Is she a value threat to you? Keep her out
Mon 14 May 2012
, LEAP redaktie, LEAP
A new study from Washington University in St. Louis revealed that women in high profile management roles often do not support other qualified female candidates as potential colleagues. The author, Michelle Duguid, assistant professor of organizational behavior, explains this lack of sisterhood by a concept called 'value threat.' In short it works like this: If you are the only woman in a leadership team, you might fear that another highly qualified female candidate for the team is more qualified, competent or accepted than you are. She poses a 'competitive threat' to you and you will therefore not support her. If you perceive the other female candidate as less qualified than you are, you won't support her either because you are afraid it would reinforce negative stereotypes about 'token women'. And thirdly, if the other female candidate is just fine: you might still withhold support for fear of being accused of favoritism.
The study, "Female Tokens in High-prestige Work Groups: Catalysts or Inhibitors of Group Diversification?", is based on several experiments. In one of them female college students were assigned to (fake) committees and then asked to suggest one extra member, choosing between a one male and one female profile. The students that were told that until now they were the only woman on board were less likely to choose the female candidate and more likely to report feeling nervous about her, regardless of whether the other woman's profile's qualifications were better or worse than their own. Students who were told that the majority of the committee members were women, on the other hand, were more likely to be interested in another female member. The more alone the 'token success, feels, the more likely value threat is to occur, the study implies.
So, those women that are lonely at the top are likely to remain lonely. The higher up the lonelier. The experiments showed that the perceived power and status of the job plays a significant role in the behavior of the 'token success' . The participants that were told their committees were headed by the dean of the college were more nervous about choosing an extra female member, than those that were told it was headed by a student researcher. Is seems the value threat increases as the value of the job increases.
What to do about the value threat? Duguid advises companies to actively promote mentoring relationships between female employees and active networking between lower ranking female employees so they can support each other working their way up. Furthermore, she states, not surprisingly, but it can't be said often enough, that the responsibility for recognizing and promoting talented minority employees should be spread. If we leave that job to the happy few token successes it will not be done.
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