par Serghini Idrissi, Aïcha
Président du jury Gassner, Marjorie
Promoteur Verstraeten, Michel
Co-Promoteur Garcia-Prieto Sol, Patricia
Publication Non publié, 2016-06-27
Thèse de doctorat
Résumé : In an effort to make documented and fair decisions on work‐related opportunities and career progressions, job performance has emerged as a pivotal Human Resource tool due to its link to quasi‐every career‐related decision in the organization. Indeed, differences in performance evaluations can influence a number of career advancement variables. Performance measurement differences can impart both pay and promotions (Roth, Purvis & Bobko, 2012), lead to lower levels of job satisfaction (Colquitt, Conlon, Wesson, Porter & Ng, 2001; King et al., 2010) and lower levels of perceived organizational justice (Colquitt et al. 2001; Motowidlo, 2003), which in turn break efforts to create a fair and balanced workplace. If within an organization allocation of bonuses, wages, responsibilities and promotions are partially or entirely determined by job performance evaluations, then job performance is likely to mediate the relationship between gender and career advancement, particularly for women in male dominated organizations.The centrality of job performance calls for scrutiny; as job performance has a potential to constitute a powerful mechanism in terms of its potential to marginalize and/or exclude women. Despite legislative and organizational efforts to alleviate gender inequality and shatter the glass ceiling, women are still disadvantaged in the labor market.In fact, women who have managed to enter male‐dominated organizations and occupations are still under‐represented and face numerous hurdles. Empirical evidence is plentiful on gender discrimination even when women are successful at their job (e.g.; Parks‐Stamm et al., 2008, Heilman & Okimoto, 2007) and have secured positions in upper management (Heilman et al., 2004). However, little evidence is available on women’s experience of discrimination within the performance appraisal context and how existing job performance prototypes are affecting the perception of their work, including bias by other women.This dissertation is interested in filling that research gap and contributing to the body of knowledge on women’s experience in male‐dominated organizations. The potential of job performance having a marginalizing effect on women, in the sense of limiting women’s career opportunities, is examined with regard to women’s work experience and how women themselves can perpetuate their marginal position in the workplace. The intent is to reveal the mechanisms upholding and reinforcing the glass ceiling and gender inequity in the workplace.Based on the literature review and identified knowledge gaps two lines of enquiry have emerged and will be investigated in this dissertation:-  How job performance functions as a mean of (re)producing gender inequality in male dominated organizations and occupations by its gendered character-  How women in male‐dominated organizations can be participants in maintaining inequality by relying on gender stereotype expectations to evaluate their job performance and that of other female colleagues.In order to grasp and address the complexity of the potentially gendered character of job performance the dissertation takes on a multidisciplinary approach.The dissertation is divided into two main parts. The first part comprising chapters 1 to 3 reviews the current literature on women’s experience in male‐dominated organizations. These chapters provide the theoretical framework for the research contributions, presented as essays in part two of the dissertation. Chapter 1 presents a literature review depicting the situation of women in the European labor market and the persistent horizontal and vertical segregation. The specificities of token women (less than 15% representation; Kanter, 1977a) in male dominated organizations and the impact of tokenism on women’s job performance are discussed.Chapter 2 details gender stereotypes and explicates their direct impact on the assessment of women’s work and job performance. This chapter argues the case for genders stereotypes as the leading social psychological mechanisms impeding the perception of women’s work as being equivalent to that of men. Perceived incongruity between gender stereotype attributes gives rise to expectations on women’s performance, generally, that they will perform poorly in male‐typed occupations (Heilman, 1983, 1995, 2001). This can therefore penalize women in their career paths and become significant barriers to their social and economic opportunities. In fact, stereotype beliefs about attitudes, characteristics and roles of women and men influence the evaluation process and constitute the backbone of the analysis of this dissertation.Chapter 3 explores the existing literature on women’s participation in biased evaluation of themselves and other women. Women’s roles as evaluators as well as their self‐ perception as performers is outlined in relation to the way they can maintain and reinforce gendered performance norms. Building on system justification theory, this chapter highlights the complexity of gender inequality in organizations and seeks to acknowledge internalized and often unconscious gender biases at work.Subsequent to the literature review of part one, part two (chapters 4 to 8) presents the research contributions of the dissertation, namely the mechanisms, which maintain and reinforce gender inequality in male dominated organizations. Chapters 4 to 5 outline the investigations into the research enquiries posited. Each chapter of part two constitutes an independent essay highlighting through various analytical lenses the complexity of marginalization through job performance. In line with a multidisciplinary approach, the essays presented in chapters 4 and 5 are of a theoretical nature whereas chapters 6, 7 and 8 comprise empirical studies.Chapter 4 sets out to investigate the potential gendered character of job performance and the legitimating effects of meritocracy as the ideological framework, which informs each stage of job performance; from setting the criteria to using performance evaluation information to distribute organizational goods. The major contribution of this chapter is to bring forth the way in which performance and merit intertwine to perpetuate mechanisms of