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Empowering Women and Reducing Gender Gap in Leadership
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The difference in representation of women and men in leadership positions is an undeniable fact. Society generally associates successful leadership with stereotypically “masculine” traits such as assertiveness and dominance, and so disapproves of female leaders because they violate these gender norms. As a consequence women encounter hardships in attaining leadership positions. Brief social psychological interventions are high impact treatments that have been shown to increase academic performance and especially reduce gender or ethnicity gaps in academic achievement. They are based on the idea that stereotype relevant worries are partly responsible for the achievement gap. When someone is concerned that her actions will represent her ethnicity or gender group, this creates a stereotype threat and influences self-efficacy and task performance. In this series of randomized experiments, we test the impact of two brief social psychological interventions on increasing women’s leadership self-efficacy and performance.
Manuscript in preparation. |