Kim Mills: 2020 is the 100th anniversary of women winning the right to vote in the United States, yet fully quality for women in this country remains elusive. Yes, US Senator Kamala Harris is the Democratic nominee for vice president, which is certainly significant, yet she's only the second black woman ever to be elected to the US Senate, which has only seen 57 female members since the dawn of our country. Only one quarter of the Senate is female today, while the much larger house with 435 members is 23% female.
Mills: The number of women at the top of the business world is also scant. We have just reached an all time high of 37 women CEOs of the Fortune 500, but that means that almost 93% of those top companies are led by men. Why has it taken so many years for women to make even these gains? What are the particular challenges faced by women who strive to be leaders? How can psychology help us better understand the factors that hold women back or push them down or discourage them from aiming for the top?
Mills: Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, the flagship podcast of the American Psychological Association that explores the connections between psychological science and everyday life. I'm Kim Mills. Our guest today is Dr. Alice Eagly, a professor of psychology at Northwestern University, who for many years has studied the psychology of gender, especially sex differences and similarities in leadership, prosocial behavior, aggression, partner preferences, and sociopolitical attitudes. Dr. Eagly has written numerous articles, chapters, and books on these topics, her most recent book Through the Labyrinth, the truth about how women become leaders, challenges, the common metaphor of the glass ceiling. Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, Dr. Eagly.
Alice Eagly, PhD: I'm pleased to be here, Kim.
Mills: This is not the first time a woman has been on the vice presidential ticket in this country. And women have run for president, although only once, as a major party candidate. Is there something different about what's happening now and are the reactions from the media and the public different this time around?
Eagly: Well, yes. I think that it was entirely expected, even demanded of a democratic candidate such as Joe Biden, because the support for the Democratic Party is stronger among women than men. So it really called for women being represented. And then it's a time when there's a good deal of protest and unrest over minority issues. And so choosing a woman of color certainly made sense to represent that community, which tends to lean Democratic, but to call on their loyalty in this particular way. So I think it was entirely expected and generally very well received.
Mills: Yeah. That's been interesting that there has not been a whole lot of backlash, I think.
Eagly: No.
Mills: Well, I mean what are the characteristics that make her less of a target?
Eagly: She is quite qualified in the sense that she had a number of political roles in California and she is a Senator. And so she has very good qualifications that would be normal in a male candidate. So she's qualified in that sense. She's also quite gifted as a speaker and a debater, as was displayed earlier in the hearings in the Senate. So I think she struck the public as somebody who had the toughness to be a good campaigner.
Mills: So what particular challenges do women politicians face first as candidates and then once they're elected?
Eagly: Well, there are serious challenges that are embedded in the culture in a sense, in terms of the way we think about leaders and the way we think about women and men. So this is well established in studies on stereotyping, done by psychologists and political scientists in this case. So we know that people think women are the nicer, kinder, more compassionate sex, more sympathetic to others, better social skills, and that men are the tougher, more agentic, we call it, more assertive, more aggressive sex. Okay. We know about that.
Eagly: But then people think about leaders as more agentic than communal. So they think about they have to take charge. They have to be tough, tell people what to do often. So that image is widely shared in a culture and is much more similar to men than women. That puts women at something of a disadvantage and it sort of goes like that, "Well, she's very nice, but..." Then the but is, "I don't know if she's tough enough to handle that kind of situation. Could she really hold up in a big debate? Could she get people to do things which she has the respect and authority." And so that lingers in the culture. And so women have to overcome in a sense, these anxieties people have. It's not about being a good person or a competent person, it's about being a tough enough person to really take on that kind of role that demands a lot of competition and assertion.
Mills: And yet, if you're too tough as a woman, then that cuts against you as well.
Eagly: That's right. That's the agency paradox. So, if you're very assertive, so you say, "Well, okay, I'll be just like a man." Wrong. That doesn't really work for women. Unless, it could take on qualities of being assertive to some extent, but not to go to the extreme, which is dangerous, but add to it, the qualities of warmth and kindness and empathy. So display both, that tends to be something that works for women who are leaders or wish to be leaders. And you could see that in Kamala Harris right away. She speaks in a clear pleasantly assertive way. She smiles a lot too, and has a lot of feminine expressiveness in her gestures and voice, not too much, but it's definitely there. And so I think she has that blend that in fact works very well for women in leadership roles.
