Women and work: supporting female colleagues in psychology.

Maltby, Lauren E. ; Hall, M. Elizabeth Lewis ; Anderson, Tamara L. 等

In 2007, the most recent year for which data are available, women comprised 64.4 percent of the 185,000 psychologists nationwide. Sixty-six percent of mental health counselors and a striking 82 percent of social workers were also women (United States Department of Labor, 2008). Despite women's strong presence in the social sciences and mental health fields, women still face unique challenges as they advance through their career. For instance, APA's study of salaries in psychology showed that in 2007, women earned less than men, with the disparities becoming more pronounced with more years of work experience (American Psychological Association Center for Workforce Studies, 2009). Sexual harassment and sexism are still pervasive in many work places, as well as the often-overlooked tensions of balancing multiple roles for working mothers (Oates, Hall, Anderson & Willingham, 2008). Many of the problems women face, as well as their solutions to these problems, are closely intertwined with their religious faith (Hall, Anderson & Willingham, 2004; Hall, Christerson & Cunningham, 2009). This article seeks to identify common issues faced by Christian women working in psychology-related fields, as well as highlight avenues for supporting these women in the workplace. To this end, we will first review some issues faced by working women in general, and then discuss those issues that pertain more specifically to working mothers.

Issues Facing Working Women

Women who work face certain unique challenges, including encounters with sexism, as well as structural obstacles in the workplace (such as discriminatory policies), which can serve to place them at a disadvantage. These negative encounters and structural obstacles may take the form of small, almost imperceptible slights which, when considered individually, do not amount to much; in other words, they are molehills. But molehills can accumulate over time to create mountains in the form of unsupportive or even hostile environments for women. Valian (1998) refers to this phenomenon as the accumulation of disadvantage, and makes the case that this is an important and frequently overlooked issue in the workplace. We turn now to the specific negative experiences women face in the workplace.

Gender discrimination. Gender discrimination occurs whenever a person or persons are put at a disadvantage compared to other groups because of their gender. Gender discrimination includes many forms of disadvantageous treatment, including discriminatory decisions (such as hiring or firing), sexual and gender harassment. Sexual harassment is "the sexualization of a work relationship" (Settles, Cortina, Malley, & Stewart, 2006), and includes a range of behaviors including sexual assault, sexual coercion and unwanted sexual attention.

 Elena works as a therapist in a prison
 setting. Although she finds her work
 meaningful, she sometimes dreads
 going to work because of the catcalls
 and sexualized comments directed at
 her by the inmates. Although she usually
 wears her long hair in a bun, Elena
 once wore it down, as she was going
 directly to a social event after work.
 One of her colleagues, a therapist, told
 her that she was "asking for" sexual
 attention by wearing her hair down.

Gender harassment, on the other hand, conveys degrading and sexist attitudes without the intention of eliciting sexual cooperation with the perpetrator. In a qualitative study on gender harassment, Swim, Hyers, Cohen and Ferguson (2001) concluded that it is composed of three unique types of incidents: demeaning and derogatory comments and behaviors, sexual objectification, and traditional gender role prejudice and stereotyping. For example, stereotypes may lead to devaluing or ignoring the contributions of women.

 Jane is one of only two women on
 the board of an organization that provides
 psychological services to the
 community. At a board meeting, she
 suggests an amendment to a motion,
 but her comment is ignored. Several
 minutes later, a man makes the same
 suggestion, and the decision is made
 unanimously to change the motion.

As Valian (1998) eloquently argues in her work, all forms of discrimination, be they sexual or gender harassment, are rooted in gender schemas that disadvantage women. Stereotypical gender schemas are especially damaging to women in the workplace because they include expectations about men and women's professional competence. These expectations then bias one's interpretation of women's actual performance. To put it simply, people expect men to perform well at work and people expect women to perform less well.

But how much does it matter if one's expectations about work performance vary slightly based on gender? As it happens, it matters a great deal. Valian (1998) reviewed research in which men and women were asked to review the curricula vitae of an applicant for an academic position. Some participants were given a vita with a male name attached, and others with a female name attached. Both men and women consistently rated the women as less competent for the academic position than the men, despite the fact that the vitas were identical. It is important for both men and women to recognize that no experience of gender discrimination is too small to be addressed.

What kind of expectations do people have of women, which might result in gender discrimination? Glick and Fiske's (1996) theory of ambivalent sexism proposes that sexist attitudes toward women may be expressed in ways that are either outwardly hostile, or outwardly benevolent. Hostile sexism is defined as antagonism; it is an attitude toward gender relations in which women are perceived to be using sexuality or feminist ideology to control men and characterizes women as inferior (Glick & Fiske, 1996; Glick, Diebold, Bailey-Werner & Zhu, 1997). Benevolent sexism, on the other hand, is a subjectively positive attitude toward women that serves to reinforce traditional gender roles, by characterizing women as "pure creatures who ought to be protected, supported, and adored and whose love is necessary to make a man complete" (Glick & Fiske, 2001, p. 109).

