Personal Endorsement of Ambivalent Sexism and its Impact on Objective and Subjective Career Success

Abstract

The gender wage gap is a persistent problem that has remained stubbornly stagnant over recent decades. Although significant efforts have been expended to understand why it exists and persists, we argue that an important contributor—personal endorsement of hostile and benevolent sexist beliefs—may have been overlooked. We examine whether and how one’s sexist attitudes shape one’s perceptions and actions that can affect one’s career success, both objective and subjective. Our results indicate that personal endorsement of hostile sexist beliefs helps to explain the gender wage gap. For objective career success, a serial mediation model was supported, such that gender predicted hostile sexism (with men more likely to endorse these attitudes than women), hostile sexism predicted seeking out men for career advice, and seeking out men for career success then predicted objective career success. Interestingly, although benevolent sexism was related to greater career interruptions for women (but not men), career interruptions was negatively related to pay for men (but not women). Finally, although there was no gender difference in subjective career success overall, we uncovered an indirect effect between gender and subjective career through hostile sexism and defensive voice, serially. These results highlight the importance of studying how personal endorsement of sexism influence one’s workplace outcomes in addition to the effects of others’ sexist beliefs and behaviours.