Organizations working to meaningfully improve diversity and inclusion in STEM may be missing a crucial consideration, new research suggests.
In a two part study, researchers first examined whether acts of gendered social exclusion are systematically associated with men’s implicit gender stereotypes. They then turned to women’s experiences, investigating whether women’s workplace outcomes are associated with being socially excluded by male colleagues.
“Our research shows how positive day-to-day interactions between colleagues reflect and reinforce this chilly climate, and points to a counter-intuitive way that we can help fix it,” said Emily Cyr, a PhD candidate in social psychology at Waterloo. “When men made even small gestures of social inclusion, for example, chatting with female teammates during breaks, women reported feeling less worried about being stereotyped at work and more engaged in their careers. However, men were less likely to socially include their female colleagues than their male colleagues, especially men with stronger unconscious (implicit) gender stereotypes.”
You can read the full article featured in Waterloo News.
The study authored by Cyr, Bergsieker, Dennehy and Schmader appears in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.