Maybe He Is Relatable Too: Encouraging Women to Identify With Male Scientists by Highlighting Bias Against Fathers

Abstract

Successful exemplars can act as guides to help women navigate environments where they have traditionally been underrepresented. For an exemplar to be a guide, it is important for women to feel similar to the exemplar. When women identify with an exemplar, that person also can become a role model to promote belonging. Because men are overrepresented in many STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields, we aimed to understand when and why women might identify with a male scientist. Across five experiments, relative to control information, information about constraining masculine stereotypes for men in caretaking roles increased female participants’ beliefs that a father and computer scientist had faced bias. Believing this father scientist had encountered mistreatment in turn encouraged feelings of empathy and identification with the scientist. Moreover, teaching women about masculine stereotypes enhanced interest in working with the scientist (Experiments 1b, 3a, and 3b) and attraction to his science and technology focused school (Experiment 3b). Although we did not find that our manipulation directly influenced belonging in STEM, identifying with the father scientist correlated with higher feelings of belonging. Thus, highlighting identity-based struggles (i.e., fatherhood difficulties) may be one strategy to help make male scientists more relatable and approachable. Additional online materials for this article are available on PWQ’s website at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/0361684320972118