Mills: You recently published a study that looked at a large body of nationally representative public opinion polling, and found that women are now perceived as being just as competent as men as well as more communal, but they're seen as less ambitious. How have these views changed over the past decades? Is this good news for women leaders today?
Eagly: It's mixed news. So this study was based on representative public opinion poll data, where people were asked about men and women, and the data go back to 1946 and then through 2018. So it's quite a nice series. And so the way the pollsters do this is they ask a very direct question. They say like, "Intelligence, more true of women, more true of men or equally true?" And so we do see a lot of change in that women's competence relative to men has risen. So most Americans now say, "Equal." But those who don't say equal are more likely to say women than men. So there, that competence leans slightly in the female direction. That would be like being intelligent.
Eagly: The other change is rather unexpected to me, observers, I think or social scientists in particular, that the communion of women versus men has increased. So now it's overwhelmingly true. If you say something like, "Sympathetic, more true for women or men?" "It's women." That has changed over time to be more extreme and agency doesn't change. So 1946 people saw men as more aggressive and assertive than women and they still do and there's no significant change in that trends.
Eagly: So for women not to be troubled by these stereotypes, it's the agency that has to change as well as the competence. People have to see women as tough enough. And that still goes on the male direction. The competence is very helpful. If anything, women so or more competent than man because competence is something people expect of leaders. And the communion is probably not particularly effective in terms of being seen as even more communal than women in the past.
Mills: What do you think is different in other countries? I mean, women are still underrepresented in leadership in America, but other industrialized countries have been led by women. You can think of Germany or England or even New Zealand today. What's different there?
Eagly: The political scientists explain that there's, women have better chances at a parliamentary system than a presidential system. So in a parliamentary system, the executive and the legislative branches are combined because the prime minister is the head of the party that wins. That has the majority. And so women can make their way up through good service and popularity in their own districts, up the hierarchy and the party like Margaret Thatcher, a couple of others, and you can make it to the top of your party. And then by the way, you get to be prime minister if your party is elected. They don't elect a person directly. They elect a party. But we don't have that. We have the separate executive. And so the focus is all on this one role and being a woman or a man, you're voting for the person. And I think that brings out the difficulties that women have even in the UK, but because they're never voted for as a person when they get to be prime minister.
Eagly: And then the other thing, it's some countries, and it happened a little bit here as an attempt, there's a passing on through family, very elite family ties. And so Indira Gandhi was Nehru's daughter. And so some countries have that passing on and if there's not a male to pass it on to, it might get passed on to a wife in some cases, or to a child. Of course, we had a hint of that with the Clintons. Didn't we?
Mills: Almost.
Eagly: But it didn't go, when all was said and done, but it's not a tradition in the US to do that exactly. There was the two bushes, so it looked like we did it though. But anyway, it's a stronger tradition in some other countries where it's happened at an earlier point as when Indira Gandhi was prime minister of India. So there are differences in the governmental system. There may be differences in attitudes too, but it's particularly the structure of the political system, I think.
Mills: Yeah. I mean, we would tend to see some of those cultures as being even more sexist than at United States.
Eagly: Yes. Yes. But yet like Pakistan and India and other countries have had.
Mills: Right. Benazir Bhutto, same situation.
Eagly: Yeah. And have had women and they tend to have been closely aligned in the narrow elites that were in the often by blood. Yeah.
Mills: So in your book, Through the Labyrinth, you challenged the notion of the glass ceiling that's solid, but somewhat invisible barrier that most of us think women face when it comes to reaching the highest echelons of leadership. Why do you think that metaphor is not apt? And that a labyrinth is closer to the challenges that women face?
