 Merit versus maleness: How strategic positioning can mitigate external gender biasRachel Mui, Owen Parker and Varkey Titus Business Horizons, 2022, vol. 65, issue 4, 427-436 Abstract: Despite the proactive efforts of many firms to combat gender bias within their organizations, societal prejudices still disadvantage women leaders and the firms who employ them. This external gender bias shapes outside stakeholder evaluations of women leaders’ efforts in various ways, and firms need strategies to cope with this external gender bias. We examine the conditions that might alleviate this burden of external bias and what women leaders and top executives can do to leverage these conditions—from a strategic positioning perspective—that will effectively allow female leaders to differentiate their work. To do this, we synthesize and build upon evidence that the external gender bias against women leaders diminishes when they lead in areas that are unconventional rather than mainstream. We then propose a two-step process based on (1) identifying the likely threat of external gender bias, which is stronger in some industry contexts than others, and (2) leveraging unconventionality to circumvent male prototypical comparisons, thereby reducing the hazards of external gender bias. Keywords: External gender bias; Women leaders; Role congruity; Unconventional roles; Perceived capability (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:bushor:v:65:y:2022:i:4:p:427-436 DOI: 10.1016/j.bushor.2021.05.003 Access Statistics for this article Business Horizons is currently edited by C. M. Dalton More articles in Business Horizons from Elsevier |
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