Are Women Punished for Seeking Power?

One of the catch-22s of gender relations these days is that women are hemmed by both realistic power structures that do exist, as well as by perceptions of what ‘should’ exist.

Specifically regarding gender stereotypes, many people expect not only that women are more modest in their presentation and interactions, but that they should be more modest.

So what happens when women violate these stereotypes?

That was the question that Professor Victoria Briscoll of Yale University posed in her seminar on “Women and Power: Hard to Earn, Difficult to Signal, and Easy to Lose.” She broke her answer into three parts.

First, women often have to manage people’s impressions of their rise to power. Their intention of seeking power and authority appear inconsistent with people’s perceptions that women should be communal and not dominating. So even female politicians like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Patty Murray, who are essentially in the business of power, often downplay the fact that they are there, insisting that they “never expected to run for office.”

Second, once in power, men and women often communicate differently to continue this impression management. According to a great deal of social psychological research, ‘powerful’ people are often given a license to talk more than people with less power, who signal deference. Moreover, women tend to lead in more democratic, non-hierarchical fashions than men. So in spaces like the US Senate floor, men talk to display power, while women tend to talk to establish and maintain relationships and advocate for communal rather than personal causes. This is often in the effort to avoid backlash.



Finally, women’s power is often more fragile and easily lost than that of men. In the case of expressing anger, women are almost always penalized for this, while angry white men are sometimes rewarded for being assertive. But when women can explain their anger away to an external source, women are rewarded.

So clearly there’s a lot of work for society to do. To get there, do women need to keep on adjusting what they do? How can we get societal expectations to change in the long run?

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Are women more moral than men?

Are women more moral than men?

There have long been the stereotypes of the “nurturing mother” and the “strict father”. But what does this mean in more real circumstances?

Jooa Julia Lee, a doctoral candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School, recently presented some of her work, with David Tannenbaum of UCLA, on just this subject. In “Gender and Moral Decision-Making,” she looked at how women and their decisions are perceived in society.

Off the bat, there’s the idea that when a white man is “agentic,” he’s seen as assertive, authoritative, ambitious and, fundamentally, a leader. But when a woman is agentic, she’s seen as bossy, aggressive and emotional. Accordingly, when people think of competent managers, they tend to think of males and masculinity. Women, meanwhile, are expected to be “communal”: empathetic, gentle, and compassionate.

Lee wondered whether these associations are driven by the actual decisions that leaders make---particularly when there’s a moral conflict between doing what’s best for the greater good (utilitarian choices) and doing no harm (neutral, deontological choices).

After a series of simulations and psychological tests, they found that when individuals were asked to suppress their emotions, they were more likely to make utilitarian decisions; that cognitive and emotional processes are in conflict when moral decisions need to be made.

How does this affect perceptions of gender? Well, when told about a hypothetical Mayor Edward Jones making massive lay-offs, people saw him as a decisive, moral leader who could make the best decision for the city. But when the name was changed and Mayor “Elizabeth” Jones made those same lay-offs, she was seen as an immoral, bad leader.

Because of these biased perceptions, female utilitarian decision-makers are not given as many leadership positions. To overcome this, Lee suggests that women use the system while advancing what needs to be done: blend agentic and communal leadership styles by making the tough, utilitarian decisions that must be made, while also being empathic and building strong relationships.





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How do we fix the work-life balance for everyone?

Over the last generation, we've seen a lot of changes. These days, more than two-thirds of children have two parents that are working full time. Meanwhile, those parents are simultaneously responsible for elderly, babyboomer dependents---which cuts into their financial responsibilities as well as their time. Add on other vital hobbies, leisure, a social life, and other priorities, and we see that balancing work and life is getting more and more difficult.

This was the challenge that Jane Waldfogel of Columbia University addressed in her recent seminar on “Work-Family Policy in the United States.”

