See feminine – Think incompetent? The effects of a feminine outfit on the evaluation of women's computer competence

Abstract

According to common gender stereotypes, women are assumed to have lower computer skills than men. Following the interactive model of Deaux and Major (1987), target attributes or situational cues can activate stereotypes. Can the outfit of a woman elicit the stereotype of women's lower computer skills? In our study, 162 participants (105 women, 57 men) evaluated the same women competing for an IT-related student job, differing only in their outfit (neutral vs. feminine). Compared to a neutral outfit, a feminine outfit led to higher ratings of femininity, but lower ratings of computer skills, and unfavorable attributions of success and failure in a computer task (higher attribution of success to luck and of failure to lack of skills). Furthermore, women with a feminine outfit were also rated as less intelligent, less competent and less likeable. Similar to previous findings, male participants rated themselves as higher in computer skills than female participants.