Eagly: There was a couple of reasons, at least. One is access, it suggests a very solid barrier and I don't think it's like prejudices, aren't like that. They are more fungible and malleable. And it isn't that we've never had women, as for instance, CEOs in the Fortune 500. So there are some and have been others. But the other reason it suggests that the barrier is right near the top. So you move up through your career and, Oh my God, you can't be CEO because there's this barrier at the top, next to the top, but that's not how it works in terms of careers in management or other areas that involve leadership. The challenges are all along the way. It's in day one, you go to work, as a manager just coming in with your MBA. The challenges you have as a woman are there and they're there every day.
Eagly: And as you rise, there are different challenges, it goes on and on. So it isn't as if you're exactly the same as men and then near the top, there's a glass ceiling. It's really a completely wrong metaphor. It has some truth to it perhaps, but it doesn't adequately represent the nature of the challenges, which are all along the way. And so that's why we propose labyrinth that the man has a relatively straight road. Do you know what I mean? He has some bumps along the way or whatever, but the woman has to go through this labyrinth. So she has be smarter and she has to figure out how to overcome these challenges that she then might face as a woman.
Eagly: She might take a wrong turn, but it's possible to turn around and go on, if you're really persistent. But you got to expect, you might get confused at some time and take a wrong turn. So it more represents the true complexity of women's careers in leadership than a glass ceiling does.
Mills: You published a meta analysis in 2011 that examined the extent to which stereotypes of leaders are culturally masculine? Can you talk about those findings and whether these stereotypes have changed in the intervening years?
Eagly: Right. We did publish a better analysis. It involved actually three underlying types of studies that had looked at the leader stereotype. The most famous paradigm was started by Virginia Shine and it's called the think manager, think male paradigm, started first in 1973. And in that study, there are three groups of participants, one rates, women, one rates men, and one rates managers or leaders. And they do it on a long list of traits. And then they correlate these ratings, the men group to the leader group and the woman group to the leader group. And they find the male leader, correlations are much higher than the woman leader correlations, which is just what we said before. People think that leaders are masculine and assertive. And so men are more like leaders than women are.
Eagly: And so that's why it got called the think manager, think male paradigm. And so it started in 1973. So we could look at it over many years and we did find some shift and that was, the woman leaders relationship. There was some gain in thinking that leaders had more feminine characteristics, that is in particular more social skills.
Eagly: So the notion of leader had changed so that yes, people continue to think that leader need to be tough and assertive, but by the way, they should be somewhat socially skilled. And so it was a hint of androgyny coming in. But still the masculine characteristics won out over the feminine, even in the most recent study. So it was a shift that would be welcoming to women. There's growth of androgyny, but it didn't go all the way to androgyny. It just was some addition of the social skills, sympathy, empathy, kind of thing, to what people expect for leaders.
Mills: You've also looked at differences in prosocial behaviors between men and women. How are they different and how are they the same?
Eagly: Prosocial behavior encompasses a lot of different kinds of behaviors. And so we found the both sexes engage with pro social behavior, a lot of it. So they're similar in engaging in this class of behaviors, but they tend to specialize to some extent in different aspects. And one of the things we were interested in, in particular was pro social behavior where the helper puts him or herself at some risk. And that was interesting because there was a lot of differentiation. So men are more likely to do physically dangerous acts to save other people's lives, such as saving somebody from drowning, running into a burning building and pulling out somebody, intervening in a crime setting, where the criminal has a gun. So these are truly life threatening. And although women sometimes do these things, it's considerably less likely.
Eagly: But another thing that has some danger is living kidney kitten donation, giving your kidney, you're a perfectly healthy person and this person's kidneys have given out. And would you jump up and say, "Well, you can have mine." That's not an easy decision because it involves, not actually a lot of risk, but it involves an operation and some real risk to your health and whatever. And we find women are more likely to do that, it's to give parts of their body. It's often done in family, it's within families because the more you're genetically matched, the safer it is for the person who receives it. But women are more likely to, and highly disproportional for giving to a spouse. Women are much more likely to give to her husband than a husband is to a wife. And so-
Mills: That's pretty amazing.
