Why More Women Don’t Lead and Innovate - Transforming Your STEM Career Through Leadership and Innovation - page 42

believe we can do all that we would like to do and this result is a function of many
factors including social conditioning as well as our perception of ourselves. It may
be due to what others around us think regarding our abilities. The common thread
here is that these are individual perception-based challenges that are manifested as
a lack of self-knowledge and self-confidence. The key is to recognize when we're
falling victim to negative conditions and to take an active role in the “recondition-
ing” of our expectations. To recondition we must alter our S-R relationship with
new knowledge and experiences that demonstrate positive rewards for seeking
leadership roles. I have found three useful approaches for changing my percep-
tions when reconditioning is necessary. These three approaches include:

Mentally cataloging my past experiences that were successful. l

Identifying through the literature other experiences where individuals were
successful in a similar endeavor.

l

Developing a plan to recognize and eradicate the feelings, actions, and atti-
tudes that I demonstrate when this negative conditioning is influencing my
decision making or thought processes.

l

As we consider our perceptions they are impacted by our environment and,
thus, we must evaluate the perceptions of others and the impact of these views
on women's opportunities for leadership. Based on the results of a recent Cata-
lyst study, the old adage “women 'take care,' men 'take charge' ” persists and
is impacting the modern workplace. The study indicated that gender stereotypes
attribute traits such as sensitivity and being emotional to women, while attribut-
ing traits such as aggressiveness and rationality to men [3] . Top corporate leaders
were asked to judge how effective female and male leaders are on 10 behaviors
essential to leadership. Based on the common gender stereotypes from previous
research, each of the behaviors was classified as either feminine or masculine
( Table 3.2 ). Specifically, leadership behaviors that depend on the task-oriented
“take charge” traits of men were categorized as masculine, while those that rely on
the people-oriented “caretaker” traits of women were classified as feminine [3] .
The judgment from male and female corporate managers did in fact match
the patterns of stereotypical expectations in all areas, with the exception of a
few categories. Female respondents ascribed to male leaders greater compe-
tency at networking, a stereotypic feminine behavior, and male respondents saw
male leaders as better at inspiring, a behavior also classified as feminine. Addi-
tionally, problem solving was the only masculine behavior at which women
perceived women leaders to be superior.
Although objective evidence tells us that they should not be, respondents'
perceptions were generally aligned with gender stereotypes. Together, these facts
give us some indication that respondents were likely not basing their perceptions
on fact but rather on gender stereotypes. This does not suggest that respondents
were not being honest when they reported their observations. Because people
are generally unaware of how their thinking is automatically influenced by ste-
reotypes they conclude that their perceptions come from objective observations,