Eagly and her colleagues conducted a meta-analysis of 16 national opinion polls surveying more than 30,000 U.S. adults between 1946 and 2018. These surveys examined three categories of traits —conduct that is ambitious, assertive and competitive; andIn each survey respondents were asked, in one form or the other, whether they thought various traits were more true of women or men or equally true of both. Gendered stereotypes of competence changed dramatically over time.
In addition, Eagly found the stereotype that women are more compassionate and sensitive than men has actually grown over time, increasing from roughly 50% of people viewing women as the more compassionately sex in the 1940s to about 75% holding that view in 2018. Meanwhile the stereotype that men are more ambitious and competitive than women has not changed.
A major conclusion of the authors is that some stereotypes are not as fixed or rigid as usually assumed. Instead, they are mutable, changing in response to different social roles and responsibilities taken on by women and men. Increased perceptions of women’s competence might derive from two such trends. First, women’s participation in the labor force has increased from about a third in the 1950s to almost 60% currently, while men’s participation has declined during the same time frame. There’s no better proof of competence than the day-in-day-out positive performance of women in the increasing range of jobs they’ve assumed.
The second trend is the dramatic gain in women’s success in higher education, manifest by an across-the-board surge in degree completion and a strong college completion edge for women over men. Currently,
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