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Work as a Masculinity Contest

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Jennifer Berdahl suggests a key reason why the workplace gender revolution has stalled is that work remains the site of masculinity contests among men.

Image courtesy of interviewee. March 28, 2024

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This video discusses the concept of "masculinity contest culture," which refers to the pressures men face in the workplace to conform to traditional masculine ideals. Observations have shown that workplace performance evaluations often prioritize adherence to these ideals over actual job performance, reinforcing a male-dominated environment where men prove their masculinity through status and power.

The framework of hegemonic masculinity suggests a hierarchy among men, where certain characteristics (e.g., physical strength, emotional stoicism) are culturally valued. This video creates competition among men to display these traits, leading to a toxic environment detrimental to both men and their colleagues. Toxic masculinity is characterized by harmful behaviors stemming from these pressures, contributing to issues like harassment, low psychological safety, and burnout.

The culture not only affects men but also influences women's roles, compelling them to behave in ways that align with or counteract these masculine ideals to gain acceptance. Marginalized men face additional challenges, as their identities may not fit into the dominant culture, resulting in penalties for attempting to assert traditional masculinity.

This video also outlines potential interventions to combat the negative effects of this culture, including promoting psychological safety, reevaluating reward structures based on job performance rather than masculine performance, and fostering ethical leadership. Lastly, it emphasizes the importance of redefining masculinity towards more positive and inclusive ideals, moving from the concept of being a "real man" to being a "good man."

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1. **Definition of Masculinity Contest Culture**: Masculinity contest culture refers to the workplace environment where men's performances are evaluated based on their ability to exhibit masculine ideals rather than their actual task performance or work merit. This culture creates pressure on both men and women to conform to traditional masculine characteristics in order to gain status and respect.

2. **Hierarchy of Masculinities**: Within this culture, a hierarchy of masculinities exists, with hegemonic masculinity at the top. This often involves characteristics like physical strength, emotional stoicism, and being the primary breadwinner. Men are assessed against this ideal, which can create feelings of inadequacy and insecurity.

3. **Impact of Toxic Masculinity**: Toxic masculinity, a byproduct of this culture, is defined as harmful enactments of masculinity that negatively affect both the individuals who adopt these behaviors and those around them. This culture can lead to high levels of emotional stress, burnout, and adverse organizational outcomes including harassment and a lack of psychological safety.

4. **Consequences on Workplace Environment**: Masculinity contest culture can undermine organizational performance by creating environments where employees feel unsafe to express uncertainty or admit mistakes. This dynamic often results in reduced creativity, poor teamwork, and an increased likelihood of harmful behaviors like bullying or harassment.

5. **Potential Interventions and Cultural Change**: Changing the masculine contest culture involves promoting psychological safety, redefining what it means to be a "real man," and un-gendering organizational cultures. Approaches include emphasizing job performance over adherence to masculine norms, fostering ethical leadership, and integrating diverse identities into leadership roles to shift workplace dynamics towards a more equitable environment.

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Here are some key quotes from the video regarding masculinity contest culture and its impacts:

1. **Definition of Masculinity Contest Culture**:
- "Masculinity contest culture is this idea that [...] evaluates their performance, not so much based on their task performance or their work merit, but on their ability to exhibit masculine ideals."

2. **Male Dominance in the Workplace**:
- "The workplace has been and remains male dominated... defined by and for men, even with women in it."

3. **Performance and Masculinity**:
- "The workplace remains a site where men prove their manhood by gaining status, power, and respect within it."

4. **Hegemonic Masculinity**:
- "The gender literature... shows that this idea of hegemonic masculinity is that there is a most culturally honored or valued way of being a man in a given convideo."

5. **Toxic Masculinity**:
- "Toxic masculinity is defined as enactments of masculinity that are harmful to both the men who enact them as well as the people around them."

6. **Precarity and Insecurity**:
- "It creates a precarity, it creates an insecurity in men and in all people who are being measured against this ideal."

7. **Cultural Pressure**:
- "It takes a real toll. It's harmful to those who enact it. It's almost impossible to keep up all the time."

