00:00:00
Loney: And so, part of the research you
had done a few years ago looked at specifically how
self-reliance in women
00:00:06
- Yeah.
- is perceived kind of in the office setting— and the
potential impact. Shaumberg: When you think about
self-reliance and what that means
00:00:12
and what that conveys, I always say
it sort of conveyed this inability to ask for help, this
resistance to others.
00:00:19
I'm from Oregon. It's kind of like the man in
the woods who doesn't want
00:00:23
to talk to anybody else.
- That's right. - But that just did not align
with the examples and historical
00:00:28
examples in my own life of women
who I thought of as being highly self-reliant. Where, in fact,
it wasn't at all a resistance to
00:00:35
community, but it was
a capacity or an agency. Well, how does self-reliance factor into
potential career success for a woman?
00:01:04
Rebecca Shaumberg is an Assistant
Professor of Operations, Information, and
Decisions here at the Wharton School.
00:01:09
She has taken a deeper dive
into this area over the years, and she joins us here in our studio.
Nice to meet you.
00:01:15
Great to have you with us today.
- Nice to meet you, too. Let's start larger-scale, though. What's
the importance,
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do you think, of the component
of self-reliance in general? Self-reliance is obviously a trait
that I think within the U.S.
00:01:27
we talk about a lot.
It is a cultural value that especially, for someone like me who
has grown up in the Pacific Northwest,
00:01:32
kind of the frontier states, it's part of our ethos and our culture, but it is a trait that is—
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tends to be associated
stereotypically more with men than it is with women. And I think because of that, our understanding
00:01:46
of what this trait means and what it conveys— particularly
as it is associated with women—
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is not well understood. And indeed is pretty different from
how it is often thought about,
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in terms of its association with men. And so part of the research you had
done a few years ago
00:02:00
looked at specifically how self-reliance
in women - Yeah. is perceived kind of
in the office setting
00:02:07
and the potential impact. When you think about self-reliance
and what that means and what that conveys,
00:02:12
I always say it sort of conveyed this inability to ask for help,
this resistance to others.
00:02:18
I'm from Oregon. It's kind of like
the man in the woods who doesn't want to talk to anybody else.
- That's right.
00:02:23
But that just did not align
with the examples and historical examples in my own life
00:02:28
of women who I thought of
as being highly self-reliant. Where, in fact, it wasn't at all a
resistance to community,
00:02:35
but it was like a capacity
or an agency. Something that inspired this work for me was
actually my great-
00:02:41
-great grandmother, who immigrated to the U.S.
from Ireland. And she had 11 children, and
on the way, her husband dies.
00:02:49
You know, and ends up in Nebraska - Oh, wow.
- And, like, makes it work through the use of community.
- Right.
00:02:56
And I'm like, "That
is a self-reliant woman." It's like, female homesteaders
in the early 1900s.
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Those are self-reliant women, and that's just not
captured well in our association
when we think with men,
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it's sort of like this self-reliance
and an inability to ask for help. That's not how I thought
about self-reliance for myself.
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It's not how I thought about
self-reliance for the other women in my life. Indeed, it's not how
other people appear to perceive
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self-reliance when it's
communicated or associated with women, which is just fundamentally
different and means something
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very different than when it is, for instance,
communicated by a man. So then in terms of the
workplace, then, there are probably
00:03:29
historical patterns in terms of
how this idea of self-reliance is thought of, in terms of how
it's associated with men,
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and it's probably different in how
it's associated with women. I mean, one is, I think, we
just haven't even thought of what
00:03:44
self-reliance means, or how the
definition of what self-reliance is changes when it's
associated with women.
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Indeed, I think historically in
the workplace, it has been so male-dominated that our
understanding of these traits and
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qualities have often -- particularly
masculine qualities -- have often been associated—
or we only
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see them through that lens,
of being attached to sort of male employees, as opposed to
00:04:05
when all of a sudden
they're associated and attached to women, female employees,
they just may mean
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something fundamentally different.
- Right. So tell us a little bit about
the research and what you found out
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from doing it. What I did and what
I was interested in is how, pretty simply, if you describe a man as
"self-reliant," and you describe a
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woman as "self-reliant," do those
communicate dissimilar or different things? And so you hold everything
constant, which can be challenging,
00:04:29
particularly when you're
studying something like gender. You take different individuals or
different types of leaders or different—
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you describe different people, and you
hold everything constant except, you know, it a man or a woman,
and do you describe them as self-reliant?
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Or for instance, another
trait, like "dominant" or just something neutral.
00:04:44
And what I wanted to know was when you
describe self-reliance for a man, does that communicate
something different than for women?
