Implications of Gender Metastereotypes for Addressing Sexist Behavior
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Oxford University Press (OUP)
Abstract
Women often experience competence questioning communication (CQC), in which their contributions are overlooked or credit is misdirected to a male colleague. We examine whether gender metastereotypes—the stereotypes that women believe men hold of women, and the stereotypes men believe women hold of men—predict responses to sexism in the workplace. Specifically, through vignette-based experiments, we examine whether women’s and men’s willingness to directly confront male perpetrators of CQC, and men’s willingness to amplify the voice of female colleagues is affected by the activation of gender metastereotypes. For both women and men, positive metastereotypes directly predicted willingness to confront sexism, but, as theorized, only when individuals believed that the stereotypes held of their ingroup were held of them personally. We also found significant indirect effects of metastereotype activation on willingness to address sexism via felt responsibility for addressing sexism (for women) and concern for the group image (for men).Description
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4701 Communication and Media Studies, 47 Language, Communication and Culture, 35 Commerce, Management, Tourism and Services, 3507 Strategy, Management and Organisational Behaviour, Behavioral and Social Science, Women's Health, Basic Behavioral and Social Science, 5 Gender Equality, 2001 Communication and Media Studies, Communication & Media Studies, 3507 Strategy, management and organisational behaviour, 4701 Communication and media studies
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Human Communication Research, ISSN: 0360-3989 (Print); 1468-2958 (Online), Oxford University Press (OUP), hqaf009-. doi: 10.1093/hcr/hqaf009
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© The Author(s) 2025. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of International Communication Association. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.