Are policies to increase women’s share among university professors effective? The importance of gender equality on the labor market has been well established, but our understanding of what kind of policy is effective to increase the share of women is still unclear. Three sets of factors explain women’s low shares at higher job levels, notably individual, cultural, and structural or institutional perspectives, and policies to increase the proportion of women therefore should address these factors. This paper aims to investigate if they do so and if they are effective. We investigated the efficacy of gender equality policy measures in all 14 universities in the Netherlands, implemented between 2000 and 2007. Based on documents and interviews, 19 measures were identified that could be classified according to the three perspectives. The university with the most measures applied four times more measures than the one with the least measures. The more measures a university applied in the cultural perspective, the more likely it also applied measures in the other two perspectives. Whereas the HR managers and policy makers at universities reported skepticism and lack of evaluations, our study reveals a positive relationship between policy measures and the reduction of the glass ceiling and between policies in the cultural perspective and the increase of the proportion of women among professors.

Using data from 188 female full professors from all 14 Dutch universities this study examines whether skewed sex ratios in the environment and the absence of a women-friendly environment are related to their career path experiences and to their perception of the general ease of women's obtaining a professorship. Results from multi-level analyses show a positive relationship between the perception of women-friendly environment and both the experience of their own career path, and the perceived ease with which other women could become a full professor. Moreover results show that the higher the percentage of women professors in the academic field the stronger the relationship between perception of women friendliness and the experienced ease with which they became a full professor.

Gender stands for the expectations of an individual and others about what it means to be a man or a woman. Gender has been extensively studied in all fields of social psychology, for instance, in the psychology of health and mental health, education, criminality and political behaviour, to name just a few topics included in this book. The present chapter is about gender in work and organizational psychology. We first describe the societal context that gave rise to theories and research on gender and work. There are many differences between working men and women that often are disadvantageous for women. On average, women earn less than men for the same work, and have a lower probability of reaching top positions in organizations. We then focus on career-related decision making: women's own decisions and the decisions of others involved in selection and assessment. We pay special attention to women in management and leadership positions. After discussing the influence of the organizational context we finish by briefly discussing interventions that have been applied to change the relative position of men and women in organizations.

Objective This study investigates the relationship between four job characteristics and family-to-work conflict on emotional exhaustion and mental health problems. Methods Multiple regression analyses were performed using data from 1,008 mental health care employees. Separate regression analyses were computed for high and low patient interaction jobs. Results Different job characteristics as well as family-to-work conflict were associated with emotional exhaustion and mental health problems in each job type. The relationship between family-to-work conflict and emotional exhaustion was mitigated by social support from colleagues for those who worked in low patient interaction jobs. Conclusion In addition to general and specific stressors, it is worthwhile to include home-related stressors that interfere with the work domain in stress research.

In dit artikel wordt aan de hand van vragenlijstonderzoek onder 188 Nederlandse vrouwelijke hoogleraren (respons 48%) een beschrijvend overzicht van hun loopbaanervaringen en meningen over emancipatiebeleid gegeven. Deze groep vrouwelijke hoogleraren vond het in het algemeen niet erg moeilijk om hoogleraar te worden. Ze vinden hun afdeling tamelijk vrouwvriendelijk; dit geldt in mindere mate voor de faculteit waar ze werkzaam zijn, en in nog mindere mate voor hun universiteit. Om het aantal vrouwelijke hoogleraren te verhogen hebben ze een voorkeur voor een duidelijk beleid ten aanzien van vrouwen in hogere functies en een duidelijk loopbaanbeleid voor wetenschappers. Minder positief zijn de vrouwelijke hoogleraren over een bonus voor de faculteit bij de aanstelling van een vrouwelijke hoogleraar, en over de verplichting om altijd een vrouw op de shortlist te zetten.

The main objective of this study was to examine the psychosocial stress model developed by Taylor and Aspinwall with emotional exhaustion as the outcome variable. Respondents, 409 men and 346 women, who had a paid job for at least 20 hours per week, completed questionnaires concerning demographic variables, personality, temperament, work pressure, workload, perceived social support, appraisal, coping, and emotional exhaustion. Structural equation analyses provided only partial support for the validity of the model. First, on theoretical and statistical grounds, one more path linking external resources to social support was added. Second, contrary to expectations, coping styles did not predict emotional exhaustion. To conclude, when coping is measured retrospectively, it does not add to our understanding of emotional exhaustion. It is suggested that future studies should be longitudinal and include objective measures of stressors and psychosocial health outcomes in addition to self-reports. Copyright (c) 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The present study examines the relationship between four sources of social support (i.e., spouse, relatives and friends, supervisor, and colleagues) and time and strain-based work-to-family and family-to-work conflict among 444 dual-earners. Gender differences with respect to the relationship between social support and work–family conflict were examined as well. The relationship between the sources of support and work–family conflict was tested using multiple regression analyses. Results showed that women reported more strain-based work-to-family conflict than men. Social support from spouse and from colleagues were related to family-to-work conflict, while none of the sources of social support were related to work-to-family conflict. Social support from supervisor and from colleagues were related differently to work-to-family conflict (time-based) and family-to-work conflict (strain-based) for men than for women. We conclude that social support is especially important in reducing family-to-work conflict.

