THE INFLUENCE OF FEMINIST ROLE MODELS ON WOMEN’S EXPERIENCE OF SOCIAL IDENTITY THREAT
Date
2019-05
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Although the gender gap is getting progressively smaller, women are still vastly underrepresented in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) fields. One reason for this underrepresentation of women in STEM is a phenomenon called Social Identity Threat. Social identity threat (SIT) is a psychological dilemma occurring when individuals are confronted with a situation where they are at risk of perpetuating a negative group stereotype. More recent research has shown that presenting women in SIT context with ingroup role models can help buffer women from negative SIT effects. One way that role model interventions may work is by priming perceptions of open boundaries. However, when primed, open boundaries tend to promote individual mobility beliefs and self-focus. Ultimately, individual mobility tends to decrease collective action- anytime a group members actions are directed at improving the condition of the entire group. Therefore, while traditional role models are effective in increasing performance and promoting individual mobility, they may negatively influence women’s collective action tendencies.
The current study tested whether feminist role model interventions could help women cope with SIT, while also helping maintain collective action among women in STEM. We hypothesized that like past work on role model interventions, women exposed to either role model conditions will perform better on the math intelligence task than women in the control condition. Additionally, we hypothesize that the feminist role model intervention would lead to more collective action tendencies than the traditional role model intervention.
Unexpectedly, results for performance on the diagnostic math task showed a decrease in performance for traditional and feminist role model conditions compared
to control. Interestingly, female participants in the feminist role model condition performed somewhat worse than the traditional role model and control condition. Furthermore, results showed that women in both role model conditions showed increased interest in joining a Women’s STEM association. That said, participants in the traditional role model condition reported wanting to join more for personal (self-focused) reasons than participants in the feminist role model and control conditions. Alternatively, participants in the feminist role model condition reported participating for group-based (other-focused) reasons more than the traditional role model and control conditions. These results provide some evidence that feminist role model interventions can help women maintain collective action motivations, but that it may come at a cost to their performance in a SIT context.
Description
Keywords
Psychology, Feminist role models, Social identity threat