8. **Women in a Masculinity Contest Culture**:
- "Women may try to compete in these contest cultures [...] but they have to tread a very fine line."

9. **Impacts on Organizations**:
- "It's harmful to organizations [...] if people aren't getting enough sleep [...] you're not gonna get the kind of organizational performance you would want to see either."

10. **Psychological Safety**:
- "Psychological safety predicts creativity and performance and teamwork and [...] the extent that an organization has a high masculinity contest culture, it has very low psychological safety."

11. **Cultural Change**:
- "Changing cultures is incredibly difficult [...] a strong leader could do a long way toward changing a culture by just not tolerating this kind of behavior anymore."

12. **Redefining Masculinity**:
- "How can we reframe masculinity and redefine what it means to be a good man and start shifting more toward being a good man and away from being a real man?"

These quotes highlight the main themes of the video, including the challenges posed by masculinity contest culture, its impact on individuals and organizations, and the need for a cultural shift in how masculinity is defined and enacted.

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Here are some articles and topics related to "masculinity contest culture," hegemonic masculinity, and the impact of toxic masculinity in the workplace:

1. **Understanding Hegemonic Masculinity in the Workplace**: This article examines how hegemonic masculinity shapes workplace dynamics, influencing interpersonal relationships and performance evaluations. It discusses the implications for both men and women and the need for inclusive practices.

2. **Toxic Masculinity and Workplace Culture**: This piece explores the concept of toxic masculinity, detailing its manifestation in corporate environments, including how it affects mental health, team dynamics, and employee wellbeing.

3. **The Impact of Masculine Norms on Career Progression**: This article analyzes how traditional masculine norms can hinder career advancement for both men and women, discussing the need for organizations to adjust their evaluation frameworks.

4. **Challenging Traditional Masculine Ideals in Professional Settings**: The article focuses on strategies to redefine masculinity in the workplace, highlighting successful case studies where companies have embraced more inclusive definitions of gender roles.

5. **Empowering Marginalized Men in the Workplace**: This article investigates the experiences of marginalized men in male-dominated industries, discussing the social and psychological pressures they face and potential support mechanisms.

6. **Creating a Psychologically Safe Workplace**: This piece outlines the importance of psychological safety in combating harmful masculine norms, providing actionable steps organizations can take to foster an environment of acceptance and support.

7. **Gender Equality and its Effects on Organizational Culture**: An exploration of how promoting gender equality can lead to better organizational outcomes, this article discusses ways to dismantle toxic masculine cultures in favor of more collaborative environments.

8. **Rethinking Masculinity: Towards a Positive Framework**: This article delves into the shift from traditional to positive masculinity, arguing for a broader societal acceptance of diverse male identities and behaviors.

9. **Leadership Styles and Gender Norms**: The article discusses how different leadership styles can either reinforce or challenge traditional masculine ideals in the workplace, advocating for ethical leadership practices.

10. **The Role of Women in Shaping Masculine Work Cultures**: An examination of how women influence workplace cultures dominated by masculine ideals, including strategies they use to navigate and reshape these environments.

These articles provide further insights and perspectives on the concepts presented in your original video, highlighting the significance of understanding and addressing masculinity contest culture in professional settings.

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Masculinity contest culture is this idea

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that my colleagues and I came up with,

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when we were observing pressures on men

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and women in the workplace that really seemed

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to be evaluating their performance, not so much based on

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their task performance or their work merit,

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but on their ability to exhibit masculine ideals.

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Um, and, you know, where does this come from?

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So, just to back up a little bit, the workplace has

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and remains, has been and remains male dominated.

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Um, and it also remains very segregated by sex.

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That means that men

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and women are sorted into quite different occupations on

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the, on the whole, and also quite different levels

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of power within those occupations where men tend

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to hold more prestigious, higher paying,

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and higher powered occupations.

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So, in other words, the workplace is very much defined,

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by and for men, even with women in it.

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And similarly, men are largely defined

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by their performance within this workplace as men.

