Gender Role Congruity Research Articles

Power to the she: early-stage female entrepreneurs and innovation

PurposeOur study draws on gender role congruity theory to theorize and test an integrative conceptual model outlining how motives for entrepreneurial action explain the relationship between female entrepreneurship and innovation in nascent ventures.Design/methodology/approachTo test our hypotheses, we employed structural equation modeling (SEM) in a sample of early-stage entrepreneurs (N = 533).FindingsWe found a positive relationship between nascent female entrepreneurs and innovation, and that this relationship is mediated by motives for recognition, respect, and autonomy.Originality/valueBy revealing a positive relationship between female entrepreneurship and innovation, our work provides a complementary perspective to the literature, which suggests that there are limits to innovation potential for female entrepreneurs. Further, we find that this relationship is explained by motives for recognition, respect, and autonomy, but not financial security. Finally, most empirical research focuses on the innovative outputs of established new ventures, while our work leverages a sample of early-stage entrepreneurs.

The gendered effect of populism on innovation

This research addresses the impact of the remarkable rise in populism on innovative new ventures. Integrating institutional theory with gender role congruity theory, we reason that the surge of populist discourse by a nation's top political leaders decreases the innovativeness of new ventures, and this negative relationship is more pronounced for women entrepreneurs. We also consider two critical yet overlooked institutions, gender inequality and grammatical gender marking in the dominant languages that entrepreneurs speak, and propose that they reinforce this negative relationship. Data from 69,406 observations of entrepreneurs across 40 countries during the period of 2005–2018, analyzed with a difference-in-differences (DiD) design, support our hypotheses. Theoretical and policy implications are discussed for the challenges of promoting innovation among women entrepreneurs, in countries with greater gender inequality and where the dominant language exhibits greater intensity of grammatical gender marking, with populism on the rise worldwide.

Finding the Right Voice: Exploring the Impact of Gender Similarity and Gender-Role Congruity on the Efficacy of Automated Vehicle Explanations

Automated Vehicles (AVs), acting as social robots, hold potential benefits for society. Prior research highlights how AV explanations can enhance passenger trust by clarifying the vehicle's reasoning and actions. However, an underexplored area is the impact of voice gender in AV explanations on this trust dynamic. To bridge this gap, our study, inspired by the gender-role congruity and similarity attraction theories, investigates the impacts of AV voice gender on user trust. The anticipated findings from our research are poised to play a critical role in designing AV explanations that enhance trust, thereby advancing the human-AV interaction landscape.

Learning to be entrepreneurial: Do family firms gain more from female leadership than nonfamily firms?

AbstractResearch SummaryWe integrate social learning theory with gender role congruity theory to propose that family firms gain more from female leadership than nonfamily firms due to the congruence of female communal values with those of a family business. Results of our empirical study, based on a sample of 322 Spanish small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs), show that while all three dimensions of learning orientation (commitment to learning, shared vision, and open‐mindedness) are positively related to an entrepreneurial orientation, significant differences exist based on the CEO's gender and whether the SME is a family or nonfamily firm. Strongest differences were found between female‐led family and nonfamily SMEs whereby the entrepreneurial orientation of female‐led family SMEs benefited significantly more from their firm's commitment to learning and open‐mindedness.Managerial SummaryTo cultivate entrepreneurship, a small‐ and medium‐sized enterprise (SME) leader must create an organization that fosters learning. Yet, surprisingly, we know little about male and female leaders' ability to translate their SME's learning into entrepreneurship. Our study reveals that in comparison to nonfamily firms, family firms offer an environment that is more conducive to supporting women leaders, which allows their female leaders to direct their SME's learning more effectively toward entrepreneurship. However, while female‐led family SMEs were as effective as male‐led family‐ and nonfamily‐led SMEs in directing learning toward entrepreneurship, female‐led nonfamily SMEs struggled. Our study therefore suggests that while women have an advantage leading family SMEs, gender biases hamper female leaders' ability to transform learning into greater entrepreneurial orientation in nonfamily SMEs.