inequality and invalidate contestation at each stage of job performance. Gender‐blind and merit‐based HR (Human Resources) processes such as performance are rarely put to question and revealed as inherently biased themselves. The findings call for a critique of meritocracy on a systemic level as well as the implementation of an outcome‐oriented approach to job performance evaluations and reward allocation.Chapter 5 applies and extends social identity theory to explain the underrepresentation and marginalized position of women in European academia. The chapter illustrates the extent to which the Leading Academic Performer (LAP) is based on male characteristics and therefore contributes to the marginalization of female academics. This chapter endeavors to further the theoretical underpinnings by proposing an applicable taxonomy of social identity theory performance (Klein, Spears & Reicher, 2007). The chapter illustrates how social identities can be strategically performed to enhance the perception of female academics as leading academic performers.Chapter 6 and chapter 7 are contributions based on an empirical study using a social psychological experiment methodology, involving 163 Master students (Business major) from a Belgian university. The objective of the study was two fold. Chapter 6 investigated the standards and criteria used to evaluate male versus female job performance. Chapter 7 looked at how female and male evaluators differed in their evaluations and how they perceived the value of their evaluative work when evaluating a woman versus a man.More specifically, in chapter 6 participants were asked to evaluate the job performance of a randomly assigned female or male IT manager and to decide on whether they should retain their position. Major findings of this study show that not only did evaluators (regardless of their gender) automatically assign female IT managers higher interpersonal skills, thereupon confirming the use of stereotype beliefs, but they also used double standards to decide the retention of the female employee. When it came to female employees, their retention decision was directly linked to their performance evaluation. This was not the case for male employees. Other standards outside of job performance were used to retain the male employee. In addition, results reveal that female evaluators systematically gave lower ratings than their male counterparts. The results in this study show that both men and women evaluators not only use similar norms to evaluate but are also harsher when evaluating female performance.Chapter 7 explores the evaluators’ perceived entitlement in regards to the task of evaluating the job performance of a man versus that of a woman. Contrary to previous research on the depressed entitlement effect (i.e., phenomenon where by women underpay themselves relative to men but are just as satisfied with their employment situation as men) in this study, all evaluators, men and women expressed an elevated sense of entitlement when appraising the performance of a female worker. Evaluators assessing a woman’s job performance felt that they deserved 19,64% more (monetary reward) compared to those evaluating a man’s job performance. Interestingly, evaluators who gave high interpersonal skill ratings exhibited a depressed entitlement effect. It would seem that focusing on female associated skills gives evaluators the perception that this work is less worthy. Both chapters 6 and 7 highlight the gendered character of evaluating performance and point to the difficulty evaluators might have in evaluating female job performance. Equally, the findings support the claim that women themselves participate in system‐maintaining mechanisms that stress communality injunctions on female workers.Chapter 8 presents a study, using qualitative methodology, conducted in a Belgian subsidiary of a multinational IT corporation. The study is based on semi‐structured interviews with 32 managers and employees across organizational departments. The aim is to highlight job performance expectations and to render visible criteria thought to be best predictive of good employee performance. To bring forth existing yet hidden gendered elements in the discourse on job performance, gender subtext was chosen as the analytical tool. Gender subtext analysis allows for an understanding of how seemingly gender‐blind language is in fact embedded with gendered meanings. Results of this fieldwork support the analysis in previous chapters: Job performance expectations perpetuates a prototype of the exemplary performer as masculine, thereby forcing the few token women to position themselves in masculine terms or risk increased marginalization from deviating the dominant management style. Finally, a section of the chapter is dedicated to analyze how women do work in their predominately male dominated organization and how this could lead to perpetuating masculine norms of performance.A general discussion concludes the dissertation and analyses the findings (i.e. the four mechanisms that have been identified, which reinforce the glass ceiling and maintain gender inequality through job performance). Overall, the investigations into the research enquiries have revealed the gendered and thus biased character of job performance. If within an organization, androcentric job performance criteria and evaluations are partially or entirely used to determine the allocation of bonuses, wages, responsibilities and promotions, then job performance constitutes a powerful gendered mechanism legitimating and maintaining gender inequalities. Each essay in part two has examined and brought to light the (re)production of gender inequality in male dominated organizations and occupations through job performance. By using a multidisciplinary approach, the theoretical analyses presented, is consolidated the laboratory experiments and fieldwork. Equally, the role of women in maintaining gendered performance norms by relying on gender stereotypes, albeit unconsciously, is uncovered. The participation of women themselves in maintaining and reproducing the status quo limits the possibilities for contestation and hinders attempts at transformation towards more gender equity. To conclude, the chapter proposes practical recommendations alleviate contributing mechanisms behind the glass ceiling.

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