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So the workplace remains a site

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or is a site where men prove their manhood

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by gaining status, power, and respect within it.

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And so this creates a, a culture in which everyone is sort

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of motivated to try to gain status

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and respect based on their ability to demonstrate,

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and outperform others in masculine characteristics.

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And then within that framework, there's hierarchies of men.

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So the gender literature, you know, shows that this idea

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of hegemonic masculinity is that there is a most

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culturally honored or valued way

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of being a man in a given context

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against which all men are compared

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and have to position themselves against.

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And that there's a hierarchical ordering of men

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with hegemonic masculinity, the most, culturally honored

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or elite way of being a man at the top.

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And then, complicit masculinity men who might gain

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benefits from just simply being men without having to enact

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overt, forms of dominance over other people.

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Um, you know, these might be men with privileged identities

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that don't necessarily have to work hard to be dominant

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or seen as men.

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And then there's, you know, subordinated, masculinities men

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who take on maybe feminine characteristics

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that are considered devalued

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and marginalized masculinities, where men of lower classes

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or races or ethnicities are marginalized in their

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masculinity, et cetera, et cetera.

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So there's this whole hierarchy of men

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that exists in the workplace

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with hegemonic masculinity at the top

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and hegemonic masculinity, is

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culturally defined, so it might vary by context,

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but in the western world of work,

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it has largely been defined through, physical strength

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and stamina being the breadwinner, putting work first,

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being emotionally tough

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and showing no uncertainty, these kinds of characteristics,

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along with, you know, being white,

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being class privileged, being tall, you know,

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all these other things that people can't control.

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Um, and so

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all men are gonna be judged when they enter the workplace

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against this ideal

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and feel almost an impossibility

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of achieving it all the time, even if they have some

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of those, characteristics coming in.

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Um, but, you know, being emotionally stoic

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or being physically, you know, tough, like, you know,

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sleep is for the week.

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You know, I work through the night

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and, putting work first, ignoring your family,

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all these things put tremendous pressure on people to kind

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of deny, deny their humanity, deny their human side.

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It takes a real toll.

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Um, so it's, it's harmful to those who enact it.

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It's almost impossible to keep up all the time,

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and it's harmful to those around them.

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So this is where the idea of toxic masculinity comes in.

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Um, toxic masculinity is defined as enactments

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of masculinity that are harmful to both the men

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who enact them as well as the people around them.

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Um, and because it's so hard to constantly prove

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and achieve, it creates a precarity,

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it creates an insecurity in men

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and in all people who are being measured against this ideal.

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And so that's where the contest culture comes in,

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where you're trying to keep it up and try not to lose it,

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and you're trying to outcompete others,

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and kind of not lose your spot

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in the wrong, so, so to speak.

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So, I mean, why this is so harmful?

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I mean, I've already outlined a little bit why it's harmful

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socially and harmful to the men.

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Um, it's harmful to organizations, obviously insofar as it,

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it is independent of,

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or even counter to work performance.

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You know, if people aren't getting enough sleep

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or, you know, they're harassing their coworkers,

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and all these other things that it might motivate,

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then you're not gonna get the kind

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of organizational performance,

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you would want to see either.

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Prior work has definitely talked about,

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masculinity in the workplace

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and has talked about gendered organizations in the sense of

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male dominated occupations and

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Workplaces, and some of the pressures,

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they put on women in particular,

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or, you know, the, the dynamics of harassment

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that might occur in some of these contexts.

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But I think, what the

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masculinity contest culture really hones this idea that

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each individual enters a system that is bigger than them.

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It takes a somewhat, you know, compassionate

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and non-essential lens to what's going on in the sense

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that this isn't something inherent to men.

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This is not something that men are born with,

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necessarily having,

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but it's something that is socially constructed,

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through gendered hierarchies

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and valorized in the workplace

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for all employees, men or women,

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or other genders, so that people enter their workplace

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contexts being assessed according to their ability to fit in

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with serve or outcompete others in this

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masculinity contest culture.

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And that it's individually rational, sadly, to compete.

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Because if you don't, you're gonna lose out, right?