Understanding these two components of sexism is especially important in supporting female colleagues. Benevolent sexism, although subjectively positive, is often used to reinforce traditional gender roles and suggest that women are better suited for domestic roles. Benevolent sexism may be harder to recognize as sexism per se, but this attitude toward women deemphasizes work-related characteristics (such as competency, intellectual skills, and leadership abilities) and influences expectations and judgments about women's work performance. Benevolent sexism's view of women as essentially more nurturing than men also has significant implications for childrearing decisions, and is often the basis for communicating a judgment against working mothers. These small differences in evaluation of work can add up, creating big differences in outcome over time.

 Ruth is a psychologist who works as
 a college professor. Her students'
 expectations of her are often reflected
 in comments on course evaluations.
 After struggling in a difficult statistics
 course, one student wrote, "She said
 that the exams would be difficult, but
 she smiled so much and was so
 warm, that I didn't believe her."

Research suggests that encounters with gender and sexual harassment, as well as sexism, create negative outcomes for women through three primary mechanisms: (a) by evoking feelings of stereotype threat, in which being reminded of disadvantageous gender schemas negatively effect one's performance; (b) by rewarding certain behaviors and punishing others (e.g., when assertive behaviors by women in committee meetings are ignored or met with negative nonverbal reactions) (Heilman & Chen, 2005); and (c) by acting as "daily hassles or microstressors" (Settles et al., 2006, p. 49). The problematic effects of gender stereotyping and harassment collect, just like interest on a debt accumulates over time.

Men can support their female colleagues by acknowledging the toll these "daily hassles" can take on the mental well-being of women. Additionally, men can both listen to women's experiences of discrimination and harassment in the workplace, and insist with them that these experiences be addressed. No experience is too small to be examined and addressed.

Women working in settings which are religiously affiliated may experience the mechanisms of discrimination in unique ways. Because religious belief systems often have social practices that shape gender schemas and prescribed behavior, religious beliefs and attitudes may affect how gender is socially constructed and how discrimination is experienced (Cadge, 2004). Although there is clearly within-group diversity among evangelicals, research has shown that evangelical Christians are more conservative in their views on gender roles than the general population (Lehrer, 1995).

In their study of discrimination against women in the context of Christian higher education, Hall et al. (2009) found that experiences of discrimination were more negative when the victim attributed the discrimination and harassment to the Christian beliefs of the perpetrator. Religiously motivated statements about women which stereotype women can create serious detrimental effects both for working women in general, and for mothers in particular, a subgroup to whom we now turn our attention.

Working Mothers: Structural Obstacles, Inter-role Conflict and Stereotypes

Although virtually all working women in psychology-related fields face gender discrimination (e.g., gender and sexual harassment), working mothers face some additional challenges which are unique to their life situations.

Structural obstacles. Structural obstacles include institutional norms and policies that impede women's success in the workplace. While many women opt for private practice settings in order to escape these obstacles, many others work in organizational, academic, or medical settings that have structures built around men's careers and life cycles (Bickel, 1995). For women to be successful in these settings, they must rearrange their lives to conform to this structure.

 Esther is a clinical social worker at a
 university-affiliated medical center,
 where she works with the families of
 chronically ill children. She loves her
 work, though it is demanding and
 often requires that she work overtime.
 She is married and would like children
 of her own, but can't imagine how she
 might balance childbearing with the
 high demands of her job. It would be
 difficult or impossible to find a job
 with the same focus in a more flexible
 setting. Esther feels that she must
 choose between fulfilling her vocational
 calling, or being a mother.

Supportive work environments feature job sharing, provide pretax reimbursement for childcare, and allow flexible work schedules (Seyler & Monroe, 1995). Colleagues of women in structured job settings can offer support and solidarity in the struggle to create a supportive work environment. The following vignette (drawn from the experience of one of the authors), illustrates this supportive stance:

 Due to a shortage of classrooms, the
 university administration has dictated
 that classes formerly offered on a
 Monday-Wednesday schedule, must
 now be changed to Monday-Wednesday-Friday,
 in order to utilize previously
 unused classrooms on Fridays. This
 unpopular change will limit the days
 that faculty can work out of their
 homes. The chair of the psychology
 program, a man, opens conversation
 with the faculty on the issue by stating,
 "of course, we want to give scheduling
 priority to our faculty mothers who are
 dealing with family demands." The rest
 of the men in the room quickly nod
 their heads in agreement.

