THINK FOLLOWER, THINK FEMALE: MOTIVATIONAL, IDEOLOGICAL & COGNITIVE ROOTS OF FOLLOWERSHIP STEREOTYPES

This contribution addresses gender inequality in terms of the – relatively underexplored– stereotypical association between women and followership positions as a function of individual level variables including motivational, ideological and cognitive ones. A correlational study (N = 247) was conducted on a sample of Italian workers in the public and private sectors to investigate the antecedents of gender stereotypes of followership (i.e., women are better followers than men). The study focused on the role of an individual’s motivated closed-mindedness (i.e., need for cognitive closure; NCC) as a factor leading to the endorsement of system justification ideologies promoting the maintenance of the status quo such as Beliefs in a Just Word (BJW) and Social Dominance Orientation (SDO), and, consequently, the individual’s cognition that women are unfit for leadership positions, as assumed in the role congruity theory. We expected individuals with a high need to maintain cognitive stability (i.e, high NCC) to rate women as better followers than men via their higher endorsement of system justification ideologies, leading in turn to hold the gender stereotypes of women as unfit for leadership positions. The results revealed that individuals with a high NCC rated women as better followers than men and, most importantly, that this effect was mediated by individual’s endorsement of BJW and SDO, leading in turn to individual’s gender stereotypes of women as unfit for leadership positions. This study highlighted the complex psychological antecedents of the individual’s endorsement of stereotypes associating women with subordinate workplace positions. Besides underlying this detrimental path, evidence of the study could be informative of strategies that can be implemented to enhance gender equality via the beneficial effect of NCC in fostering generalization of new knowledge and changes in individuals’ stereotypical cognitions, for instance after contact experiences in with counterstereotypical women (e.g., women as managers) challenging previous knowledge.