insiderblmWomen and those who support them have made incredible progress since the women’s movement in the 1960s. From the United States White House to the head of New Zealand, women are rising to the top tiers of government. In the entertainment industry, women are hitting all-time highs regarding profits (Rihanna), demanding safer work environments (Selma Hayek, Ashley Judd), and taking on power positions to integrate the media (Eva Longoria, Shonda Rhimes).
Business is seeing more women sitting in the C-suite and leading national and global companies. So why is it that powerful women still make people uncomfortable? Why are there still double standards when it comes to these powerhouse females?
Where we were
In the early to middle decades of the twentieth century, the expectations and roles for women and men were clearly demarcated within society. Men were the breadwinners. Their role was to provide financial stability and comfort to their families. They were expected to be strong, objective and logical. They were the heads of their households. Women’s roles offered a balance to that male persona. Women were considered the weaker sex. Women were considered more nurturing, passive and emotional. They followed rather than led. Their primary role was as caretakers of their spouses and children and as managers of the home.
From a psychological perspective, norms and standards offer comfort. We know what to expect. We know what we can rely upon. There are no surprises to throw off the day-to-day functioning of society in general, or homelife specifically. Of course, as the twentieth century progressed, these traditional norms changed. The delineation of what a woman’s role was became blurry. They started asking for things they wanted: education, equal pay, leadership positions. They began postponing or rejecting the idea that they were meant to get married and have children. Essentially their actions, thoughts and words no longer aligned with societal scripts, the scripts society was comfortable with.
When two behaviors or two thoughts don’t align, it creates cognitive dissonance in humans. This cognitive discomfort is not a state people can exist in, and to reduce cognitive dissonance, something must change. When women clearly were not going to give up on their new rights and freedoms, that meant the members of society had to change their definitions, perceptions and understanding of women’s roles. The problem is that changing concepts that are decades, if not centuries, old doesn’t happen quickly.
Where we are now
As powerful women become more common in society, it is less acceptable to verbalize any discomfort with their changing roles. Members of society are expected to accept the changes, fully and happily. If they have reservations about women in leadership roles, most know the backlash it will create to voice their unease, and they squelch their discontentment. The biases don’t disappear simply because women’s roles are changing.
Instead, the biases are shoved down, silenced or hidden. The expression of these biases has gone from overt declarations that divide women and men to covert belief systems, sometimes without the owner of the bias even realizing it. They don’t say the biases out loud, but these outdated standards still influence the owner’s reactions, thoughts and feelings about strong women. So, the cognitive dissonance isn’t resolved. There is still the misalignment between what is changing in the roles of women and that person’s beliefs, and because of this, there is a continued discomfort with these women who aren’t following the norm.
How we can grow
How can the standards regarding women change enough that they eradicate the old definitions? The umbrella response is to keep adding women to the ranks of leaders, whether it is the leader of a classroom or the leader of a country. The more commonplace this is, the more acceptable it will become simply because there’s nothing novel about it. To do so, people, and specifically women, can take steps to facilitate the acceptance of powerful women as the norm rather than the exception.
