Direct evidence of the relationship between stereotypes and discriminatory behavior is rare; most often it simply is inferred from “post-hoc” explanations of research results. In unequivocally establishing that stereotypes mediate discriminatory behavior, one problem has been the development of a reliable instrument to measure stereotypical attitudes toward women at work. In the Attitudes Toward Women Scale developed by Spence and Helmreich only a few of the fifty-five items deal directly with attitudes toward women at work. An instrument developed by Bass, Krusell, and Alexander, designed specifically to measure attitudes about women managers, is faulty in its construction, e.g., items are double-barreled and all item stems are unfavorable in valence. In 1974, however, Peters, Terborg, and Taynor developed the twenty-one-item, Likert-type Women as Managers Scale (WAMS). Although it has its critics, it since has been validated (Terborg, Peters, Ilgen, and Smith) and used in a number of investigations.
Garland and Price demonstrated that favorable attitudes toward women in management (as measured on the WAMS) were positively correlated with personal causal explanations and negatively correlated with situational-causal explanations of a woman’s work success. These results, together with those of the previously discussed Heilman and Guzzo study suggest that stereotypical attitudes about women at work can result in the discriminatory allocation of their organizational rewards. Also, Terborg and Ilgen found that the higher the score on the WAMS, the higher their subjects rated the desirability of hiring a female. Selection processes also indicate that stereotypes about women are related to how fairly they are treated in work settings.
Additional support for this idea can be found in a study by Mischel. She demonstrated that in Israel, a far less sex-typed society than our own, the biases so often shown here in the United States were not apparent. Israel is a country with a policy of sexual equality in many more areas than ours (e.g., women are required to serve in the military). With this equality one might expect sex stereotypes to be less prevalent. Using Israeli students in an experiment fashioned after Goldberg, Mischel in fact found little evidence of evaluation discrimination. Therefore it appears that the lack of traditional stereotypes facilitated the more equal treatment of men and women.
There are findings that verify the relationship between sex stereotypes and sex discrimination. But how does one go about changing such stereotypes? Two very different types of change are conceivable. One is cultural change, the changing of the forces that produce biased conceptions of women. The other is individual change, the changing of the current stereotypical attitudes and beliefs held by a specific man or woman.
Most investigators have found little evidence that in recent years sex stereotypes have changed within the culture. Even today’s college students seem no different than their predecessors in their attitudes and beliefs about women. This lack of change was particularly evident when researchers took precautions to limit the pressures on subjects to give socially appropriate responses. However, there is some evidence suggesting that current societal changes ultimately may alter views of women. If a person’s mother has worked, for instance, that individual has been shown to have a less stereotyped view of women than one whose mother has not (Vogel, Broverman, Broverman, Clark-son, and Rosenkrantz). Exposure to a woman in a nontraditional role (a working mother) can influence one’s general view of women. Extrapolating from this finding, one might expect that changes in the way women are portrayed by the media, in the way they are depicted by our educational institutions, and in their visibility and importance in the work force will contribute slowly to an evolved view of women in the coming generations. There is therefore some room for optimism about the future.
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