Inter-role conflict. Inter-role conflict was originally defined by Greenhaus and Beutell (1985) as a specific type of conflict that emerges when the responsibility from different domains of one's life creates pressures that are in some way incompatible. Oates, Hall, Anderson and Willingham (2008) summarized a number of studies on inter-role conflict, and concluded that women with multiple roles exhibit better mental and physical health than women with fewer roles (e.g., Barnett, 2004). However, women who balance multiple roles often report feelings of inner conflict between their roles, especially between the "seemingly conflicting goals of career and mothering" (Oates et al., 2008, p. 5). This internal tension has been shown to have numerous negative effects on women's subjective well-being, such as symptoms of depression and anxiety, anger, stress, guilt, and other negative self-assessments (Oates et al., 2008).

 Tanya generally feels that her life as a
 working mother is going well. Her
 private practice gives her some flexibility,
 and she is largely able to work
 around her daughter's kindergarten
 schedule. However, this morning her
 daughter woke up with a fever, and
 Tanya felt torn. She didn't have
 enough slots to reschedule all her
 clients, and one of them was in crisis.
 On the other hand, she felt the pull
 to be home to comfort her daughter,
 though she knew that she would be
 comfortable and well cared for at her
 neighbor's house. At these times,
 Tanya wondered whether she was
 doing the right thing in "selfishly"
 doing the work she loved.

Colleagues can support women in psychology-related fields by making efforts to help women resolve this internal tension in a way that is meaningful and appropriate for their unique circumstances and lifestyle. They can also avoid the "mother-blaming" that occurs so frequently in our culture. Garey (1999) identified two unique ways of coping with multiple roles, "balancing" and "weaving." In balancing, women keep the two spheres of work and family relatively independent of each other. Alternatively, in weaving, women strive for seamlessness between their two worlds, which may entail working from home at times or bringing children to work during school holidays. Colleagues of working mothers can support these women by offering them their support as they choose and implement whichever strategy is the most effective in their life, given their particular circumstances.

Stereotypes. Working mothers also face a particularly unique challenge when it comes to navigating the conflicting stereotypes and prejudices of their multiple roles. Fiske, Xu, Cuddy and Glick (1999) have demonstrated that prejudice toward outgroups is often rooted in negative appraisals about warmth and competence. In their study, they demonstrated that outgroups are generally categorized into one of two categories along these dimensions: incompetent but warm (leading to a paternalistic prejudice) and competent but not warm (leading to an envious prejudice). Traditional women, such as mothers, often face paternalistic prejudice whereas nontraditional women, such as career women, often face envious prejudice. Clearly, working mothers present an essential challenge to common gender schemas. Because gender schemas guide our behavior in a variety of settings (Valian, 1998), working mothers often receive conflicting messages from co-workers and personal acquaintances about their competency and level of warmth/nurturance. These messages can be confusing and frustrating; being aware of the conflicting messages about warmth and competency that working mothers receive is a good starting point for opening up a dialogue with working mothers in a myriad of work environments.

 Nicole is a mother and psychologist
 in the department of psychology at
 her university's medical school, and
 is responsible for directing the
 Dialectical Behavior Therapy program
 for highly suicidal adults with
 borderline personality disorder.
 Nicole maintains strict therapeutic
 boundaries and holds high standards
 for her trainees, which is likely part
 of why her program has been so successful.
 However, she occasionally
 overhears trainees and other staff
 members in her program make comments
 about how badly they feel for
 her children due to her perceived
 lack of warmth at work.

Conclusion

This article has examined the gender discrimination and structural obstacles that many working women face, in addition to some issues unique to working mothers. Colleagues can support their female co-workers by acknowledging the accumulation of disadvantage, and creating a safe work environment free from both sexism and sexual harassment. Colleagues can also support their female co-workers with children by recognizing the tension inherent in balancing multiple roles, giving these working mothers the freedom to choose a strategy that is most effective for life circumstances (e.g., balancing vs. weaving), and striving to create a work environment that addresses both emotional and practical needs.

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Lauren E. Maltby, M. Elizabeth Lewis Hall,

and Tamara L. Anderson

Biola University

Lauren E. Maltby, M.A., is a graduate student at the Rosemead School of Psychology at Biola University, with particular interests in ambivalent sexism, psychology of religion, and child trauma.

M. Elizabeth Lewis Hall, Ph.D., and Tamara Anderson, Ph.D. are faculty members in the Department of Psychology at Rosemead.

Correspondence regarding this article may be addressed to Lauren Maltby, Rosemead School of Psychology, Biola University, 13800 Biola Ave., La Mirada, CA 90639; Lauren.Maltby@biola.edu.