Cecilia L. Ridgeway

Unpacking the Gender System A Theoretical Perspective on Gender Beliefs and Social Relations

According to the perspective developed in this article, widely shared, hegemonic cultural beliefs about gender and their impact in what the authors call “social relational” contexts are among the core components that maintain and change the gender system. When gender is salient in these ubiquitous contexts, cultural beliefs about gender function as part of the rules of the game, biasing the behaviors, performances, and evaluations of otherwise similar men and women in systematic ways that the authors specify. While the biasing impact of gender beliefs may be small in any one instance, the consequences cumulate over individuals’ lives and result in substantially different outcomes for men and women. After describing this perspective, the authors show how it sheds newlight on some defining features of the gender system and illustrate its implications for research into specific questions about gender inequality.

Gender, Status, and Leadership

More than a trait of individuals, gender is an institutionalized system of social practices. The gender system is deeply entwined with social hierarchy and leadership because gender stereotypes contain status beliefs that associate greater status worthiness and competence with men than women. This review uses expectation states theory to describe how gender status beliefs create a network of constraining expectations and interpersonal reactions that is a major cause of the “glass ceiling.” In mixed-sex or gender-relevant contexts, gender status beliefs shape mens and womens assertiveness, the attention and evaluation their performances receive, ability attributed to them on the basis of performance, the influence they achieve, and the likelihood that they emerge as leaders. Gender status beliefs also create legitimacy reactions that penalize assertive women leaders for violating the expected status order and reduce their ability to gain complaince with directives.

Expectations, Legitimation, and Dominance Behavior in Task Groups

This paper proposes an expectation states theory of the legitimation of power and prestige orders in task groups. Valued status positions are a reward for those whose distribution members develop expectations. The more differentiated these expectations, the more likely that the power and prestige order will be treated as legitimate. Applying our formulation to various types of group structures we derive a set of theoretical assertions that relate the initial status composition of a group to the likelihood that its power and prestige order becomes legitimatized. These predict, among other things, that legitimation of structure is more likely to develop in heterogeneous status consistent groups than in groups that are initially homogeneous, and it is more likely to develop in the latter groups than in heterogeneous status inconsistent groups. If verified, these predictions will provide an explanation for the difficulty that those who operate from a disadvantaged external status position, such as women and minorities in mixed sex or bi-racial groups, often face in trying to wield directive power over their members even when they are task leaders.

Framed Before We Know It How Gender Shapes Social Relations

In this article, I argue that gender is a primary cultural frame for coordinating behavior and organizing social relations. I describe the implications for understanding how gender shapes social behavior and organizational structures. By my analysis, gender typically acts as a background identity that biases, in gendered directions, the performance of behaviors undertaken in the name of organizational roles and identities. I develop an account of how the background effects of the gender frame on behavior vary by the context that different organizational and institutional structures set but can also infuse gendered meanings into organizational practices. Next, I apply this account to two empirical illustrations to demonstrate that we cannot understand the shape that the structure of gender inequality and gender difference takes in particular institutional or societal contexts without taking into account the background effects of the gender frame on behavior in these contexts.

Creating and Spreading Status Beliefs1

In this article, two experiments support status construction theorys claim that interaction spreads status beliefs through behavior, creating a diffusion process that makes widely shared beliefs possible. The first demonstrates that people who hold a status belief can “teach” it by treating the other in accord with the belief. The second shows that third‐party participants who witness such behavioral treatments also acquire the status belief. The first experiment also verifies a general mechanism by which interaction creates status beliefs: nominally different participants developed shared status beliefs about the difference from the repeated enactment of influence hierarchies corresponding to the difference. This general mechanism suggests that any structural condition that gives one group a systematic advantage in gaining influence over another group in intergroup encounters will foster the development of widely shared status beliefs favoring the advantaged group.

