Research on women’s paths to leadership and the obstacles they encounter seems to have a certain affinity for metaphors to illustrate the mechanisms at play. In this blog post, I will describe and compare some of the most used of these metaphors.  As metaphors have the power to influence women’s  feelings and ambitions regarding their careers and situation in an organisation, understanding their meaning and implications is of importance (Burkinshaw & White, 2020).

In this video, Federica Case analyzes the features and benefits of mentoring relationships in the workplace. 

LGBTQ+ children’s books can not only be useful tools to educate youngsters about different gender and sexual identities, human rights issues, and challenges of the queer community, but also help parents and educators talk about gender roles and identity with them. Yet, the existence of such publications is not without controversies. While sometimes they are welcomed and gladly used in schools, it is not uncommon that LGBTQ+ books face backlash and may even get banned.

Ana-Nzinga Weiss illustrates how intersectionality is manifested by reviewing the stereotypical images of the Black woman in the U.S.

Unlike the term stereotype or the even more uncommon stereotype threat, many have probably heard, read, or used the word prejudice. Prejudice covers a wide variety of meanings in everyday life, and some of those meanings are the same in the field of Social Psychology. But before explaining what those meanings are, let’s think about this variety of different meanings – and the reasons to narrow them down.

In attempts to achieve gender equality in the workplace, the underrepresentation of men in women-dominated careers is often overlooked. Men who wish to pursue careers in sectors dominated by women are often faced with opposition, as they are perceived unsuitable candidates. This is especially true of highly feminised careers, such as childcare work, where women are assumed to have innate qualities that make them more suitable for the position. Women are perceived as more communal—warm, nurturing and caring—than men, which results in men being overlooked for positions in childcare work. Persisting gender stereotypes such as this can impede the sustainable representation of men in childcare careers, hindering attempts to increase gender equality in society.

What pops into your mind when you think of the word “pilot”? In a collaboration project with the Finnish Aviation Academy about gender and pilot occupation, I asked this question to 962 Finnish students and their most frequent answer was “brave”. “Salary” was the second most frequent word, “responsibility” was the third, and interestingly, “man” was the seventh most frequent.  

Conspiracy theories are alternative explanations for important events that center around secret plots by powerful and ill-intentioned groups. According to the psychologists Jan-Willem van Prooijen and Karen M. Douglas, they are 1) consequential, which means they either promote or inhibit certain behaviors; 2) universal, because they have been present in every culture and historical period; 3) emotional, since they appeal to feelings rather than rational thoughts; 4) and social, meaning they refer to intergroup conflict.

In less than one second, we effortlessly and automatically categorize a person according to gender and race. It’s useful to group together things that share characteristics into categories. This allows us to talk about “birds” rather than just “robins and sparrows and those kinds of things”. But the problem is that we also have strong, …

Prototypes: The Gender and Racial Biases That Are Too Obvious To Notice Read More »

What if a person with a stigmatized identity acknowledges some negative stereotypes associated with their identity? Negative stereotypes represent the descriptive, cognitive components of our knowledge about groups that have a negative social value (i.e., being lazy, see the post about stereotypes). What if those negative stereotypes are activated in their brain while completing a related task? What would happen then?