"I don't know anything about soccer" how personalweaknesses and strengths guide inferences aboutwomen's qualification in sex-typed jobs

Research output: Journal contributionsJournal articlesResearchpeer-review

Authors

  • Marc André Reinhard
  • Simon Schindler
  • Dagmar Stahlberg
  • Matthias Messner
  • Nadine Mucha

A great deal of research has been dedicated to the difficulties women face in business management domains because they lack the required "masculinity" in terms of masculine skills and traits. Previous work has shown that when males are judged, failures in typical feminine tasks can signal high masculinity and can therefore become an asset in terms of attributed occupational success in a typical masculine job (i.e., manager position). However, jobs at lower levels of organizational hierarchies differ in their trait requirements, with some jobs requiring mostly typical feminine traits and others mostly typical masculine traits. The present study therefore tested and found support for the hypothesis that personal weaknesses and strengths in a feminine or masculine domain guide recruiters' inferences about a candidate's gender prototypicality. These inferences, in turn, predict job-suitability ratings for sex-typed jobs. It is shown that for women, too, stating weaknesses can sometimes be more advantageous than stating strengths.

Original languageEnglish
JournalSwiss Journal of Psychology
Volume70
Issue number3
Pages (from-to)149-154
Number of pages6
ISSN1421-0185
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 09.2011
Externally publishedYes

    Research areas

  • Gender typicality, Job suitability, Personal weaknesses and strengths, Sex-typed jobs, Stereotypes
  • Psychology