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Or to find some way to fit within that system so that you

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minimize your harm within it.

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So for example, women, may try

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to compete in these contest cultures.

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They might try to demonstrate their dedication to work,

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by foregoing having children

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or, you know, their ability to be socially dominant,

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or their ability to fit in with a dog eat dog culture.

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Uh, there was even a book called Female Chauvinist Pigs

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that talks about this phenomenon.

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Um, yet women on the whole receive real dominance,

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penalties or penalties for exhibiting these behaviors.

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So there's a very fine line that they have to tread.

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Um, if they're seen as too masculine, there's often a lot

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of backlash, but then if they're seen

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as too feminine, they're dismissed.

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So the same type of thing exists for, marginalized men.

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So men from backgrounds

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and ethnicities that are seen as,

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being outside of the contenders,

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for dominance so that they, ex they experience penalties

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for demonstrating dominance.

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Uh, for example, some of my research has shown

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that Asian American men, are not expected

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to exhibit social dominant behavior in the workplace,

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and they experience real backlash for doing so.

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At the same time, they tend to be feminized compared

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to other men and dismissed, and not respected.

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So relative to Asian Americans levels of education

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and training, they're

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underrepresented in leadership positions.

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We've developed a scale to measure masculinity,

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contest culture, finding four dimensions of it that kind

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of map onto these dimensions of hegemonic masculinity of

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strength and stamina, and, showing no weakness.

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That is showing no emotional weakness

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or uncertainty, putting work first,

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and then dog eat dog competition.

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And that measure has been shown to predict all kinds

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of organizational and individual outcomes, even above

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and beyond some

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of the other theorizing about gendered workplaces.

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So a recent paper, for example,

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was studying men's proclivities

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to sexually harass others at work,

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and found that over

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and above the number of men in the workplace

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or the male typing of the occupation

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masculinity contest culture predicted their likelihood

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to sexually harass other people.

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Our research has found so far

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that masculinity contest cultures,

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while they can exist in female dominated organizations,

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because those organizations are also operating in, you know,

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a context that, you know, is defined often

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by men, but, that they do tend to correlate more highly

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with the more men there are, in a workplace,

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the more, male typed the organizational task

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or occupation is so finance

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or, you know,

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some blue collar occupations are very

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male typed, for example.

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And so they tend to report pretty high levels of

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masculinity contest cultures.

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Not always, though, I mean,

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we are in some recent research finding

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that ethical leadership, so leaders,

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who might be operating in a broader context defined

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by masculinity contest culture, if they are ethical leaders,

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if they are fair, if they are people that are safe to go to,

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they can actually counteract

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or mitigate some of the negative effects

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of masculinity contest culture on employees.

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So that would be more at the, like supervisor level,

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not necessarily the CEO of, of course, if A CEO

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is an ethical leader, the whole organization is less likely

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to have this kind of a culture.

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But it's this reciprocal process where the culture produces

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CEOs that are toxic

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and toxic CEOs produce a culture like this.

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Um, but within that, you know, you might find pockets

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of ethical leaders that help mitigate the

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negative outcomes on it.

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Um, and we found that it leads

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to organizational level outcomes like, harassment

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and bullying and low psychological safety in organizations.

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So that's the idea developed, by Amy Edmondson of,

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people not feeling safe to share ideas,

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feeling like it's not okay to be vulnerable,

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that others are gonna attack you the moment you show

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show any uncertainty.

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So it's a, it's a related construct,

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but it psychological safety is really important to,

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relate to this because it, it's measured very differently,

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and it really predicts a lot of things

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that organizations would want.

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So psychological safety predicts creativity and performance

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and teamwork and all these great things, right?

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And to the extent

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that an organization has a high masculinity contest culture,

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it has very low psychological safety,

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and it has, you know, high rates of bullying

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and harassment, and we know how bad those things are.

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And then it also, you know, predicts burnout.

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So individuals tend to be burned out in these organizations.

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It predicts their mental and psych and physical health.

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Um, and it also predicts their, desire to leave.

