Virus for Women Employees: Exploring the Stereotypical Beliefs of the Leaders about their Female Followers

The never-ending gender discrimination in societies needs multidimensional exploration to understand its causes. Gender stereotyping has remained one of the foremost causes of gender discrimination in the workplace. This study strived to explore the stereotypical thinking and beliefs about women employees in the minds of their office leaders and discuss - es how these stereotypes play a role in the management of talent and performance of female employees. With the qualitative approach, this study has used hermeneutic phenomenology as the method of exploration. The data was collected with purposive sampling from managerial leaders, working in private companies whose followers include women employees. Nineteen in-depth interviews were conducted with questions designed from theory, expert and construct validity. The data were analyzed with multi-level coding and thematic analysis. The results revealed that managerial leaders have work-related, family-related, and personal stereotypes about their female followers. They generalize that women employees are less ambitious, less professional, over-occupied, and emotional. They believe that they feel the need to micromanage the females as they require more guidance. Those organizations that believe to maintain diversity in employees should regularly organize training sessions to neutralize the stereotypes in the minds of their managers so that they could not hamper the progression of their female followers.


Introduction
The world of 2020 started with bad news. That bad news is primarily for marginalized gender, but it is a matter of concern for everybody. "None of us will see gender parity in our lifetimes, and nor likely will many of our children" (Global Gender Gap Report 2020 | World Economic Forum, n.d.). In addition to being bad news, this, in itself is an unfortunate question mark on the conscience of the civilized world, but to ask the question, why gender inequality is bad news? Restricting gender norms is restricting growth, it deprives every virtue of its perfection, in other words, it restricts everything (Shannon et al., 2019). Gender inequality affects health (Coe et al., 2019), personal efficiency (Kinkingninhoun-Mêdagbé et al., 2010), economics, society (Alam, 2011), organizations, and whatnot. Despite being one of the most sought human rights, gender equality is still a premium, this makes it a prime research problem to explore, explain and solve. In this line, scholars delve into the discussion of antecedents of gender inequality, or the factors which cause gender discrimination in any form. The popular researched factors in this regard are socioeconomic conditions (Zarar et al., 2017), culture (Patterson & Walcutt, 2014), religion (Awad, 2010), historical context, psychological (Macarie & Moldovan, 2012), and other factors. One such factor that illuminates the menace of gender inequality is stereotyping (Cundiff & Vescio, 2016;Fiske & Stevens, 1993;Heilman & Caleo, 2018). People, based on different factors, oversimplify an incident, attitude, or phenomenon and generalize that oversimplification on a particular group, thus labeling them, this becomes stereotyping (Bodenhausen et al., 1994).
Women at the workplace become the victim of this stereotyping from multiple fronts, followers think stereotypically about women, society, by large, has stereotypes for working women, and families become a hindrance for women employees. The menaces like glass ceiling, and glass cliff patriarchy in business are a few of those offshoots of these stereotypes. Social role theory has answers to these questions as it explains how society has assigned roles to the genders and it becomes taboo and unconventional when a gender starts behaving differently or begins performing a different role. A society like that of Pakistan has a history of women subjugation and therefore it is replete with biases against women's role on par with men, especially in the workplace setting. Research has been conducted on what stereotypes are there in the minds of followers about their women leaders, however, it is pertinent to study how leaders themselves perceive their women followers. This study strives to explore the stereotypical beliefs of leaders about their female followers.