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And indeed, like, when you
describe a man as "highly self-reliant,"
it communicates more
00:04:53
of this inability to connect
with others, a lower what we call "communality," which is
connection with other people.
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And that's just not the case for
women, where in many ways this self-reliance is orthogonal
or independent of
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any association of communality. So we could say for men,
you describe a man as "highly
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self-reliant," people infer
that he's not going to be very social, he's not going to be very
warm, he's going to be resistant to
00:05:15
working with others. They just don't make that same
inference when you describe a woman
00:05:20
as "self-reliant." - Right, and of course when you're
talking about kind of the business setting,
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that kind of idea of community,
- Yes. - especially now,
in the last several years,
00:05:29
it seems like the focus on
community and groups and working together is even much— a
greater focus than we've seen.
00:05:36
Yes, and I think
what's interesting about that is normally, if you view
self-reliance, as I said, from this
00:05:41
masculine angle, or as it's
associated with men, you would think it's— that it would be in
opposition to that,
00:05:46
to sort of a team-oriented
environment. - Right. - But when you take, as I say,
this more feminine perspective on
00:05:51
self-reliance, it is actually quite
aligned with that environment— or at least not
in opposition to it.
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Is it surprising that there is kind of
that separation of what the perception is, for
men and women?
00:06:03
On the one hand, yes.
I think with traits, you know, like self-reliance, dominance,
or even
00:06:07
caring or compassion, we associate
these traits with different genders. You know, we associate
caring and compassion
00:06:13
stereotypically more with women, and so when we
hear those traits, we often then assoc— we have an image
of a woman and
00:06:19
all the stereotypes
that go along with that. But then what happens when we put
that trait in association with a
00:06:24
man? We assume it means the same
thing, but that's an assumption. And I think what this work shows,
which I think is a promising other
00:06:32
area of inquiry, is that these same
traits mean something different when they're associated
with different genders.
00:06:39
And so we can't assume that
the meaning of the word or the trait stays the same.
00:06:43
Not that it's something
that probably a lot of the C-suite would be thinking about, but there
is probably a significant business
00:06:50
impact component here that needs
to be investigated so that you can truly have a better understanding
of how your operation works, the
00:06:57
ways to be able to reach the levels
of success that you want for all employees across the scope.
00:07:02
What you realize is that
if you start to think about the traits and qualities that you
would look for in a leader, in a
00:07:08
manager, somebody to lead a
team, a project leader, we have to understand what these qualities
mean when they're associated with
00:07:15
different genders or different
types of groups of people. Because if we're saying, "I don't think I
would want
00:07:20
somebody who is is self-reliant," because that seems
in opposition to being
00:07:23
team-oriented or being a leader,
that's just not the case of all of a sudden you're looking for -- if
you mean that—
00:07:28
if you take this more in
this other perspective associated with women,
how that might mean.
00:07:31
Yeah. Because when you say
"self-reliant," the first thing I thought of is "team player."
00:07:35
You know, you're not necessarily
viewed as a team player because if you're
self-reliant, you're able to take
00:07:40
care of things on your own, and you
don't really feel like you need to incorporate other people
kind of into the mix or the
00:07:47
operation that you're running.
- Yeah. I think that is the
dominant perception of what this
00:07:51
trait is, but again, because the
dominant perception of this trait comes from an association of this
trait with men in general,
00:07:59
that we don't know that we realize that that trait can just mean something different when we
associate it with women.
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And I do think that that is surprising, but it is less surprising when I
stat to think about
00:08:09
the association with other things like -- there's a term in cultural
psychology called "horizontal
00:08:15
individualism," which is a
mouthful, but just basically means that, like, there are views of the self
that you're an independent person,
00:08:21
but you're not better or
worse than any other person. - Sure.
- And into my own work,
00:08:26
that seems to be
more about what self-reliance is conveying for
women than it is for men.
00:08:30
So there's probably an
element that, by understanding this better, you're maybe taking away
some of those historical beliefs
00:08:41
- Yeah.
- that will make the overall operation
or the overall mindset around employees and workers in
the company better in the future.
00:08:49
That's what I would hope. And I think— you know,
what's also interesting to me
00:08:52
with any research
related to gender is we often talk about it
through the lens of one gender.
00:08:57
- Right.
- So I'm talking about this as self-reliance as it relates
to women, but I think
00:08:59
this work also sheds light on some
of the pressures that we've talked about, self-reliance
as it relates to men.
