Relationships between Sex-Role Orientation and Attitudes toward Women as Managers

Abstract

The relationship between attitudes toward women performing in managerial roles and sex-role orientation was examined by correlating scores on subscales of the Women as Managers Scale with scores derived from the Bern Sex-role Inventory within homogeneous biological sex samples of 117 males and 222 females. Within each sex sample there were modest, but significant, relationships between sex-role orientation and attitudes toward women as managers; the direction of the relationships was significantly different for males and females. Those males and females who were more sex-stereotyped toward their own biological sex were less favorable about women performing in managerial roles.