Theoretical Background
Humans cannot live in isolation; therefore, they built societies, they built the civilizations, and following the norm of interdependency, they assigned certain roles to the people so that they could expect the required performance of that predefined role from the persons. When Shakespeare says, "All the World's a stage; All the men and women merely players", it gives a glimpse of how those players are supposed to perform their defined roles. This precludes the social role theory, in which people are expected to respond and behave according to the norms and expectations aligned with their role in society. These roles, mother, father, teacher, laborer, and so on, are created by society, and with centuries of reinforcement of the role expectations, these players feel responsible to behave accordingly. One of many, albeit one of the most fascinating, dimensions of the role theory is a social theory of sex differences. The stark question is about why males and females behave differently in some circumstances and similarly in others.
Although many of the sciences including biology and economics have their answers, we rely on the one given by Eagly and Wood which they specifically call the social theory of sex differences and similarities (Eagly & Wood, 2016). These differences and similarities are witnessed because of the different and same gender roles that are assigned to both genders; this is how they put it. It would not be incorrect to say that much of the disparity in the opportunities for males and females is because of the role's society has assigned them for centuries. Despite several waves of feminism, human rights activism, and other hue and cry, the world has failed to produce equal rights, equal job opportunities, and equitable perception for both genders. For instance, role congruity theory, a further extension of social role theory, asserts that since people accept or reject the role of gender according to the assigned expectations, therefore, people hold prejudice towards women leaders since gender stereotype makes them believe that leadership association is with male gender (Eagly & Karau, 2002). Gender-based stereotypes, however, do not haunt female leaders only, they, like a pandemic, are spread all over the roles of females which challenge the mainstream male-oriented tasks (Deaux & Lewis, 1984).
Gender stereotypes are linked to two different directions; descriptive and prescriptive, where the former is related to a generalization about women and men that how they are, and later guides how they should be (Heilman, 2012). Besides, these stereotypical barriers for women work on two different levels, at the macro societal level, where women live in a society that is engulfed with systematic gender discrimination, and at the micro-individual level where these barriers are part of organizational structure ( Drbohlav & Dzúrová, 2017).
These directions and levels of stereotypes hamper the performance and growth of women in the workplace. The social role theory of sex differences, probably, flows in the veins of workplaces in a country like Pakistan, not only do women face hurdles to coming out and working, it is very difficult for them to decide about their careers (Ali & Syed, 2017). This is probably because gender bias is structured in society, for instance, one study revealed that the textbooks in secondary schools of Pakistan are replete with gender discrimination, and females are portrayed mostly with a traditional and less prestigious occupation that involves passive personality traits (Kazi & Niaz, 2018). When society acknowledges the need for women workforce or the push motivational factors compel males to cooperate with their working women, even then the few jobs are preferred by women because those have a bit of acceptance in society.
In addition, women in organizations are tasked based on their gender. It has been in the focus of researchers that why women do not become leaders, however, this and the plight of women employees should be explored from local contexts. Social role theory suggests that stereotypes of tasks are rampant which affects the ambitious career choice of females (Madsen, 2016).The literature on gender stereotypes in the workplace is rich, albeit not exhaustive, however, the usual extractions are for the women leaders, that how these stereotypes impede women to climb the ladder of leadership, there is, therefore, a need to get the focus of such research towards women followers as well, that how these stereotypes create problems for them, or even what stereotypes exist in the minds of leaders for their women followers.

Method
Exploring the stereotypical beliefs about women employees in the minds of their leaders required to rely on the lived experiences of the leaders with women employees, therefore, this study followed phenomenology methodology with interpretivist underpinnings. Moreover, since we tried to explore the essence of the lived experiences of leaders with their women followers, but this was through the language and their interpretation of those experiences, our specific methodology in this study is hermeneutic phenomenology (Langdridge, 2008;Van Manen, 2016).

Procedure
Data were collected with an in-depth interviewing technique, the interview protocol was prepared in which the questions were prepared in the light of the theoretical background and expert opinion (Long & Johnson, 2000) to ensure the construct validity of the questions (Gibbert & Ruigrok, 2010). The assurance of confidentiality was provided to the participants that their data would only be revealed in the general analysis. Moreover, the interviews were recorded in a completely undisturbed environment to make the most of the data. Interviews were audio-recorded with the prior consent of the participants.

Sampling
The participants were the managerial level leaders in the private companies of Pakistan, they were selected based on a purposive sampling strategy (Etikan et al., 2016) as the frame of reference for this study was the leaders whose subordinates include female employees, and their leader-follower relationship before the interview should have been at least 2 years so that the experience which we studied should be exhaustive, Table 1 presents the details of participants. Although the interview protocol did not include any controversial questions, however, they were given the option to withdraw at any time during the interview and opt not to be part of this study (Walker, 2007). Since qualitative research does not have any specific sample size to rely on, however, we decided to reach the saturation point. At the 21st interview, the data revealed repetition but the 22nd interview was conducted to make sure that the saturation point has been achieved (O'Reilly & Parker, 2013;Walker, 2012). Table 1 Profile of Participants

Triangulation and Credibility
Along with the interview protocol, the observation protocol (Ary et al., 2018) was also designed to note down the expressions and other observations during the interviews. We prepared the transcripts of the recorded interviews and shared those transcripts with the respective participants to ensure member checking (Goldblatt et al., 2011). Analysis With the written transcripts of the data available, the descriptive codes were prepared in the first cycle of coding. With those codes, it was tried to set the direction for further coding, and in the second level of coding, we followed axial and pattern coding to concentrate the data (Saldaña, 2016). Thematic analysis was performed to extract themes from the codes to understand the answers to the research questions (Floersch et al., 2010), and the framework of phenomenological analysis was made.

