying mechanism that could explain this relationship, as fear of backlash does not seem to explain this relationship. All in all, these findings imply that the most important contribution of this study is that women should be aware of the stereotypes they may subject themselves to, as women can be important actors in reaching gender equality in the workplace.
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