Voices of Leadership

Previous research shows that voice pitch plays a significant role in leadership selection (Mayew et al., 2013) and that moremasculine traits, including voice pitch, are typically associated with successful individuals in leadership roles. The present studyextended prior research by examining how sex and gender characteristics of voices influence the perception of leadershipqualities within a military environment. Specifically, the design of the study was a 2 (sex of voice: male, female) × 2 (gender ofvoice: masculinized, feminized) × 2 (sex of participant; man, woman) mixed model design, with the sex and gender of voiceserving as the within subjects factors, sex of participant as a between subjects factor, and ratings of military leadership potentialserving as the dependent variable. Results from an analysis of variance showed that participants rated men’s voices significantlyhigher than women’s voices for leadership potential. However, feminine voices were rated significantly higher than masculinevoices. Additionally, there was a significant interaction between sex of voice and gender of voice that showed that the masculinefemale voice received the lowest ratings of leadership potential. Male participants also provided lower ratings on average to allvoices when compared to female participants. We discuss these findings in terms of gender role congruity and the influence ofandrogyny and gender norms on perceptions of women’s leadership potential in a male-dominated, hierarchical environment.

A theory of gender’s effect on vote shift with a test based on Turkish elections

ABSTRACT Despite great advances in the last decades, there is an enduring gender gap in a majority of the countries. Gender is prevalent in all aspects of life, and it is impossible to avoid gender roles. The choices regarding gender roles are threefold: Accept them, reject them, or have an ambivalent stand. When voters grow incongruous with their parties, they look for an alternative which is ideologically closer to them. However, evaluating this vote shift without the full effect of gender will provide an incomplete picture of electoral politics. I theorize that when voters are faced with female candidates or female party leaders, their assessment of gender roles will be a deciding factor for whether the intended vote shift will be realized. I apply this extended theory of ideological and gender role congruity to a high gender gap context, Turkey, utilizing district level electoral data. Taking into account the spatial dependence of factors that affect voting behaviour, I empirically demonstrate that for two ideologically opposing parties, the salience of gender politics through the ranking of female candidates on the closed-lists and presence of national female leadership affected their vote share in line with my theoretical expectations in the 2018 general election.

Parenting Practices and Authenticity in Mothers and Fathers.

We explored the relationship between parenting practices and the experience of subjective authenticity in the parenting role. Based on work showing that authenticity responds to violations of broad social expectations, we predicted that mothers would feel more authentic than fathers. We also predicted, however, that parenting practices that conflicted with broad gender norms would differentially predict authenticity for mothers and fathers. We tested this prediction in a single study of U.S. parents recruited from an internet research panel service (N = 529). Parents completed online measures of authenticity and parenting practices on three separate occasions. We assessed the within-person association between parenting practices and parent-role authenticity. Authoritarian parenting practices negatively predicted parent-role authenticity for mothers, whereas permissive practices negatively predicted parent-role authenticity for fathers. Authoritative practices positively predicted authenticity regardless of parent gender, and, overall, women felt more authentic in the parenting role than men. These findings contribute to emerging theoretical perspectives on authenticity and gender role congruence and highlight how different parenting practices relate to the well-being of mothers and fathers.

Cut or Close in? Examining Social Relations from Stakeholders Perspective Towards Family Business Success

Stakeholder social support is integral to the thriving of the succesors in a family business. The paper aims to develop an understanding about the provisions of social nudge that influence the support of stakeholders (viz., life partner, investor, community of entrepreneur, expert, venture partner and employee) towards the role of successor in the family business. Implicit in many discussions of congruence of gender roles and job roles is the idea of perceived incongruity between the female gender role and leadership roles. We address whether this intuition is supported by the empirical data in the context of 218 family businesses i.e., 1,308 stakeholders. The role is understood in terms of the gender role congruity of the successor, in simple words, the effect of the gender of the successor in shaping the social support from stakeholders. Network Relationship Inventory-Social Provisions Version (NRI-SPV) (Furman & Buhrmester, 1985) is used to conceptualize social provisions and thus, is used to measure stakeholders’ social nudge. The results imply that social nudge comprises of antagonism as negative quality and affection, nurturance and reassurance of worth as positive quality. The positive and negative social nudge by the stakeholders along with the gender effect determines the support of stakeholders towards the family business successor. Moderation analysis further reveals that gender influences the stakeholders’ positive and negative qualities.

Confucian Culture, Gender Stereotype and Female Entrepreneur: Evidence from China

ABSTRACT Female entrepreneurship activities in China encounter a unique informal institutional situation – Confucian culture favouring masculinity. Drawing on Social Role Theory and Gender Role Congruity Theory, we explore whether and how Confucian culture affects female entrepreneurship. Using 20,531 entrepreneurs’ data from Chinese Private Enterprise Survey over the period of 2002–2014, we find that Confucian culture is negatively associated with female entrepreneurship. In addition, gender stereotypes based on Confucian patriarchal ideology have a partial mediation effect in this relationship. Further analysis demonstrates that managerial experience might be a potential way for women to achieve entrepreneurial breakthroughs in these adverse conditions.

