Also see:     
AOL/Microsoft-Hotmail Preventing Delivery of Truthout Communications    [

Also see below:     
Nicholas D. Kristof | When Women Rule    [

    Clinton Battles Unconscious Bias Against Strong Women
    By Daisy Grewal and Elena Grewal
    The San Jose Mercury News

    Monday 11 February 2008

    Sen. Hillary Clinton should be forcing Americans to think more deeply about their views on gender and politics. However, current debates about her popularity prove we are still a society mired in gender stereotypes.

    For years, social scientists have known that people perceive female leaders more negatively than male leaders. Even when female leaders behave exactly like male leaders in controlled experiments, audiences still respond to them less favorably. This disfavor manifests itself through non-verbal behavior such as frowning and shaking one's head while listening to a female leader speak. Both men and women are likely to display this behavior. While most Americans would be reluctant to admit it, perceptions of Hillary Clinton are strongly driven by stereotypes.

    Consider the all-important question of her "likability." Why does she invoke such strong and polarized reactions from people? Dr. Alice Eagly at Northwestern University has shown that people discriminate against female leaders because qualities stereotypically associated with women (nurturance) conflict with stereotypically masculine qualities associated with effective leaders (assertiveness). Women who display masculine qualities often achieve success but lose out in popularity. Women leaders face a double bind that is difficult to overcome.

    As Princeton University psychologist Dr. Susan Fiske and her colleagues have found, stereotypes about women tend to fall along two dimensions - warmth and competence. The two dimensions operate in teeter-totter fashion: When perceptions of a woman's warmth increase, her perceived competence decreases (and vice versa). The same is not true for men. If a man is a "family man," perceptions of his competence do not change; however, a woman is seen as less competent when she has a baby.

    The effect of perceptions of Clinton's "self-righteousness" relates to Dr. Laurie Rudman's research at Rutgers University, which found that people dislike self-promoting women far more than they dislike self-promoting men. In fact, men are hesitant to hire a self-promoting woman even while admitting that they view her as competent. In other words, men would rather hire a woman they like than one they know can do the job. So Clinton faces yet another Catch-22 - she must defend her competency but survive the prejudices of those who dislike self-promoting women.

    Hillary Clinton won't be the last to face these problems. Angela Merkel of Germany and Segolene Royal of France have run similar gantlets. Perhaps what distinguishes Clinton is her acute awareness of her predicament. To keep her image more feminine, she has changed hairstyles, suits - and even political opinions - in order to carefully maneuver around the gender-rooted obstacles in her way. Her critics have dissected each move, taking them as proof of her ruthless ambition.

    Whether we love her or hate her is not really the issue. Clinton's image in the press has become like a distorted reflection. For some, she reflects the hopes that one day a woman will lead; for others she reflects a dangerous trend of women trying to usurp power from men. Regardless of whether she wins the Democratic nomination, her candidacy has already challenged us to clarify our definitions of what makes a good leader and to understand the pervasive role of gender stereotypes. Are we brave enough to examine what's in the mirror?

---

    Daisy Grewal has a doctorate in psychology from Yale University. Elena Grewal is a doctoral student in education at Stanford University. They wrote this article for the Mercury News.

 

---

    Go to Original

    When Women Rule
    By Nicholas D. Kristof
    The New York Times

    Sunday 10 February 2008

    While no woman has been president of the United States - yet - the world does have several thousand years' worth of experience with female leaders. And I have to acknowledge it: Their historical record puts men's to shame.

    A notable share of the great leaders in history have been women: Queen Hatshepsut and Cleopatra of Egypt, Empress Wu Zetian of China, Isabella of Castile, Queen Elizabeth I of England, Catherine the Great of Russia, and Maria Theresa of Austria. Granted, I'm neglecting the likes of Bloody Mary, but it's still true that those women who climbed to power in monarchies had an astonishingly high success rate.

    Research by political psychologists points to possible explanations. Scholars find that women, compared with men, tend to excel in consensus-building and certain other skills useful in leadership. If so, why have female political leaders been so much less impressive in the democratic era? Margaret Thatcher was a transformative figure, but women have been mediocre prime ministers or presidents in countries like Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Philippines and Indonesia. Often, they haven't even addressed the urgent needs of women in those countries.

    I have a pet theory about what's going on.

    In monarchies, women who rose to the top dealt mostly with a narrow elite, so they could prove themselves and get on with governing. But in democracies in the television age, female leaders also have to navigate public prejudices - and these make democratic politics far more challenging for a woman than for a man.

    In one common experiment, the "Goldberg paradigm," people are asked to evaluate a particular article or speech, supposedly by a man. Others are asked to evaluate the identical presentation, but from a woman. Typically, in countries all over the world, the very same words are rated higher coming from a man.

    In particular, one lesson from this research is that promoting their own successes is a helpful strategy for ambitious men. But experiments have demonstrated that when women highlight their accomplishments, that's a turn-off. And women seem even more offended by self-promoting females than men are.

    This creates a huge challenge for ambitious women in politics or business: If they're self-effacing, people find them unimpressive, but if they talk up their accomplishments, they come across as pushy braggarts.

    The broader conundrum is that for women, but not for men, there is a tradeoff in qualities associated with top leadership. A woman can be perceived as competent or as likable, but not both.

    "It's an uphill struggle, to be judged both a good woman and a good leader," said Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a Harvard Business School professor who is an expert on women in leadership. Professor Kanter added that a pioneer in a man's world, like Hillary Rodham Clinton, also faces scrutiny on many more dimensions than a man - witness the public debate about Mrs. Clinton's allegedly "thick ankles," or the headlines last year about cleavage.

    Clothing and appearance generally matter more for women than for men, research shows. Surprisingly, several studies have found that it's actually a disadvantage for a woman to be physically attractive when applying for a managerial job. Beautiful applicants received lower ratings, apparently because they were subconsciously pegged as stereotypically female and therefore unsuited for a job as a boss.

    Female leaders face these impossible judgments all over the world. An M.I.T. economist, Esther Duflo, looked at India, which has required female leaders in one-third of village councils since the mid-1990s. Professor Duflo and her colleagues found that by objective standards, the women ran the villages better than men. For example, women constructed and maintained wells better, and took fewer bribes.

    Yet ordinary villagers themselves judged the women as having done a worse job, and so most women were not re-elected. That seemed to result from simple prejudice. Professor Duflo asked villagers to listen to a speech, identical except that it was given by a man in some cases and by a woman in others. Villagers gave the speech much lower marks when it was given by a woman.

    Such prejudices can be overridden after voters actually see female leaders in action. While the first ones received dismal evaluations, the second round of female leaders in the villages were rated the same as men. "Exposure reduces prejudice," Professor Duflo suggested.

    Women have often quipped that they have to be twice as good as men to get anywhere - but that, fortunately, is not difficult. In fact, it appears that it may be difficult after all. Modern democracies may empower deep prejudices and thus constrain female leaders in ways that ancient monarchies did not.