Some private companies have allowances for personal leave, but low-income workers, who wouldn’t be able to pay for supplementary help (like babysitters or nurses), don’t necessarily benefit from this. So there’s clearly a need for the public sector to get involved.

While the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) of 1993 requires companies with more than 50 employees to provide up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave, the United States does not have paid maternity leave. Some of the states that are considering laws of that nature---California, Washington, New Jersey, and Rhode Island among them---are the same ones that currently have Temporary Disability Insurance. TDI is a publicly funded pool of money (taken from a small amount of payroll tax) that provides about 55% of wages for employees that are temporarily unable to work for up to six weeks, and job protection upon their return. Of course, when the US Supreme Court mandated that TDI must cover maternity leave as well, no other states adopted it.

Some other options for assisting with work-life balance have been paid sick leave, flexible work hours (outside the 9-5 box), and assisted care. Currently, child and elderly care only exist in a very expensive private market, while middle income families are often eligible for tax credits. Lower income families receive some subsidies---and since the welfare reform of 1994, HeadStart programs have been expanded to care for younger children. But those programs still cover only 30% of eligible families due to a lack of funding.

So what’s the next step?

One big challenge is simply framing the issue. The feminist movement in the US has been reluctant to talk about family issues out of fear that doing so will hamper equality in the workplace.

Instead, Professor Waldfogel has proposed something different: speak more broadly of the importance of work-life balance for not just fathers and mothers---but for caregivers. And more broadly, for those who have responsibilities and personal priorities outside of work---a balance is important not just to one’s self, but to an employee’s health, sanity, and ensuing contributions to hir organization.

Frankly, the nature of work has changed in America, and not necessarily for the better. We value even the perception of quantity over quality; as Anne-Marie Slaughter rightly wrote, “more time in the office does not always mean more ‘value added’.”

While we rethink the work-life balance, we really ought to reconsider the work-work balance itself.

How Does Media Bias Affect People's Perceptions?

In December 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was meeting with the press in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. She had just spoken about the challenges of being female in legal practice, where women are often judged on more critical and superficial standards than are men.

A few minutes later, the moderator asked, with no irony, “so which [clothing] designers do you prefer?” The Secretary responded, “Would you ever ask a man that question?” before moving to the next question.

Media coverage of female politicians---with a focus on appearance, on “women’s issues” like education rather than economics, on communal rather than individual qualities---is clearly different than that of men. This week’s WAPPP Seminar speaker, Exploring Viewer Reactions to Media Coverage of Female Politicians, Joanna Everitt, a Dean at the University of New Brunswick and current WAPPP Visiting Fellow, explored the effects of that coverage on voter perceptions.

She starts with the assumption that, in many cases, media simply reflects cultural biases and stereotypes---rather than actually creating them. One of these is that politics is what men do; for women, playing that ‘power game’ is out of the ordinary.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm (2003–2011) speaking at 2012 DNC.

Professor Everitt and her colleagues broke down even visual cues into those that represent decisiveness and individual power---like up-and-down vertical hand motions---and those that represent communal inclusiveness---like horizontal hand gestures. (I bet you’re moving your hands right now; if not, try it. You’ll see what she means---plus it’s been confirmed by repeated social psychological tests).

The media even more subtly reflects some of these biases in how they present female candidates in short clips. Professor Everitt’s study played short videos of different politicians using ‘agentic’ versus ‘inclusive’ poses in front of 100 human lab rats (students that took part in surveys).

The result? There were no differences in whether the participants liked the candidates overall. But those male politicians that were shown using the up and down hand gesture were seen as more impressive, while those going side to side were less so. Female politicians were seen as more impressive and likable when they didn’t use expansive gestures and were actually less liked when they used the up and down hand gestures.

So what does that say about us as people? Sometimes women and men (of different races) succeed by ‘mastering’ and using some of the benefits of their own stereotypes. But is that good? Should we understand and master what is accepted---in a sort of social jiu-jitsu to get our work done? Or should we fight to effectively change what’s accepted? If so, how?

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