Global Surgery and Ethics in Humanitarian Settings

Sample Solution

Gender stereotypes Despite numerous awareness campaigns, feminist initiatives, and other attempts at bringing more equality onto the work floor, gender stereotypes still play a significant role in this world. Both men and women are often expected to act a certain way, and these expectations can have more influence on their evaluations than their actual performance and/or behaviour. Eagly, Makhijani, and Klonsky (1992) found that women using an autocratic leadership style were rated as less effective than men using the same style. They explain that autocratic leadership behaviours are seen as more masculine, and that male leaders are seen as more effective than women, because these behaviours seem “more fitting” for men, regardless of their actual performance. On the other hand, women were rated more favourably than men when adopting a transformational leadership style, because this style is seen as more feminine. These findings depict how gender-based expectations play a role in evaluations of leadership. Supervisors are rated higher when they comply to the expectations for their gender. This concept is also known as role congruity theory (Douglas, 2012). Goertzen and Fritz (2004) argue that the less job-related information that is available to a leader or subordinate, the more “room” is given to gender stereotypes to influence the development of LMX relationships. He also proposed that female leaders are thought to have less access to resources in general, which results in them being rated lower on quality of LMX. This effect is largest when women occupy a role that is seen as traditionally masculine, for example the role of CEO. Carli (2001) found that women whose competence was rated as highly as men’s, are seen as not complying to their gender role. She also noted that mainly men often do not acknowledge women’s contributions, especially when they perceive incongruence between their acquired position and gender role norms. When women manage to get t