Different Cultures, Similar Perceptions: Stereotyping of Western European Business Leaders, a study conducted by Catalyst and researchers from the Institute for Management Development (IMD) in Switzerland, examined a major barrier to women's advancement in business: Gender stereotypes - generalizations we make about the characteristics of women and men.

Impetus: Despite different national and cultural backgrounds, Catalyst found that women leaders gave similar accounts of what impedes their advancement in business. When Catalyst asked women leaders to identify the barriers that keep them out of the most senior positions in business, they cited gender stereotypes with great regularity. In the present study, Catalyst set out to better understand how women's experiences with stereotypes varied in countries across Europe.

Methodology: Catalyst surveyed 935 respondents from IMD's alumni database. Two-hundred eighty-two (30.2 percent) were women and 653 (69.8 percent) were men.

This study analyzed similarities in the cultural beliefs of managers from ten countries, separated into four distinct clusters of culturally similar countries:

Nordic Cluster: Denmark, Norway, Sweden
Latin Cluster: Italy, France, Spain
Germanic Cluster: Germany, The Netherlands
Anglo Cluster: United Kingdom, United States

More than 90 percent of respondents self-identified as managers, across clusters.

The largest industries in terms of respondent representation were also similar across cultural groups. Collectively, these included: Engineering, Consulting, Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate, Manufacturing and Mining, and Services (other than Consulting). In most cultures, women and men were similarly represented in these industries.

The survey, conducted via email, first asked participants to estimate, based on their own experiences, the percentage of women who performed each of ten different leader behaviors. In a separate task, respondents were asked to estimate the percentages of men they believed to be effective at the same ten leader behaviors.

Analyses are based on the average differences between the percentage estimates respondents gave for women and men on each behavior.

Findings: The study, which compared the four cultural clusters in Western Europe - Anglo, Germanic, Latin, and Nordic - and found striking cross-cultural similarities in the ways senior managers stereotype women's and men's leadership capabilities: Moreover, the study suggests that in some cultures, these stereotypic perceptions discredit the effectiveness of women leaders at highly valued leadership attributes.

From analyses of 45 studies on leadership, researchers concluded that gender isn't a good predictor of leadership performance. Yet this study showed that, based on gender alone, managers had different perceptions of people's leadership effectiveness.

Regardless of cultural background, managers agreed on the behaviors that most set women and men leaders apart. Respondents perceived women to be more adept at "taking care". Across cultures, managers perceived that women leaders outperformed men most at supporting others. In contrast, respondents perceived men to be more adept at "taking charge". In almost all cultures, men respondents perceived that men leaders outperformed women most at problem-solving; women from all cultures perceived that men leaders outperformed women most at influencing upward.

Since managers' perceptions were also very widely shared within cultures, they can be a likely source of bias in the workplace. Research suggests that when stereotypic beliefs are widely shared, they gain more credibility, making individuals more likely to apply them in making judgments. Somewhat paradoxically, stereotypic perceptions were more pervasive in some cultures with higher levels of gender equality. Nordic and Germanic managers perceived gender differences at more aspects of leadership than did managers from the Latin and Anglo clusters. Relative to other cultural clusters, stereotypic perceptions of women and men leaders were more widely shared among Nordic managers.

The leadership behaviors considered most important across Europe are: Inspiring - a majority of managers from all cultures ranked "inspiring others" as a highly important leadership attribute. Team-building - "team building" was also top-ranked as a highly valued leadership behavior by Anglo, Latin, and Germanic respondents. Delegating - A majority of Nordic managers also ranked "delegating" as a highly valued leadership behavior.

In at least two cultural contexts - Nordic and Anglo clusters - stereotypic perceptions of women leaders discredited women's effectiveness at the highly valued leadership behaviors. Nordic men judged women leaders to be less effective than men at delegating - a leadership behavior that was considered important among Nordic respondents. Anglo men perceived that women leaders were less effective than men at inspiring others - a leadership behavior that was considered important by a large majority of Anglo managers.

While stereotypes cannot be eliminated overnight, the study suggests key actions to intercept the effects of stereotyping and prevent stereotyping from influencing key decision-making or negatively impacting the advancement of women; eliminating or weakening stereotypic biases so they do not have a chance to influence behavior; exposing employees to peers - including men - who are advocates for women leaders; increasing employees' abilities to monitor and control the effects of stereotypes on behavior through diversity education; defining gender equality in measurable terms and evaluate managers' performance against these metrics.

Lead Sponsor: General Motors Corporation

Participating Sponsor: IBM