Women at Work: Pathways from Gender Stereotypes to Gender Bias and Discrimination

Abstract

Despite important advances, gender-based discrimination continues to hinder women's career progress. This review examines the role that gender stereotypes play in promoting gender bias and discrimination. After reviewing what is known about the content of gender stereotypes and examining both their descriptive and prescriptive aspects, we discuss two pathways through which stereotypes result in discrepant work outcomes for women and men. First, we consider how the characterization of women as communal but not agentic conflicts with the perceived demands of many male gender-typed jobs and fields, thus promoting perceptions of women's lack of competence in those areas. Second, we consider how norms about how women should and should not behave cause women to incur penalties when they exhibit counter-stereotypical attributes and behaviors at work. Our review further focuses on the conditions that foster or undercut gender bias and discrimination and uses this knowledge as a foundation for proposing strategies to promote more egalitarian organizational processes.