Gendered Work Cultures
Workplace culture functions as a social control system promoting norm-congruent behavior, with noncompliance leading to sanctions and exclusion. In some workplaces, organizational norms are entangled with those associated with a specific gender role, defining seemingly gender-neutral performance standards and “ideal worker” notions. In one line of research at SRBL, we focus on understanding how these gendered work cultures emerge and how they operate, what their consequences are, and how they might be challenged.
For example, in a recent project, we investigated how women manage their social identity in workplaces characterized by strong "masculinity contest cultures" (Veldman & Vial, 2026). Our studies reveal that the female social identity is greatly devalued (i.e., viewed as low status) in workplaces with strong masculinity contest norms. As a result, women distance themselves from their gender group identity in these kinds of workplace contexts as a way to cope with the devaluation of the female social identity. Doing so allows them to enhance their personal sense of status in workplace contexts with strong male norms. These findings have important theoretical implications, shedding light on the psychological mechanisms that promote self-group distancing. They also have practical implications, because self-group distancing has negative consequences for individuals’ mental health as well as for gender diversity goals. As such, self-group distancing may be an important mechanism whereby strong masculine work cultures undermine the well-being and participation of women, encouraging them to pursue work in other domains in which their gender social identity is not devalued.
Veldman, J. & Vial, A. C. (2026). Masculinity contest cultures lead to self-group distancing in women. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 122, 104832. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2025.104832. PDF.
Going beyond masculinity, our research has broadened the scope by investigating the workplace culture that characterizes female-typed occupations (Vial & Beneda, 2026). We developed the Femininity Workplace Culture (FWC) scale to measure organizational norms that reflect the female gender role. The scale items focus on workplace behaviors and attitudes that denote descriptive norms (what is typical), prescriptive norms (what is encouraged or rewarded), and proscriptive norms (what is discouraged or punished). The FWC scale comprises two broad dimensions that align with the female gender role and/or femininity norms: A Communal dimension and an Unmitigated Communion dimension. Our work shows that these norms are characteristic of occupations and workplaces in which women are overrepresented and in which the work itself entails the provision of care (i.e., labor that involves meeting the emotional, psychological, developmental, and/or physical needs of others), which is stereotypically female. Across several studies comprising over 5,000 participants from various occupations in the United States and the United Kingdom, the FWC scale dimensions consistently predict work-relevant outcomes (e.g., lack of work-life balance, work-related burnout, experiences of workplace ostracism) and psychological outcomes (e.g., anxiety, depression, feelings of authenticity). The Communal norms dimension of FWC predicts positive outcomes, whereas the Unmitigated Communion norms dimension predicts negative outcomes. Importantly, our work shows that these two dimensions tend to co-exist in female-typed occupations and workplaces. As these norms clash by definition with male gender role norms, femininity workplace cultures may hold key insights on the underrepresentation of men in the care economy. The full 24-item scale and the short 8-item version are available here.
Vial, A. C. & Beneda, M. (2026). Femininity workplace culture: Conceptualization and scale development. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000514. PDF.
Other SRBL publications on gendered workplace cultures:
Vial, A. C., & Spielmann, J. (2026). The status divide: Masculinity contest cultures as hierarchy-enhancing norms that undermine workplace diversity. Manuscript under review.
Vial, A. C., Ramadhan Alahmadi, A. & Cowgill, C. (2026). Help yourself? Masculinity contest cultures reduce interpersonal helping by promoting objectification and instrumental motivations. Manuscript in preparation.
Vial, A. C., Takizawa, R. & Bosak, J. (2026). When parents don’t fit in: Masculinity workplace norms promote hiring discrimination of parents through prejudice accommodation processes. Manuscript in preparation.
Vial, A. C., Muradoglu, M., Newman, G., & Cimpian, A. (2022). An emphasis on brilliance fosters the perception of masculinity contest cultures. Psychological Science, 33(4), 595-612. https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976211044133. PDF.