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So, their search for other jobs,

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I think I've talked about the costs a lot,

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and where they're prevalent a little bit about why,

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women end up having to join it.

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Basically, all employees are in a shared culture defined

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by a masculinity contest.

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Um, but they might find different ways

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of surviving within it.

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So if you can't win the masculinity contest,

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or you can't be one of the, the guise at the top,

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that conform to the hegemonically masculine ideals in

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that context, you might do something like distance yourself

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from other women while at the same time not trying

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to claim space of being a man, but being kind of a deputy

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or somebody willing to do the bidding of somebody

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who wins the masculinity contest culture.

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Um, and so women

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and marginalized men might find themselves

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in a situation where their best option is if they want

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to be protected, is to find

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somebody who's winning this contest, who protects them,

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from it in exchange for the woman

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or the marginalized man doing what that man wants them

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to do, or serving some kind of role,

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that they want them to serve.

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So again, it's kind of giving up some individual power

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and agency and perhaps pride, but it is surviving

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and maybe getting kudos in exchange for doing that.

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Changing cultures is incredibly difficult.

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Um, cultures are often formed, you know,

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by their initial conditions, their initial employees,

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their founders, and then it just kind of

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reverberates throughout the generations.

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Um, obviously if you have a very strong leader

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who is also supported by a board or whoever appoints them

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or has their back, a leader could do go a long way toward

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changing a culture by just not tolerating this kind

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of behavior anymore and taking swift action when

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people harass others or bully

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or, you know, try to enact behaviors that are inappropriate

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and counter to work performance.

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Um, other ways of doing it would be to focus on the mission

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of the organization to refocus.

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You know, why are we here? What are we trying to achieve?

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We're not, you know, this is hard

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because you set up a system where individuals get rewarded

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for perhaps their performance of masculinity instead

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of their actual performance of the job.

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But to the extent that you can realign rewards

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with job performance

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and not masculine performance, you know, if you

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promote the person who, you know, keeps their head down

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and works hard and works well with others instead

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of the person who socializes and drinks bourbon

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and, you know, struts their muscles around the office

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or whatever it is, right?

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Like, if you're promoting people based upon, you know,

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what serves the organization rather than what impresses

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you socially, that's another way of doing it.

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Um, one study that was very interesting was done

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by Robin Ely

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and Deborah Myerson of oil rigs where they were having loss

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of accidents on this oil rig.

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And it turned out that they had,

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even though they weren't calling it really a masculinity

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contest culture, that's what they had men were, afraid

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to admit when they were uncertain about something

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or, if they hadn't completed a task and

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therefore things weren't really getting caught

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and accidents were happening.

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And so they went in

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and they did an intervention

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where they basically made it a more psychologically safe

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environment where people could talk about their feelings

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and their uncertainty,

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and they really downplayed the need to

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exhibit their masculinity.

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And lo and behold, the accident stopped happening, you know?

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Um, and so by making it a mission-driven intervention,

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like what do we need to make sure that our

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oil rig performs well?

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We need to cut down on accidents.

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Um, what's causing the accidents?

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You know, doing that kind of an analysis of, you know,

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if a financial,

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brokerage is taking huge risks

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and losing a lot of money, is that somehow related to men's,

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or a culture in which men

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or other employees don't feel safe, not taking big risks

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or showing uncertainty, et cetera.

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So you can do a mission driven intervention

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more broadly speaking.

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Uh, we can un gender

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or undo gender in organizations where,

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we just not only downplay gender in various ways,

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you know, maybe starting with bathrooms

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or dress codes,

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but also bringing women

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and other genders into positions of leadership

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and, you know, integrating the workforce so that it's not

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hierarchically, segregated by power

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or vertically segregated, I mean horizontally segregated

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so that, you know,

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you don't have women in some jobs and men in other jobs.

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As soon as you start segregating the workplace,

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either in power or in occupations,

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you start getting this phenomenon happening

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where people start associating prestige

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and status with usually men

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and stereotypes of men,

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and then they start engaging in those behaviors

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and creating this contest.