Gender Diversity, Role Congruity and the Success of VC Investments

Building upon the gender role congruity theory, in this paper, we propose that the association between gender diversity and venture performance changes when roles played by individuals are not coherent with the gender-derived expectations of their ascribed social group. We test our theory in the context of early stage financing, investigating how gender diversity between entrepreneurs and VC managers influences the investment performance of VC-backed firms. Our sample consists of 5800 VC managers, who invested in 5075 different ventures in the period 2000–2019 and of 16,713 venture founders. We find that gender diversity is associated with better performance only when a female entrepreneur is matched to a male VC manager. Our analysis sheds light on the presence of several factors that moderate the observed association, related to the VC’s ability to provide value-added services to the invested ventures.

How gender role stereotypes affect attraction in an online dating scenario: A replication and extension

Two studies with racially diverse samples examined the effects of gender role congruence on romantic interest in online dating profiles. Study 1 ( N = 429, 55% male) was a replication and extension of Chappetta, K. C., & Barth, J. M. (2016). How gender role stereotypes affect attraction in an online dating scenario. Computers in Human Behavior, 63, 738–746 and examined the effects of profile gender role congruence, physical attractiveness, and a person’s own gender stereotypical characteristics on romantic interest in young adults. Participants viewed online dating profiles that varied in physical attractiveness and adherence to gender role norms. Attractive and gender role incongruent profiles were preferred over average-looking and gender role congruent profiles, but the latter effect was driven by women. The difference in preference for attractive and average-looking profiles was greater for women than for men. Women’s preferences for incongruent profiles were associated with self-reported feminine traits, but preference for congruent profiles was associated with self-reported masculine traits. Study 2 ( N = 958, 50.6% male) removed the profile photos to provide a better test of the influence of gender role congruence. Study 1 results replicated: Incongruent profiles were preferred over congruent profiles, primarily for women, and women’s masculine and feminine traits were associated with preferences for congruent and incongruent profiles, respectively, supporting the idea that attraction is based on perceived similarities. Men’s preference for both congruent and incongruent profiles was related to holding feminine communal traits and egalitarian gender role beliefs. Women’s preference for gender role incongruent profiles was robust across three studies. There was no support for predictions from social role theory that people prefer gender role congruence.

Gender stereotypes in equity crowdfunding: the effect of gender bias on the interpretation of quality signals

Equity crowdfunding has the potential to democratize entrepreneurial finance and provide female entrepreneurs with new and equal access to early-stage financing. In this paper, we present first empirical evidence on gender stereotypes in the context of technology ventures in equity crowdfunding. Drawing on signaling and gender role congruity theory, we hypothesize that quality signals have different effects depending on whether they are sent by male or female entrepreneurs. Results taken from a sample of 263 equity crowdfunding campaigns run by technology ventures confirm our hypotheses. In line with gender stereotypes, management experience is beneficial for male entrepreneurs but detrimental for female entrepreneurs. Interestingly, media coverage as a third-party signal has the oppositive effect, being more effective for female entrepreneurs.

Gender and quality signals: How does gender influence the effectiveness of signals in crowdfunding?

ABSTRACT Combining signaling theory and gender role congruity theory, this study examines if the quality signals of entrepreneurs and their ventures are perceived differently because of their gender, which, in turn, affects the crowdfunding performance. In a sample of 14,729 campaigns in Kickstarter, this study shows that gender determines the effectiveness of signals in enhancing funding performance, but not uniformly to the disadvantage of women. While females are rewarded less with the signals of competence and qualification, they benefit more from the signal of social ties. This study offers implications for evaluating entrepreneurial projects and strategies for crafting an effective pitch.

Gender role congruity and crowdfunding success

ABSTRACT Research on financial resource acquisition has indicated negative consequences for entrepreneurs that act feminine when trying to attract investors. Yet, does this remain true in crowdfunding, where there is a more diverse population of backers? To explore this, we take a gender role congruity perspective to see if gender roles align with crowdfunding success. More specifically, 2,071 entrepreneurs from Kickstarter were rated based on feminine (agreeableness and humility) and masculine (assertiveness and emotional stability) characteristics, and these characteristics were compared to whether or not the entrepreneur met the campaign goal. The results suggest that gender role congruity is a factor for successful crowdfunding, in that, for the most part, female entrepreneurs are rewarded for being more feminine and male entrepreneurs are rewarded for being more masculine. Only assertiveness was expected for both male and female entrepreneurs. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed from these findings.

