The relationship between attribution related to aquisition of managerial position by women, attitudes toward women managers, sexism and sex differences


Thesis Type: Postgraduate

Institution Of The Thesis: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Department of Psychology, Turkey

Approval Date: 2006

Student: DENİZ ÖZKAN

Supervisor: NURAY SAKALLI UĞURLU

Abstract:

The aim of the present study was to investigate the relationship between attribution related to acquisition of managerial position by women, attitudes toward women managers, sexism and sex differences. 201 workers from various positions in various firms participated in the present study. Findings indicated that male participants exhibited more negative attitudes toward women managers than did female participants. Participants who were high on hostile sexism revealed more negative attitudes toward women managers than participants who were low on hostile sexism. Additional analysis further revealed that unique contributions of sex and HS were found as predictive factors to explain the reason of both negative and positive attitudes toward women managers. Also, findings indicated that the main effects of sex difference and positive attitude toward women managers on ability and effort attributions were not found significant. However, there were significant main effects of sex difference and negative attitude toward women managers on task difficulty and luck attributions. That is to say, men attributed women managers’ success more to task difficulty, whereas women attributed women managers’ success more to luck than men. In addition, participants who were high on negative attitudes toward women managers attributed women managers’ success more to task difficulty than participants who were low on negative attitudes toward women managers. The major contributions of this thesis were (1) investigating the relationship between hostile sexism, sex difference and negative attitude toward women managers; (2) comparing the effects of sex difference and hostile sexism on positive and negative attitudes toward women managers and (3) showing the effects of sex difference, negative and positive attitudes toward women managers on four attributional explanations about women managers’ success (ability, effort, task difficulty and luck).