Sex role in the work environment

This study examined the results of the National Prison Wardens’ Survey to ascertain the levels of job satisfaction, occupational sentiments, and work-related stress among prison wardens and to establish whether these variables differed between male and female respondents. The findings indicated that wardens generally experience high levels of job satisfaction, reflect positive occupational sentiments, and report low levels of work-related stress. Additionally, results from the Chi-square tests and Lambda measures of association indicated that little to no relationship existed between gender and any of the explored variables.

This study explores the ways in which female nurses in management negotiate their roles within the male dominated institutions of medicine and administration. Our culture provides to this highly gendered profession a dominant construction of unambiguous identities for both management and nursing. The principles of semiology and feminist media criticism are used to show that negotiation with dominant messages takes place in lived reality in ways that are very similar to the negotiation in which consumers of media texts engage. Nine interview transcripts of nurses in management positions were analyzed for evidence of negotiated decodings of dominant meanings. The analysis reveals the presence of preferred readings, oppositional readings and resistive readings of the dominant construction of identities with an emphasis on the oppositional reading.

Research has shown that women are reluctant to act as or perceive themselves as leaders over men (Eagly & Karau, 1991, Snodgrass & Rosenthal, 1984). Other research has shown how expectations about behavior can elicit such behavior (Rosenthal & Rubin, 1978). This thesis combines these two bodies of research in an attempt to create an environment where women emerge as leaders over men. Mixed- and same-sex dyads were given bogus leadership expectancies, and then interacted in a team task. Leadership performance, perceptions, and predictions were measured after the task. It was hypothesized and found that expectancies can overcome sex role stereotypes regarding leadership.

This two-part study included two procedures: (1) the development of an instrument to assess gender-related attitudes among male and female managers, and (2) the collection and analysis of data on gender-related attitudes among male and female managers. Male and female managers (n = 165) responded on a Likert scale to 30 gender-related statements about male and female managers from their own perspective and then based on their opinions of how other male and female managers might respond to the statements. The topic addresses the undercurrents of conflict and dissension that are accompanying paradigmatic changes in traditional management practices and the integration of women into all aspects of management. Although women have demonstrated managerial capability in the workplace, the existence of gender differences warrants further investigation into gender factors influencing co-managing. An extensive review of the literature relating the changes in gender studies over the past 30 years is included. Statistical treatment of the data included the use of paired t-tests, independent samples t-tests or ANOVAs for 20 hypotheses. Through the hypotheses, male and female managers' perspectives on 30 gender-related statements were explored. In addition, male and female managers' responses were compared across different levels of specific demographic data. Ten of the hypotheses showed statistical significance at p <.05. For the gender-related statements, male and female managers rated female managers more positively than males; male and female managers each rated their own gender more positively than did the opposite gender. Male managers rated female peers more positively and other males less positively than they perceived other male managers would; they rated female managers less positively and male managers more positively than they perceived female peers would. Female managers rated their own gender more positively than they perceived males would and rated male peers less positively than they perceived other females would; their own ratings of females were similar to their perceptions of the ratings of other females. When the managers' mean responses for the gender-related statements were compared across different levels of demographic data, no significant relationships were found with level of management, size of company, training experiences, and female managers' preferences for working with male or female managers. However, male managers who stated a preference for working with male managers rated the statements about male managers more positively than did those who had no gender preference. In addition, male managers who stated no preference for the gender of peer managers rated statements about female managers more positively than those who stated a preference for working with male managers.