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Um, and then finally, I guess as a, as a culture,

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as a society, we can start rethinking,

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the toxicity of some of these

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pressures on men and on masculinity

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and definitions of masculinity.

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Like, you know,

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maybe this served us at some point in our human history,

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but it's certainly not serving us now, right?

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Um, how can we reframe masculinity

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and rede redefine what it means,

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to be a good man and start shifting more toward being a good

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man and away from being a real man, right?

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Um, Michael Kimmel talked about that distinction.

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Um, and, being a good man is pretty much the same thing

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as being a good person, which also leads us to

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de-emphasizing gender.

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So those are ways that we could intervene

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with these contest cultures.

Understanding Masculinity Contest Culture in Workplaces

00:00:00 - Masculinity contest culture is this idea that my colleagues and I came up with, when we were observing pressures on men and women in the workplace that really seemed to be evaluating their performance, not so much based on their task performance or their work merit, but on their ability to exhibit masculine ideals. and, you know, where does this come from?
00:00:34 - and remains, has been and remains male dominated. and it also remains very segregated by sex. That means that men and women are sorted into quite different occupations on the, on the whole, and also quite different levels of power within those occupations where men tend to hold more prestigious, higher paying, and higher powered occupations. So, in other words, the workplace is very much defined,
00:01:07 - And similarly, men are largely defined by their performance within this workplace as men. So the workplace remains a site or is a site where men prove their manhood by gaining status, power, and respect within it. And so this creates a, a culture in which everyone is sort of motivated to try to gain status and respect based on their ability to demonstrate,
00:01:41 - And then within that framework, there's hierarchies of men. So the gender literature, you know, shows that this idea of hegemonic masculinity is that there is a most culturally honored or valued way of being a man in a given context against which all men are compared and have to position themselves against. And that there's a hierarchical ordering of men with hegemonic masculinity, the most, culturally honored
00:02:14 - And then, complicit masculinity men who might gain benefits from just simply being men without having to enact overt, forms of dominance over other people. you know, these might be men with privileged identities that don't necessarily have to work hard to be dominant or seen as men. And then there's, you know, subordinated, masculinities men who take on maybe feminine characteristics
00:02:44 - and marginalized masculinities, where men of lower classes or races or ethnicities are marginalized in their masculinity, et cetera, et cetera. So there's this whole hierarchy of men that exists in the workplace with hegemonic masculinity at the top and hegemonic masculinity, is culturally defined, so it might vary by context, but in the western world of work,

Toxic Masculinity and Workplace Pressures

00:03:16 - and stamina being the breadwinner, putting work first, being emotionally tough and showing no uncertainty, these kinds of characteristics, along with, you know, being white, being class privileged, being tall, you know, all these other things that people can't control. and so all men are gonna be judged when they enter the workplace against this ideal and feel almost an impossibility
00:03:47 - of those, characteristics coming in. but, you know, being emotionally stoic or being physically, you know, tough, like, you know, sleep is for the week. You know, I work through the night and, putting work first, ignoring your family, all these things put tremendous pressure on people to kind of deny, deny their humanity, deny their human side. It takes a real toll. so it's, it's harmful to those who enact it.
00:04:23 - and it's harmful to those around them. So this is where the idea of toxic masculinity comes in. toxic masculinity is defined as enactments of masculinity that are harmful to both the men who enact them as well as the people around them. and because it's so hard to constantly prove and achieve, it creates a precarity, it creates an insecurity in men
00:04:53 - And so that's where the contest culture comes in, where you're trying to keep it up and try not to lose it, and you're trying to outcompete others, and kind of not lose your spot in the wrong, so, so to speak. So, I mean, why this is so harmful? I mean, I've already outlined a little bit why it's harmful socially and harmful to the men. it's harmful to organizations, obviously insofar as it,
00:05:22 - or even counter to work performance. You know, if people aren't getting enough sleep or, you know, they're harassing their coworkers, and all these other things that it might motivate, then you're not gonna get the kind of organizational performance, you would want to see either. Prior work has definitely talked about, masculinity in the workplace and has talked about gendered organizations in the sense of
00:05:56 - Workplaces, and some of the pressures, they put on women in particular, or, you know, the, the dynamics of harassment that might occur in some of these contexts. But I think, what the masculinity contest culture really hones this idea that each individual enters a system that is bigger than them.