Eagly: So there's a dangerous kind of helping behavior, but it's somewhat female dominated. So other kinds, volunteer organization, such as doctors and nurses who go into dangerous situations and that kind of thing, women are very well represented in those kinds of organizations, even though they're so brisk. The other thing-
Mills: Of course, there's a higher proportion of women nurses than-
Eagly: Yeah, but then both nurses and doctors and even psychologists are needed in those situations because they're traumatic.
Mills: Sure.
Eagly: So another thing we looked at, it took quite a lot of time to gather all the available data was Holocaust rescuing by non-Jewish persons, which happened in the occupied countries of Europe. And there were records, they're actually kept by Yad Vashem, which is an organization in Israel. And they are held at also the Holocaust Museum in Washington from which we got the records, from which we could classify the people by nationality and sex. And we found women slightly overrepresented. Often you couldn't tell because it was a couple, but then when there was individuals recognized for having rescued, there was a slight over representation of women. And this was extremely dangerous, particularly in Poland, the rescuers were just sent to the camps if they were, or even killed right away. So it was a very dangerous act.
Eagly: So what did we think? We thought as an overall description that women tended to be overrepresented when there was a very deeply relational kind of act as giving your kidney to another person, that's very deeply relational. And the Holocaust rescuing often was too, because it would be a coworker or a knock on the door and you had to let people into your house and find a case to hide them. So this was very deeply relational. And so the women were somewhat overrepresented when the helping was of this type. And men were more overrepresented when the act demanded often physical strength, of course, and some sudden action of rescue in a dangerous situation and stranger rescue, the person that's out there drowning is often not often in your family, but you're at the beach and it becomes apparent. That kind of stranger rescuing, demanding a very sudden decision and also there was, could be a physical element and strength being an advantage that men are overrepresented. So there was some gendering in all of this.
Mills: Yeah. But it makes sense, I mean, especially, if, I mean, a woman may say, "Oh, I'd like to run into that burning building and save those children. But I don't think I could physically do it."
Eagly: Yeah. You're not sure it could be a man or a grown person in there. And they are trained of course, firefighters, but ordinary people sometimes do those things too, not just the firefighter.
Mills: Sure. Well, let's step back for a minute and look at the big picture because you've spent your career looking at differences and similarities between men and women. And during those years there've been a lot of cultural changes. There are more women in the workforce today. Men are beginning to question the societal expectations for them to be tough and aggressive. The Me Too movement has rendered some behaviors unacceptable. Are men and women, do you think changing intrinsically through these upheavals or the difference is narrowing between what American society considers masculine and what it considers feminine?
Eagly: Wow. That is a very big question. Certainly women have changed profoundly by most women moving into the labor force, into a whole range of roles. So women have had to, their lives have changed. But if you look at that labor force, it's pretty segregated. So women tend to be in roles that are community demanding, nursing and teaching and social work, all women are overrepresented. You could say, "Well yeah, but what about those other roles they've gone into? There are lawyers and doctors too, aren't they?" Yes. But then there's an internal segregation. So look at public interest law, you'll see a whole lot of women and family law, a whole lot of women. And you look at medicine, it's obvious which specialty is most female-dominated, pediatrics.
Mills: Pediatrics.
Eagly: And of course, gynecology and psychiatry, there are a lot of women. So again, in the more community demanding areas. And in management in business, you could also guess which areas are most female-dominated, human resources and public relations, which demands a lot of social skill to go out there and represent your country. So there's, at some deep level of communion and agency, there's less change that people perhaps think because of the segregation, not only between occupations, but within occupations, the kinds of subspecialties, the women versus the men take on. So yes, there's been an enormous change.
Eagly: And we see in the stereotypes what's certainly all to be there, which is the rise of women's communion because after all women are more educated now, the many more college degrees, and even the PhD goes slightly in the female direction now. So there's an enormous change in a kind of education therefore, which produces knowledge and competence of that type. And so that's an enormous change of women becoming like men and that's, it's by overtaking them. That's fantastic, but there's this underlying agency and communion, the Yin and Yang dynamic that we still see in the data. And so we don't know what exactly the comes from, that's in the nature nurture question there.