00:09:04
For men, that stereotype seems to
suggest potentially more of this, like, "To uphold this value of
self-reliance, I'm not supposed to
00:09:09
seek help. I'm not supposed to work
with other people." And the hope would be:
Could we change the view
00:09:15
of what it means
to have the capacity to be self-reliant, such that it's
not in opposition
00:09:20
to being able to work well with others? Even though you did this
research a few years ago,
00:09:25
with all that we've gone through
in the last four years with the pandemic and
remote work and the
00:09:30
change of dynamics in and around
the workplace and what we know, I think there's probably
some importance
00:09:38
to having that understanding, even
more so now, as we kind of move forward in
the years ahead.
00:09:43
I think you're right.
I there there was kind of a induction of— many of us didn't
want to be, like—
00:09:48
going to Walden and
Thoreau and being by ourselves during all of that time. You know? And I think it's
changing.
00:09:55
So some of the benefits of
what we found during that time of being able to be more in control
00:10:00
and being more agentic over our own
work lives as individuals - Right. while also still integrating ourselves
within an organization.
00:10:06
And I think in many ways the pandemic
revealed some of that tension between our own individual agency,
and capa--
00:10:12
and then needing to integrate with
an organization. And in some ways, my own work
is just showing that own tension with
00:10:16
self-reliance, where, like, it is both this capacity to be
by oneself and to take care of oneself,
00:10:23
but that it does not
necessitate not being able to work well with others. Having done the work that
you've done up to this point,
00:10:30
where do you want to take it? Where is kind of the natural next
step in trying to take this next?
00:10:35
- So what this revealed
to me is often sometimes these traits, they change their meaning and
what they convey
00:10:40
based on who is
possessing that trait. So describing myself as
self-reliant could be different
00:10:44
from describing my
brother as self-reliant. And my guess is that there are
other traits like that,
00:10:49
where we think that they might mean the
same thing, when we describe, for instance,
a man as "dominant"
00:10:54
or a woman as "dominant."
Or if we describe a woman as "caring,"
or a man as "caring."
00:10:58
But once we associate
those qualities with a particular gender, the very meaning
of the word could shift.
00:11:05
And so I think it's important
to flesh that out - Yeah.
- so that when we're talking
00:11:09
about who are we
seeking as an employee, like, what are the qualities
that we want in a leader,
00:11:14
we have to know what we truly mean,
rather than just using the word. You know, if I say, "I'm looking for a
self-reliant person,"
00:11:20
or "I'm looking for a dominant person," or
"I'm looking for a caring person,"
00:11:24
I am assuming that that means the
same thing to you as it does to me. - Yeah. - But then if I dig deeper, and I
say, "Well, what do you mean?
00:11:30
Okay, well, what does
that look like to you? What is that— can you describe
what that person is like?"
00:11:35
Then I think we have to actually
describe what the person is like because we realize that just
sometimes using these shorthands or
00:11:40
descriptors, we might not
be communicating what we intend to communicate. What do you think this
has meant for you personally,
00:11:46
doing this research? Yeah. I mean, it's interesting. I think
about sometimes the challenge.
00:11:50
I mean, obviously right now— and I think
about this in academic research, but also as it aligns with where
organizations are interested in—
00:11:56
is deeply interested
in issues related to diversity and having rigorous empirical evidence
00:12:02
one way or the other about,
how we do we study issues of
diversity in the workplace.
00:12:06
And I think in some ways what this
work has revealed to me is just how sometimes challenging that can be,
because
00:12:13
even if the very—
we're trying to say, you know, "Oh, do people judge
dominant women differently than
00:12:16
dominant men?" And that
very well might be the case. But if what we mean by "dominance"
changes
00:12:23
when we're describing a
woman than a man, then it becomes
incredibly hard to sometimes study
00:12:27
these very things
that we care about. - Yeah. I think it's also fun
for you to express the connection
00:12:33
that it had for you personally
- Yeah. with your grandmother,
I believe you said it was, - Yeah.
00:12:37
- to see that experience and what
that means, you know, in terms of this research that you're doing.
00:12:43
I think that's where
a lot of research comes from. And sometimes the research that we're most—
00:12:48
that motivates us the most
as academics, is where when you look into the
world, and you realize your own
00:12:53
experience is not necessarily
aligning with the things that you're reading, or the
things that people are saying.
00:12:57
And then that deep exploration
into why is it that your experience might be different from
what you're reading or what
00:13:03
standard beliefs suggest? Rebecca, great to meet you. Thanks very much for coming in.
00:13:07
Thank you very much. You got it. Rebecca Shaumberg,
who is an Assistant Professor of
00:13:10
Operations, Information, and Decisions
here at the Wharton School.