Social Construction of Masculinity in the Workplace

00:06:28 - and non-essential lens to what's going on in the sense that this isn't something inherent to men. This is not something that men are born with, necessarily having, but it's something that is socially constructed, through gendered hierarchies and valorized in the workplace for all employees, men or women,
00:07:02 - contexts being assessed according to their ability to fit in with serve or outcompete others in this masculinity contest culture. And that it's individually rational, sadly, to compete. Because if you don't, you're gonna lose out, right? Or to find some way to fit within that system so that you minimize your harm within it.
00:07:31 - to compete in these contest cultures. They might try to demonstrate their dedication to work, by foregoing having children or, you know, their ability to be socially dominant, or their ability to fit in with a dog eat dog culture. there was even a book called Female Chauvinist Pigs that talks about this phenomenon. yet women on the whole receive real dominance,
00:08:03 - So there's a very fine line that they have to tread. if they're seen as too masculine, there's often a lot of backlash, but then if they're seen as too feminine, they're dismissed. So the same type of thing exists for, marginalized men. So men from backgrounds and ethnicities that are seen as, being outside of the contenders,
00:08:39 - for demonstrating dominance. for example, some of my research has shown that Asian American men, are not expected to exhibit social dominant behavior in the workplace, and they experience real backlash for doing so. At the same time, they tend to be feminized compared to other men and dismissed, and not respected. So relative to Asian Americans levels of education
00:09:07 - underrepresented in leadership positions. We've developed a scale to measure masculinity, contest culture, finding four dimensions of it that kind of map onto these dimensions of hegemonic masculinity of strength and stamina, and, showing no weakness. That is showing no emotional weakness or uncertainty, putting work first, and then dog eat dog competition. And that measure has been shown to predict all kinds

Impact of Masculinity Contest Culture on Harassment

00:09:42 - and beyond some of the other theorizing about gendered workplaces. So a recent paper, for example, was studying men's proclivities to sexually harass others at work, and found that over and above the number of men in the workplace or the male typing of the occupation masculinity contest culture predicted their likelihood to sexually harass other people.
00:10:11 - that masculinity contest cultures, while they can exist in female dominated organizations, because those organizations are also operating in, you know, a context that, you know, is defined often by men, but, that they do tend to correlate more highly with the more men there are, in a workplace, the more, male typed the organizational task
00:10:42 - or, you know, some blue collar occupations are very male typed, for example. And so they tend to report pretty high levels of masculinity contest cultures. Not always, though, I mean, we are in some recent research finding that ethical leadership, so leaders, who might be operating in a broader context defined by masculinity contest culture, if they are ethical leaders,
00:11:16 - they can actually counteract or mitigate some of the negative effects of masculinity contest culture on employees. So that would be more at the, like supervisor level, not necessarily the CEO of, of course, if A CEO is an ethical leader, the whole organization is less likely to have this kind of a culture. But it's this reciprocal process where the culture produces CEOs that are toxic
00:11:46 - but within that, you know, you might find pockets of ethical leaders that help mitigate the negative outcomes on it. and we found that it leads to organizational level outcomes like, harassment and bullying and low psychological safety in organizations. So that's the idea developed, by Amy Edmondson of, people not feeling safe to share ideas,
00:12:17 - that others are gonna attack you the moment you show show any uncertainty. So it's a, it's a related construct, but it psychological safety is really important to, relate to this because it, it's measured very differently, and it really predicts a lot of things that organizations would want. So psychological safety predicts creativity and performance and teamwork and all these great things, right?