Mills: Right. So do you have any words of wisdom for those American women who are hoping someday to be president or CEO of a Fortune 500 company? What can they do in our current culture to improve their odds of success?
Eagly: Well, one thing we see, particularly in politics, running for office, the women are more qualified in the sense they have more past experience in education that's relevant to the job. You're kind of overqualified in terms of those kinds of criteria. I'm not sure the extent to which that's true in business, but I wouldn't be surprised. So the idea would be, don't skip on the qualifications. If most of those people have MBAs, get one and get one from the best place you could get one from. And that if you want to go into politics, okay, when you're young, you got to get started. When you're in college, go to the Republican or Democratic society for the students and try to get into leadership roles and then volunteer for campaigns, get the knowledge, get the context, because they're probably going to be more important in general for the woman than the man.
Eagly: We find that in politics, it's harder for women to get the support and money for the campaign than it is for men. So you got to get well networked to compete. The route may be a little harder, therefore, you have to have a high, you have to bring more to bear. So don't skimp on it. Don't think you could skimp on it. So to get in there and get the kind of background that's as ideal as possible. That's very important.
Eagly: And then you do need to keep in mind the double bind, this is what we talked about before, but another name is the double bind that as a woman, you're expected to be communal to be kind and caring and nice. And as a leader, rather, you're expected to be able to take charge and to be assertive and to be able to argue with people and hold your own. So there's both of those things. The man can just do the ladder, but the woman have to be successful, ordinarily, have to bring the communion along because it's very important for them to be liked. Men could get away often with not being so liked, but the woman, if she's she disliked it's... I think that was part of Hillary Clinton's problem. A lot of people disliked Trump, but a lot of people disliked Hillary. And I think that was more of a disadvantage for her because she's a woman.
Eagly: And so to keep in mind the double bind and that you will have to negotiate and there's smart ways to do it. I think Kamala Harris, insofar as I've seen her on television is doing a good job with that. So look at women who appeared to be doing a good job as role models. Yeah. And then persistence.
Mills: Because you're in that labyrinth you mean-
Eagly: Yeah, you're in the -
Mills: ... take a wrong turn, don't give up.
Eagly: Yeah, don't give up. Right. Yeah. Just learn from it. Things go bad. In all careers, many things I've done, I wish had gone better or I did something wrong, but I hung in there. That's important in all careers, but if you're in a career that has a labyrinth, then it's even more important. You can get discouraged, but take a deep breath and learn from it and go on. Yeah. So I think, I admire women who do make it through to these leadership roles, because I think on the average, it just takes more skill than it did for the man in leadership. He wouldn't be so much tested and questioned as to whether he could do the job.
Mills: Sounds a little unfair, but I guess you just have to put up with that.
Eagly: It's unfair, but it's like you also have a burden for the people because the women come a lot later. So we could be thankful for Hillary Clinton that she was there and got people used to it. I know she didn't win, but she won the popular vote. Hey, come on now. So the women that come next, like Kamala Harris, I think have an easier time because of her and other women in politics. So yeah, we have to think it's unfair, but it's not as unfair as it was earlier because they were there and I hope to make it less unfair for the women who come next.
Mills: That's a good way to look at it. Well, Dr. Eagly, thank you so much for joining me today. This has been really interesting and just a very, almost a fun conversation to have.
Eagly: Thank you, Kim. I enjoyed talking with you.
Mills: You can find previous episodes of Speaking of Psychology on our website at speakingofpsychology.org or wherever you get your podcasts. If you have comments or ideas for future podcasts, email us at speakingofpsychology@apa.org. That Speaking of Psychology are one word, @apa.org. Speaking of Psychology is produced by Lea Winerman. Our sound editor is Chris Condayan. Thank you for listening. For the American psychological association, I'm Kim Mills.
Alice Eagly, PhD, is a social psychologist who has published widely on the psychology of gender, attitudes, leadership and stereotypes. She is the author of "Through the Labyrinth: The Truth About How Women Become Leaders." Eagly is a professor of psychology emerita at Northwestern University.