We examined whether gender differences in health, psychological well-being, and life satisfaction, can be explained by effects of work-related and nonwork-related sources of social support. The sample consisted of 459 men and women from dual earner families. Men report better health and psychological well-being than women, whereas women report higher life satisfaction than men. Contrary to our expectations, women receive more social support from colleagues than men, while men and women equally receive support from their supervisor. As for the nonwork-related sources of social support, men receive more social support from their spouse, while women receive more social support from relatives and friends. No gender differences exist in the effects of social support. Although men and women differ with respect to the social support they receive from different sources, these differences cannot explain gender differences in health, psychological well-being and life satisfaction.

A 16-nation study involving 8,360 participants revealed that hostile and benevolent attitudes toward men, assessed by the Ambivalence Toward Men Inventory (P. Click & S.T. Fiske, 1999), were (a) reliably measured across cultures, (b) positively correlated (for men and women, within samples and across nations) with each other and with hostile and benevolent sexism toward women (Ambivalent Sexism Inventory, P. Click & S.T. Fiske, 1996), and (c) negatively correlated with gender equality in cross-national comparisons. Stereotype measures indicated that men were viewed as having less positively valenced but more powerful traits than women. The authors argue that hostile as well as benevolent attitudes toward men reflect and support gender inequality by characterizing men as being designed for dominance.

Empirical research on sex differences in leadership styles, published between 1987 and 2000 in peer-reviewed journals, is reviewed by means of a meta-analysis. The leadership styles examined are interpersonal, task-oriented, democratic versus autocratic, and transformational and transactional leadership. Analysis showed that evidence for sex differences in leadership behavior is mixed, demonstrating that women tend to use more democratic and transformational leadership styles than men do, whereas no sex differences are found on the other leadership styles. Sex differences in leadership styles are contingent upon the context in which male and female leaders work, as both the type of organization in which the leader works and the setting of the study turn out to be moderators of sex differences in leadership styles.

The present study was undertaken to determine the factors that predict general fatigue and emotional exhaustion over two years. Because fatigue is hypothesized to be persistent, general fatigue and emotional exhaustion at baseline were included as predictors. A model of mediators and moderators of the stress-health relationship (Taylor and Aspinwall, 1996 ), was employed to select the other variables. A sample of the Dutch working population ( N = 325) completed questionnaires concerning demographic variables, personality and temperament, work pressure and workload, perceived social support, perceived stress, and coping strategies. Emotional exhaustion and general fatigue, measured two years later, were the outcome variables. Structural equation modeling indicated that general fatigue and emotional exhaustion are rather persistent. Furthermore, workload predicted both emotional exhaustion and general fatigue. Finally, emotional exhaustion was predicted by hardiness, whereas general fatigue was predicted by strength of inhibition.

From 1996 through 1999, the Empirical Research and Women's Studies Center (ERWSC) of Sana'a University in Yemen was sponsored by the Dutch government. The Department of Women's Studies of Tilburg University was its counterpart. In this article, we describe the rise and fall of this development project from our viewpoint as a counterpart. After a brief description of the larger context, i.e., the situation of women in Yemen, we describe the objectives of the project. We present the developments, including the problems that arose. After indicating the circumstances that caused its premature end, we present a general analysis and evaluation of the project. We conclude that a lack of sophistication in the design of the project, with unclear roles for the main participants and little regard for the context in which the project took place, was one of the factors that contributed to the failure of the project in the end.

The feminization of management is a recurring theme in both popular and scientific management literature. However, several studies have shown that successful managers are generally attributed predominantly masculine characterics. In this study, gender typing of the manager role was studied in a sample of 143 management students (74 men, 69 women) in the Netherlands. As was hypothesized, on a checklist with masculine, feminine, and gender-neutral traits, masculine characteristics were rated as more applicable to successful managers than feminine characteristics, but gender-neutral characteristics were rated even more applicable. Analysis of the wording used to describe a successful manager on an open-ended question showed that participants used either gender-neutral words or (generic) "he." This finding indicates that the successful manager is still imagined as a man, even though on a checklist this manager seems to possess predominantly gender-neutral traits. It is concluded that more methodological variety is needed in the study of gender typing of successful managers.

In this study, two different approaches, within one theoretical framework, were used to assess the impact of some public policy measures on the division of paid and unpaid work in the Netherlands. The first (macro-level) approach was based on the views of a panel of national experts; the second (micro-level) approach consisted of the analysis of information provided by members of households in a representative survey. In general, the results of the two studies indicate that the relevant policy measures have little, if any, impact on actual behaviour. In the survey study, the only variable that had a strong impact on both men's and women's behaviour was an attitude variable: egalitarianism. However, we conclude that the combination of methods, i.e. of the retrospective Delphi study with the cross-sectional survey, leads to better insight into the impact of the policy measures than each of the separate methods.