Results
The interview data was properly analyzed with the procedure mentioned in the method section, and nine themes emerged, it could be said, this study explored nine stereotypical beliefs that the leaders have regarding women followers. Table 2 depicts those nine themes, and these are classified into three different categories for better understanding. The first category is work-related stereotypes, which included, 'overthinking', 'need micromanaging', and 'less professional'. The second category is family-related stereotypes, which include, 'Over occupied' and 'less ambitious'. The third category is personal stereotypes, and they are, 'distracting', 'complaining', 'emotional', and 'egoist'. It also presents a few of the relevant codes to substantiate the themes. The complete set of stereotypes that have been explored is depicted in Figure 1, in the structure of a virus. These stereotypes are further explained and discussed in the following section.

Work-related Stereotypes
We explored these stereotypes and categorized them together as work-related since the leader has these beliefs regarding women concerning their work, how she responds towards tasks, and how they try to manage them.

Overthinking
Women are believed that they think in abundance about almost everything. The participants in this study tend to believe that whenever they have a task for any woman subordinate, they already know that they will think too much, which in itself is good, but doing this on every trivial matter becomes a waste for them. One of the participants remarked: "Number of times I have observed, that women subordinates, on almost every task, think from all the dimensions, the dimensions which are not relevant. 'Bal ki khal nikalti hain', (They prefer to split hairs)"

They need micromanaging
Leaders tend to think that women usually seek more guidance, for the clarity of minute details, and that again very frequently, which compels leaders to micromanage them. Surprisingly, leaders believe that this micromanagement motivates women to meet the targets in a better way. Moreover, when it was asked it may be the case with leaders as their micromanagement may be part of their management style, they viewed this that they apply this to women subordinates only. One participant said; "I personally do not like micromanagement of my subordinates but if I have to get the task done from my female subordinate, micromanagement works, in fact, whenever I leave them on their own, they feel kind of demotivated"

Less Professional
Leaders in the corporate world, as represented by the participants, incline towards the famous gender-based stereotype that females are less professional. They perceive women to be more family persons and therefore, women bring their family issues into the office. Their behavior towards tasks turns out to be less professional when they engage themselves in more family chatter and quote the melodrama examples in everything. One of the interviewees said;

Family-related stereotypes
Another category of stereotypes is the one related to the families of the female followers, their perceived attachment, and their occupation with their families. Leaders stereotypically believe that female employees behave differently because of their different roles in their families.

Over occupied
Despite the international hue and cry for the equal participation of both genders in family-related responsibilities, countries like Pakistan still live in the past, where, females hold females more accountable to their families. This has harnessed the stereotype in the minds of leaders that female employees are more occupied with family issues, and this results in their absentmindedness in the workplace. One of the participants put it this way; "It becomes very difficult for me to get my female employee to focus on the work with consistency, mainly because her mind is already occupied with her family problems, as a woman she has to deal with a lot of family-related issues, and that I understand as well".

Less Ambitious
In corporations, ambition drives performance, and, according to this study, female followers lack the spirit of ambition. Leaders tend to believe that since most females know that they have just to bring food to the family, or if they wish to advance in a career, they would not get the required support from their families, therefore, they take the job for the job itself, not as mean to propel in their career. One participant said; "I deal with many subordinates under me, I can tell you, females do not have even half the ambition as the males do have, and due to this it becomes hard to keep them excited and motivated".

Personal Stereotypes
The third category was the stereotypes that are related to the personality of the females. Leaders tend to think about the personalities of their female followers in a particular way. This study dug out those stereotypes as well.

Complaining
Females are perceived to be complaining consistently. Their leaders think that women employees have this in their personality that they are very rarely satisfied with the people and things around them, they keep on complaining about their fellow employees, about the office, about the work environment and this becomes a headache for the leaders. One of them said; "See, every organization has difficult people, and weaknesses in their work environment but we expect our employees to positively improve them and contribute despite these hurdles, what I have observed is, females pay more attention to the empty half than to another half that is full".

Emotional
Substantiating the international perception about females that they are more emotional, corporate leaders in Pakistan, according to this study, tend to have the same perception. They believe females are less capable to handle the pressure situation. Moreover, they think that in the uncertain and stiff corporate environment, it is very important sometimes to leave the setbacks behind and move ahead, but females become obsessed with the issues, and that significantly hampers their organizational performance. One of the participants viewed it in this way; "You see, we claim that we are a 'family' but at the end of the day, we need to move ahead with leaving the issues behind. What happens is, whenever any issue happens without a female employee, I feel the need to assign a counselor for her so that she could move ahead, sometimes it becomes toxic."

Egoist
Leaders believe that their female followers are egoists, and therefore, they must look after them in that regard. Females, according to them, carry my admonishing words personally, which males do not. One participant said; "Females are egoists, it's a fact. Whenever I find faults in tasks of any of my female followers, I take care of my reaction because I know how she is going to take it".