Impact of Masculinity Contest Culture in Workplaces

00:12:47 - that an organization has a high masculinity contest culture, it has very low psychological safety, and it has, you know, high rates of bullying and harassment, and we know how bad those things are. And then it also, you know, predicts burnout. So individuals tend to be burned out in these organizations. It predicts their mental and psych and physical health. and it also predicts their, desire to leave.
00:13:19 - I think I've talked about the costs a lot, and where they're prevalent a little bit about why, women end up having to join it. Basically, all employees are in a shared culture defined by a masculinity contest. but they might find different ways of surviving within it. So if you can't win the masculinity contest, or you can't be one of the, the guise at the top, that conform to the hegemonically masculine ideals in
00:13:53 - from other women while at the same time not trying to claim space of being a man, but being kind of a deputy or somebody willing to do the bidding of somebody who wins the masculinity contest culture. and so women and marginalized men might find themselves in a situation where their best option is if they want
00:14:24 - somebody who's winning this contest, who protects them, from it in exchange for the woman or the marginalized man doing what that man wants them to do, or serving some kind of role, that they want them to serve. So again, it's kind of giving up some individual power and agency and perhaps pride, but it is surviving
00:14:53 - Changing cultures is incredibly difficult. cultures are often formed, you know, by their initial conditions, their initial employees, their founders, and then it just kind of reverberates throughout the generations. obviously if you have a very strong leader who is also supported by a board or whoever appoints them or has their back, a leader could do go a long way toward changing a culture by just not tolerating this kind
00:15:25 - people harass others or bully or, you know, try to enact behaviors that are inappropriate and counter to work performance. other ways of doing it would be to focus on the mission of the organization to refocus. You know, why are we here? What are we trying to achieve? We're not, you know, this is hard because you set up a system where individuals get rewarded for perhaps their performance of masculinity instead

Promoting Performance Over Masculine Stereotypes

00:15:55 - But to the extent that you can realign rewards with job performance and not masculine performance, you know, if you promote the person who, you know, keeps their head down and works hard and works well with others instead of the person who socializes and drinks bourbon and, you know, struts their muscles around the office or whatever it is, right? Like, if you're promoting people based upon, you know,
00:16:26 - you socially, that's another way of doing it. one study that was very interesting was done by Robin Ely and Deborah Myerson of oil rigs where they were having loss of accidents on this oil rig. And it turned out that they had, even though they weren't calling it really a masculinity contest culture, that's what they had men were, afraid to admit when they were uncertain about something
00:16:57 - therefore things weren't really getting caught and accidents were happening. And so they went in and they did an intervention where they basically made it a more psychologically safe environment where people could talk about their feelings and their uncertainty, and they really downplayed the need to exhibit their masculinity. And lo and behold, the accident stopped happening, you know? and so by making it a mission-driven intervention,
00:17:33 - oil rig performs well? We need to cut down on accidents. what's causing the accidents? You know, doing that kind of an analysis of, you know, if a financial, brokerage is taking huge risks and losing a lot of money, is that somehow related to men's, or a culture in which men or other employees don't feel safe, not taking big risks
00:18:02 - So you can do a mission driven intervention more broadly speaking. we can un gender or undo gender in organizations where, we just not only downplay gender in various ways, you know, maybe starting with bathrooms or dress codes, but also bringing women and other genders into positions of leadership and, you know, integrating the workforce so that it's not
00:18:38 - or vertically segregated, I mean horizontally segregated so that, you know, you don't have women in some jobs and men in other jobs. As soon as you start segregating the workplace, either in power or in occupations, you start getting this phenomenon happening where people start associating prestige and status with usually men and stereotypes of men, and then they start engaging in those behaviors

Rethinking Masculinity: From Toxicity to Goodness

00:19:08 - and then finally, I guess as a, as a culture, as a society, we can start rethinking, the toxicity of some of these pressures on men and on masculinity and definitions of masculinity. Like, you know, maybe this served us at some point in our human history, but it's certainly not serving us now, right? how can we reframe masculinity
00:20:04 - to be a good man and start shifting more toward being a good man and away from being a real man, right? Michael Kimmel talked about that distinction. and, being a good man is pretty much the same thing as being a good person, which also leads us to de-emphasizing gender. So those are ways that we could intervene with these contest cultures.

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