How "Queen Bees" Sting Women Workers
And don't forget "older" people, either. They're part of the problem, too.
The U.K. Sunday Times, via Arts & Letters Daily, reports on a study showing that women "and older participants" are much tougher on their female counterparts than men when it comes to anticipating job success. Around 700 participants in Spain looked at fake resumes of fake employees for a fake corporation and then were asked to evaluate candidates across a variety of areas. The real results?
"Female participants had a stronger tendency than male participants to view the female candidates as less qualified than the male candidate . . . they also thought that the female candidate would fare worse in the future in her job than the male candidate."
It adds: "Female participants predicted that the male candidate would show a more laissez-faire leadership style than the female candidate would."
Katherine Rake, director of the Fawcett Society which campaigns for sexual equality, said stereotyping was more important than female rivalry in holding back women's careers: "Stereotypes about what is an appropriate role for women are still very strong in people's minds and there is still a cultural barrier to women making it into senior positions."
Given the level of fictiveness built into the study (not to mention the small sample, etc. etc. etc.), I'd be interested in seeing actual employment advancement figures. But can "705 participants living in southern Spain" be wrong? Hmm…