motivational analysis of organizations

❚❘ WOMEN AS MANAGERS SCALE (WAMS)
James R. Terborg
The topic of women as managers has recently become an important issue. With
changing social, economic, and legal conditions, increasing numbers of women are
choosing careers in management and in other areas traditionally dominated by men.
Although nearly 50 percent of the working population is female, labor statistics (1978)
show that only 6 percent of all managers are women.
Past social-science research indicates the existence of gender stereotypes.
Stereotypes refer to the practice of assigning attributes or characteristics thought to
describe an identifiable subgroup to a particular individual who is known to be a
member of that subgroup. Gender stereotypes then refer to differential assignment of
characteristics to people on the basis of sex. These stereotypes imply that men are
strong, active, competitive, ambitious, and logical, whereas women are weak, passive,
uncompetitive, unambitious, and emotional. Stereotypes may be useful because they are
thought to contain some degree of truthfulness and because they provide information on
how a person might behave toward an unknown member of some identifiable subgroup.
Consequently, a person’s behavior toward another individual may be understood in part
through examination of that person’s stereotypes. With regard to women as managers,
knowledge of a person’s attitudes toward women managers as an identifiable subgroup
may be useful in understanding how that person will react to and behave toward a
specific woman manager.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE WAMS
Although instruments already exist that measure Gender stereotypes and attitudes
toward women, these measures were thought to be too general to be used for
understanding how a person might behave toward a woman manager. It was decided,
therefore, to develop the WAMS as a specific measure of attitudes toward women as
managers. The goal was to construct a scale that would be expansive enough to
incorporate many managerial situations and yet be psychologically meaningful.
Fifty-five items were written to include (a) general descriptive traits/behaviors of
managers (e.g., leadership) and (b) female-specific stereotypic traits/behaviors thought
to represent barriers to the successful integration of women into managerial positions
(e.g., child-rearing responsibility). These items were presented to 345 male and 196
female undergraduates at several universities. Based on item analysis and principal
components analysis, the initial pool of fifty-five items was reduced to a twenty-one-
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The Pfeiffer Library Volume 19, 2nd Edition. Copyright © 1998 Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer