Do Female Executives Help or Hinder Each Other’s Careers?
By Sam Peters (New York City)
The green-eyed monster is alive and well in corporate boardrooms according to a recent study from Washington University. The study entitled “Female Tokens in High-prestige Work Groups: Catalysts or Inhibitors of Group Diversification?” purports to prove that high-level female executives subvert the success of other females to protect their position as token woman.
This research directly contradicts recent research by Catalyst, and serves to perpetuate negative stereotypes that keep women from advancing.
Queen Bees and Mean Girls
The published study combines the results of three separate studies to come to its conclusions. Assistant professor of organizational behavior Michelle Duguid, the study’s author, claims that women have “value threat” from other successful women. She identifies two types of threat. Competitive threat occurs when a woman with the power to recommend another woman for promotion fears the other woman is more qualified than she is. A less qualified candidate for promotion is seen as a collective threat. According to the study even women who are neither more nor less qualified are seen as a threat to the powerful woman’s prestige.
The competitive threat concept is merely an extension of the commonly-held stereotype that powerful women want to be the queen bee or token woman with power and authority. It is essentially a continuation of the harmful myth that all women are jealous of each other, only in the business world high-status jobs are substituted for potential mates.
The collective threat concept suggests that the performance of one woman represents the performance of all women. If a less-qualified woman is promoted, her potential failure to perform well will harm the reputation of all women, including the person who promoted her candidacy. All women are judged collectively rather than on individual merit. By suggesting that each woman’s potential failure reflects negatively on all women, the stereotype of all women’s lesser abilities is perpetuated.
Even the failure to lobby for an equally qualified female candidate reflects social stereotypes about women’s motivations. The study alleged that equally-qualified women weren’t recommended because the high-status woman didn’t want to be perceived as showing favoritism towards another woman. The underlying assumption is that women are incapable of making decision based on facts rather than worrying about what others might think of them. This conclusion represents yet another “blame the women” approach to gender inequality, one that shifts the focus away from unfair structural bias that all women contend with.
Mentoring: Women Paying it Forward
The findings of the study, which were at least partially based on an experiment using college students appointed to mythical committees, are contradicted by another recent study that found women are actually more likely than men to mentor other women. The Catalyst report released in June 2012 was co-sponsored by Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, IBM and other global corporations.
The Catalyst report found that high-potential women who were mentored were more likely than men to mentor other employees, particularly other women. Sixty-five percent of women, as opposed to 56 percent of men, who had help advancing in their careers help others in return. There were no differences by gender in the types of support provided by mentors. Both gave career advice and similar levels of social support to their protégés. Women were in fact more likely to offer support to other women than men were, with 73 percent of women mentoring other women as opposed to only 30 percent of men who mentored women.
The myth of the ultra-competitive queen bee is thus not supported by facts. Rather, women who have been assisted with their own career development are more likely than men to help other women advance. The more senior the man or woman, the more likely they are to help others along the way. Women who work at least 60 hours per week are more likely than male peers to devote time to developing others. While only 57 percent of men who work long hours were mentoring others, 76 percent of women in the same group were doing so.
While not all women participate in mentoring relationships, neither do all men. When men opt out of the mentor-protégé relationship, it is considered an individual decision with no gender implications. When a successful woman chooses to opt out, however, it is interpreted as a reflection on the character and professionalism of all women. Whether this is because female executives are still an anomaly and thus more visible, or whether it is because of gender stereotypes is difficult to say.
Interpreting gender bias can be challenging. It seems clear, however, that perpetuating negative stereotypes about women who achieve financial or corporate success serves some social purpose. Otherwise these hostile images of women would fade away. By blaming women for the glass ceiling, the systemic causes of the ceiling are ignored, which harms everyone.