Distracting
This is one of the interesting findings of this study. We learned that leaders perceive themselves as more inclined toward females. They believe since females become very emotional and personal, they develop a certain extraordinary sympathizing feeling for them, and that sometimes creates biases. It also distracts them to evaluate females based on their performance. Following is one excerpt in this regard; "It's natural I believe, when someone strongly displays her emotions and personal stories with you, and that consistently, you get attracted and become a sympathizer, many a times I have found myself being positively biased towards such a person, but then it's not fair, female employees are a distraction".

Discussion
Oversimplified thinking, generalization, and labeling are the infections that put the entire workplace on the verge of contagion (Hanrahan et al., 2017;Inzlicht & Schmader, 2012;London, 2013). When employers stereotype the people around them, they are not only distracted from the original grasp of the problem but also breed multiple other problems (Heilman & Eagly, 2008). Stereotypes have been widely studied (Eagly et al., 2020;Heilman, 2012;Koenig et al., 2011;Posthuma & Campion, 2009), however, this study strived to explore the stereotypical beliefs of the leaders for their female followers. The work-related stereotypes influence leaders to perceive their female followers with that general understanding. This study revealed that leaders tend to believe that women overthink (Nolen-Hoeksema, 2003) around the tasks and try to thoroughly understand it when it is even not needed. This labeling can deviate them from properly guiding the female employees and avoiding them when a thorough understanding would be required. Moreover, leaders also stereotypically think that their women followers require micromanagement. This can create two counterproductive outcomes; first, not every woman requires micromanagement, and thus the leader with this stereotype might wrongly manage a female employee who rather may be excellent if delegated the work properly. Two; incoherent moves, by the leaders, between different positions of leadership not only detract from the employees but also augment the ambiguity (Alvesson & Sveningsson, 2003). Besides, leaders also perceive their female followers as less professional, this mantra of labeling women as fewer professionals is not confined to the understanding of leaders, even the followers, as previous research says, think the same about their women leaders.
However, when the leader has this general perception about their female followers, it potentially has grave consequences; the career of those female followers, their evaluation, and their day to the daily work environment are affected. This study also explored the stereotypical beliefs of the leaders which are related to the families of women employees. Females are perceived to be over-occupied by their families' issues. This stereotype emerges because of the general understanding that females have to look after the homes and the tasks related to it. Another family related stereotype which rocks the minds of leaders is that females are less ambitious (Gino et al., 2015). The reason of this thinking is rooted in the fact that since it is a herculean task for females to resist the hindrance of family in the way of their career (Ellemers, 2014), and therefore, not every woman shows that courage and most of the working women just stick to their current job and do not think about future prospective. This makes them less excited to go beyond the call of duty which leaders usually want from their followers. The third category of stereotypes are related with perception of leaders about the personalities of their female followers. Leaders believe that their female followers are more complaining, as it is difficult for them to adjust themselves with the odds of the company, people and work environment. This stereotypical thinking might lead them to let slide the significant compliance which otherwise could bring important improvements. Moreover, it can lessen the motivation of female employees. The leaders also tend to believe that their women employees are relatively more emotional (Brescoll, 2016) and egoist (Schneider et al., 2019) than their male employees, therefore, women pay much of their heed towards the obsession of issues rather than moving ahead. When leaders evaluate the personalities of women employees with this mind-set that they are overly emotional, then they would pay little attention towards their genuine concerns like, workplace bullying, harassments and inequality.Interestingly, even the tendency of being sympathetic towards employees is being judged equally, the leaders believe that since women are more emotional, personal and sharing, so leaders get more sympathetic towards them and this results in the biases.

Implication
A substantial chunk of the menace of gender discrimination lies in the lap of stereotypical thinking. People do not realize that labeling people is negating them (Samo et al., 2019). This study presents theoretical contribution, as results resound the explanation of social role theory from the followers' perspective. Women at the workplace are engulfed with these stereotypes, not only women leaders are labeled with that generalized thinking but, as this study revealed, women employees face the same from their leaders. When leaders have stereotypical beliefs regarding their female followers it has consequences. The personal consequences for those women may be that they will remain demotivated, deprived, and less preferred (Heilman & Eagly, 2008). Moreover, these consequences develop deviant behavior in them (Eitle, 2002), they start believing in these stereotypes and this hampers their progress.
This stereotyping by the leaders has social consequences as well, as this makes the work environment more deplorable for women, resultantly, more women will prefer to be at home rather than at work (Ascher, 2012). In countries like Pakistan, where women constitute around half of the population, it is indispensable that women become equal contributors in the work as this will accelerate the economy. Besides, these stereotypes of the leaders regarding their female followers have consequences for the organizations as well (Kim, 2015). It is a resounding fact that diversity delivers development (Carter et al., 2003), no organization where leaders carry stereotypes will harness those benefits from diversity. It will also impede the path of women from progression to higher roles in the organization and it will certainly block the bounties of teamwork.