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      Obituaries of Female and Male Leaders From 1974 to 2016 Suggest Change in Descriptive but Stability of Prescriptive Gender Stereotypes

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          Abstract

          We analyzed 1415 newspaper obituaries of female and male leaders published in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland from 1974 to 2016, covering a time-span of 42 years, to investigate change in descriptive and prescriptive gender stereotypes. The obituaries’ content was condensed to four categories: agency, competence, and communion were used to investigate changes in descriptive stereotypes. The category likability was used to infer changes in prescriptive stereotypes. Consistent with theories claiming changeability of stereotypes, our results indicate changes in descriptive stereotypes. Female leaders were described as increasingly agentic over time, but not as increasingly competent. Descriptions regarding communion remained unchanged. In contrast, the description of male leaders remained relatively stable at first, followed by changes in recent years, where men were described as decreasingly competent and increasingly communal. Simultaneously, our results support theories suggesting stability of stereotypes over time indicating unchanged prescriptive stereotypes. Accordingly, increases in female leaders’ agency were associated with decreases in likability. In male leaders, increases in communion were associated with decreases in likability. Overall, our results reconcile divided theories regarding the changeability of gender stereotypes. Furthermore, our results emphasize that research and praxis need to enhance attention on prescriptive stereotypes to facilitate female leadership.

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          Most cited references16

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          Prescriptive Gender Stereotypes and Backlash Toward Agentic Women

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            Transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire leadership styles: a meta-analysis comparing women and men.

            A meta-analysis of 45 studies of transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire leadership styles found that female leaders were more transformational than male leaders and also engaged in more of the contingent reward behaviors that are a component of transactional leadership. Male leaders were generally more likely to manifest the other aspects of transactional leadership (active and passive management by exception) and laissez-faire leadership. Although these differences between male and female leaders were small, the implications of these findings are encouraging for female leadership because other research has established that all of the aspects of leadership style on which women exceeded men relate positively to leaders' effectiveness whereas all of the aspects on which men exceeded women have negative or null relations to effectiveness.
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              Penalties for success: reactions to women who succeed at male gender-typed tasks.

              A total of 242 subjects participated in 3 experimental studies investigating reactions to a woman's success in a male gender-typed job. Results strongly supported the authors' hypotheses, indicating that (a) when women are acknowledged to have been successful, they are less liked and more personally derogated than equivalently successful men (Studies 1 and 2); (b) these negative reactions occur only when the success is in an arena that is distinctly male in character (Study 2); and (c) being disliked can have career-affecting outcomes, both for overall evaluation and for recommendations concerning organizational reward allocation (Study 3). These results were taken to support the idea that gender stereotypes can prompt bias in evaluative judgments of women even when these women have proved themselves to be successful and demonstrated their competence. The distinction between prescriptive and descriptive aspects of gender stereotypes is considered, as well as the implications of prescriptive gender norms for women in work settings. (c) 2004 APA
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Journal
                Front Psychol
                Front Psychol
                Front. Psychol.
                Frontiers in Psychology
                Frontiers Media S.A.
                1664-1078
                27 November 2018
                2018
                : 9
                : 2286
                Affiliations
                Department of Applied Psychology, Work, Education and Economy, Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna , Vienna, Austria
                Author notes

                Edited by: Kath Woodward, The Open University, United Kingdom

                Reviewed by: Nicole Farris, University of West Alabama, United States; David Stuart Smith, Robert Gordon University, United Kingdom

                *Correspondence: Miriam Katharina Zehnter, miriam.zehnter@ 123456univie.ac.at

                This article was submitted to Gender, Sex and Sexuality Studies, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology

                Article
                10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02286
                6277582
                e2e947de-ea1b-46af-ae18-e30fc369efd1
                Copyright © 2018 Zehnter, Olsen and Kirchler.

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

                History
                : 09 August 2018
                : 02 November 2018
                Page count
                Figures: 1, Tables: 1, Equations: 0, References: 23, Pages: 5, Words: 0
                Funding
                Funded by: Universität Wien 10.13039/501100003065
                Categories
                Psychology
                Brief Research Report

                Clinical Psychology & Psychiatry
                gender,descriptive stereotypes,prescriptive stereotypes,leaders,obituaries,change

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