Expectation States Theory

Expectation states theory is, in many ways, a textbook example of a theoretical research program. It is deductive, programmatic, formalized mathematically, cumulative, precise, and predictive; and its propositions have been subjected to rigorous evaluation. More importantly, however, it is a theory that illuminates core issues in social psychology and sociology more broadly. It is fundamentally a “macro-micro-macro” explanation about one way that categorical inequality is reproduced in society. Cultural beliefs about social categories at the macro level impact behavior and evaluation at the individual level, which acts to reproduce status structures that are consistent with pre-existing macro-level beliefs. Status structures in groups can be thought of as the building blocks of more macro-level structural inequalities in society. For example, to the extent that status processes make it less likely for women in work groups to emerge or be accepted as leaders, in the aggregate we will observe that more men than women hold leadership positions in organizations, a stratification pattern that is reproduced at least partially by the way macro-level beliefs impact individual behaviors and evaluations.

Nonverbal Behavior, Dominance, and the Basis of Status in Task Groups

Linking nonverbal behavior to influence in task groups has been interpreted as evidence that behavioral dominance is the basis of status. Challenging this interpretation, this paper proposes that both the power processes that underlie status formation and the structural implications of dominance hierarchies indicate that expectations about task performance will be the usual basis of status in task groups. Furthermore, while some nonverbal behavior communicates dominance, it is not linked to influence. Influence results from nonverbal task cues that affect the performance expectations of an actor. An experiment tested this hypothesis by measuring the influence achieved by a female confederate in a three-person female group. As expected, the confederate was most influential when she displayed high-level task cues. When she displayed a high level of dominance cues, the confederate was not more influential than when she displayed submissive or low-task cues. The results suggest that status is a collective product of the entire network of group members, rather than an aggregate of pairwise competitions among members.

What Is the Relationship Between Socioemotional Behavior and Status in Task Groups

This paper analyzes the way task proceedings engender emotional reactions, the conditions under which these are expressed in positive and negative socioemotional behavior, and their effect on the status hierarchy in informal task groups. In links developments in the sociology of emotions to theories of status and provides a theoretical explanation of the predominance of positive over negative socioemotional behavior in task groups. The analysis indicates that the status herarchy asymmetrically limits the expression of negative socioemotional behaviors arising from disagreements but does not constrain positive socioemotional expressions arising from agreements. Performance expectations determine the causal attributions of disagreement and consequently the emotion felt and the likelihood that negative behavior will result. As a result, the overall level of negative, but not positive, behaviors is reduced, status struggles are contained, and group solidarity is encouraged. Also, low-status members often elicit negative emotions but must absorb rather than respond to them.

Why Status Matters for Inequality

To understand the mechanisms behind social inequality, this address argues that we need to more thoroughly incorporate the effects of status—inequality based on differences in esteem and respect—alongside those based on resources and power. As a micro motive for behavior, status is as significant as money and power. At a macro level, status stabilizes resource and power inequality by transforming it into cultural status beliefs about group differences regarding who is “better” (esteemed and competent). But cultural status beliefs about which groups are “better” constitute group differences as independent dimensions of inequality that generate material advantages due to group membership itself. Acting through micro-level social relations in workplaces, schools, and elsewhere, status beliefs bias evaluations of competence and suitability for authority, bias associational preferences, and evoke resistance to status challenges from low-status group members. These effects accumulate to direct members of higher status groups toward positions of resources and power while holding back lower status group members. Through these processes, status writes group differences such as gender, race, and class-based life style into organizational structures of resources and power, creating durable inequality. Status is thus a central mechanism behind durable patterns of inequality based on social differences.

Dominance and Collective Hierarchy Formation in Male and Female Task Groups

To clarify the impact of dominance behavior on status in task groups, the formation of status hierarchies must be viewed as the collective product of joint interaction among the entire network of group members rather than as an aggregate of independent dyadic encounters. A network-collective analysis indicates that the impact of a dyadic dominance contest on status depends critically on the reaction of group members who are bystanders to it. Structural conditions induced by the groups task encourage bystanders to intervene against members who claim status by dominance behavior, limiting its role in status allocation. In an experiment with four-person same-sex decision groups, two bystanders intervened to attack the dominance behavior of another confederate. Moreover, the dominant confederate was disliked and was no more influential in the group than a neutral confederate. These results held for both male and female groups, although levels of dominance behavior were higher in male groups.