Gender role congruity and quality signals: How does gender influence the effectiveness of signals i

Combining signaling theory and gender role congruity theory, this study examines if the quality signals of entrepreneurs and their ventures are perceived differently as a result of their gender, which, in turn, affects the crowdfunding performance. In a sample of 14,729 campaigns in Kickstarter, this study shows that gender affects the effectiveness of signals in enhancing funding performance, but not definitely to the disadvantage of women. While females are rewarded less with the signals of competence, they benefit more from signals of social tie and concrete rhetoric, which are congruent with the gender role. This study provides implications for entrepreneurial project evaluation and approaches to crafting an effective pitch.

When Beauty is Beastly: Facial Attractiveness of Female CEOs and Investor Reactions to Acquisitions

The increasing presence of women in corporate executive positions has sparked research on gender bias against female leaders. Prior work in the management area has focused on between-group gender bias in which female executives are compared to their male counterparts, which has led to mixed findings. In this study, we move beyond prior management work to explore within-group variability of gender bias in which some female executives encounter greater levels of gender bias than others do. Specifically, we investigate a personal attribute that contributes to within-group variability: facial attractiveness. Building on gender role congruity theory and the beauty-is-beastly effect, we propose that more, as compared to less, attractive female CEOs are viewed as less competent to manage stereotypically male-typed strategic actions, such as acquisitions. In a sample of female CEOs of public firms in China, we hypothesize and find that investors react more negatively to acquisitions conducted by more attractive female CEOs than to those conducted by less attractive female CEOs. Moreover, we find that this within-group bias is reduced under conditions in which there are more positive media reports about the focal female CEO, and in industries in which female CEOs are represented at a higher rate. Finally, in supplementary analyses, we assess within group male CEO attractiveness, but find that it does not influence investor perceptions of male CEO competence in conducting acquisitions.

A Gendered View of Risk Taking in Venture Philanthropy

Relying on gender-role congruity theory, this paper investigates the relationship between the gender of the top management teams of venture philanthropy firms and their business risk-taking orientation. The research also assesses if and how experience moderates this relationship. Using a combination of survey data to capture the venture philanthropy firm’s risk orientation and biographical data to identify managers’ gender and experience, it finds that only gender affects business risk-orientation in these firms. Surprisingly, this is the opposite direction than expected, whereby teams with a higher proportion of women have a higher risk-taking profile. This suggests the need to revise the applicability of gender role congruity theory, the existence of a gender-bind dilemma, and the relevance of context in venture philanthropy.

Do (women’s) words matter? The influence of gendered language in entrepreneurial pitching

Women entrepreneurs consistently raise far less investor funding than men. In this study, we consider how women’s use of gender-similar language may influence investor decisions on venture pitches. Contrary to theories of communicative style and gender, we find women do not apply linguistic styles traditionally attributed to women in crafting their pitches. Instead, women entrepreneurs use language similar to their male counterparts when pitching to investors. Consistent with gender role congruity theory, we found that a masculine linguistic style is generally more effective in pitching situations, with limitations. Overly masculine language had a negative impact for both male and female entrepreneurs. Our findings suggest women entrepreneurs have a clear understanding of the power of the spoken language and the impact of the words they use when pitching investors for funding.

Risk-taking in Impact Investing: The Role of Gender and Experience

Relying on gender role congruity theory, this paper investigates the relationship between the gender of the top management team of venture philanthropy (VP) firms and their risk-taking orientation. Our research also assesses if and how experience moderates this relationship. Using a combination of survey data to capture the VP firm’s risk orientation, and biographical data to identify managers’ gender and experience, we find that only gender affects the risk-taking orientation in these firms. Yet, this is in an opposite direction than what theorized, whereby teams with a higher proportion of women have a higher risk-taking profile. This suggests the existence of a gender bind dilemma in VP.

Women Hold Up Half the Sky? Informal Institutions, Entrepreneurial Decisions, and Gender Gap in Venture Performance

Studies that apply gender role congruity theory (GRCT) have focused on resource providers’ biased evaluations and women entrepreneurs’ internalization of gender stereotypes as primary mechanisms explaining the gender gap in venture performance. We provide an institutional foundation for GRCT and argue that informal political–cultural institutions—namely, government interference in market-based competition and cultural beliefs regarding gender inequality—differentially shape male versus female entrepreneurs’ venture performance through their influences on entrepreneurs’ industry selection and participation in after-work social activities. Our study of 7,626 Chinese entrepreneurial firms provides strong support for our arguments and contributes to women’s entrepreneurship theory and practice.