Backlash Against Women and Support for Men? On the Perception of Men and Women Researchers in Gender Stereotype-Inconsistent Domains

Abstract

Even in academic fields dominated by women students (e.g., educational research), academic careers are characterized by vertical gender segregation in favor of men. This clashes with the public understanding of educational research as a women's domain that is more strongly associated with warmth (a stereotypically feminine trait) than competence (a stereotypically masculine trait), as revealed in our first study. We thus conducted an experimental vignette study of 189 adults from the general public to explore how women versus men researchers working in educational research versus physics (as a contrasting domain clearly dominated by men) were perceived on several dimensions of competence and warmth. Whereas the female researcher in physics was rated as more competent than the female researcher in educational research, the woman in physics was penalized for her gender stereotype-incongruent domain choice by being perceived as less warm. However, the male researcher in educational research was perceived as both warmer and more competent than his man counterpart in physics, and as smarter than the female researcher in educational research. These findings suggest rewards instead of penalties for men pursuing academic careers in initially women-dominated domains, likely contributing to the increasing gender gap in academic careers in these domains.