Psychology and stuff
Moral credentialling (Monin & Miller, 2001) is a phenomenon where individuals are more likely to be discriminatory if they have previously proved to their own satisfaction that they are not prejudiced. For example, giving people the chance to endorse the election of Barack Obama as US President led to their subsequently describing a job as […]
Continue ReadingIntegrated Threat theory (Stephan & Stephan, 2000) states that a dominant group (men in this instance) will oppose policies such as gender quotas that cause them to feel threatened. Women who are quota beneficiaries pose realistic threats because they are seen as competition for jobs, promotions, and potential income, and quota policies themselves pose a […]
Continue ReadingAnother issue is the effect of quotas on collective action. According to Social Identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979) people have a sense of belonging to distinct social groups. The ability for individuals to move between different groups depends on the permeability of the group boundaries (is it easy to move into the higher status […]
Continue ReadingInstitutional changes via quotas may also hasten the narrowing of the workplace gender gap due to system justification (Jost & Banaji, 1994) whereby people are motivated to defend the status quo regardless of whether it is unfair or illegitimate. Therefore, it follows that if the status quo becomes inclusive of females in high-status roles, people […]
Continue ReadingAlthough the Sex Discrimination Act (1975) made it unlawful to purposefully discriminate against women, imbalances may arise from hiring and promotion decisions unconsciously based on stereotypes about inherent differences between men and women’s traits and abilities. These stereotypes create gender roles which prescribe types of work that men and women are suitable for. Role Incongruity […]
Continue ReadingGender quotas are the requirement that women should form a particular percentage of the sample of individuals under consideration: organisations or businesses must employ a certain percentage of female employees, or appoint a certain number of women on their board of directors; political parties must ensure that a proportion of their candidates are women, and […]
Continue ReadingHope you all had a very merry Christmas! As we move on to a new year, we look back over all the great moments of 2015. Not forgetting the sexist and misogynistic moments. The moments that you can do nothing but laugh at, and the moments that are damn right infuriating. Here‘s a quick overview. […]
Continue ReadingI’m not a great fan of social media – this blog and Facebook is about as far as I go. So when I discuss Instagram, I don’t presume to know much about it. What I do understand is that people upload pictures of their lives with a tag line, and then others who follow their […]
Continue ReadingHow can such a huge POLITICAL movement be removed from the teaching of POLITICS?! Teaching girls and young women about their political history and the movements that increased gender equality is vital. Women are consistently under-represented in such domains, which means girls have fewer role models than boys do, and it suggests that women should […]
Continue ReadingDo these protect women from sexual assault or harassment? Or do they cause women to change their behaviour to avoid victimisation, instead of teaching men not to be perpetrators? How will they be policed? How can they stop men from entering women-only carriages? What about women who feel safe enough to enter mixed carriages, or […]
Continue Reading