Abstract:

Women continue to encounter barriers at work and the situation is especially dire for racialized women. In this presentation, we explore how racialized women face subtle and hard to detect bias manifested through perceptions of warmth, a trait uniquely expected of women. We focus on East Asian women in the Canadian workplace in two different contexts. First, in a context of (immigrant) women with Mandarin accent we examined whether higher perceptions of warmth (compared to Asian women with no accent) would funnel women with Mandarin accents into feminine and not masculine jobs contributing to occupational gender segregation. Second, in the context of East Asian women professors we examined whether lower perceptions of warmth (compared to White women) undermine their ability to recruit graduate students. Across five studies, our work shows that the bias East Asian women face at work is subtle and manifests itself through the perceptions of warmth, both relatively higher and lower perceptions. Our work more broadly calls for the recognition of warmth stereotypes as being harmful for gender equity.

General information:

Attendance to this seminar is possible by invitation only. Please send an e-mail to secbs-abs@uva.nl if your are interested in attending this seminar.