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What would a perfectly gender-equal workplace be like? Certainly, it would be free of gender bias in hiring, promotion, and salary. On an emotional level, it would have to be a place where no one feels excluded because of their gender. Some organizations have a longer way to go than others toward building such emotionally inclusive cultures.
Silicon Valley’s infamous “bro culture”, for example, comes out of tech’s long history as a male-dominated industry. It also discourages women from pursuing tech careers, helping keep the status quo in place.
As it stands, women who join tech companies must find a way to navigate a toxic workplace. Some adopt a “can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” attitude, responding in kind to a work place rife with teasing, belittling sexist banter. Mandy O’Neill, a management professor at the George Mason University School of Business, has found that women who do so are rewarded by their peers with a status bump. Surprisingly, their male peers who engage in the same behavior take a step down in status as a result.
O’Neill’s forthcoming paper in Organization Science, written with Natalya M. Alonso of Haskayne School of Business, documents the “sexist culture of joviality” among trainees at a Latin American site run by a major U.S. tech company that will remain anonymous (let’s call it Tech.com). Past research suggests that joviality is a key characteristic of highly masculine cultures, allowing men to bond and blow off steam without violating gender norms such as strength, impassivity and invulnerability. Laughter, horseplay and joking around can also become a release valve for the discomfort and awkwardness some men feel when forced to work alongside women.
A main theme – if not the main theme – of the trainees’ non-work-related conversations was what they themselves called “Guerra de los sexos” (war of the sexes). The cohort of trainees that O’Neill and Alonso studied was fairly gender-balanced, but the program leadership was almost entirely male – in keeping with the wider gender dynamic in the tech industry. Jokes expressing a dim view of the opposite sex were routinely told in mixed company. Several women trainees showed they could dish it out as well as take it. Indeed, women who took part in the sexist banter reaped social rewards. Their peers hailed them as “bromistas”, or comedians. The bromistas seemed generally well-respected by both women and men. After one of the researchers momentarily turned bromista, relaying an overheard sexist joke to a mixed-gender group of trainees, she was praised for “learning the culture” and invited to socialize with trainees after work.
Later, the researchers statistically verified the “bromista effect” with a social network and demographics survey. The trainees were asked to nominate peers with whom they shared various kinds of relationships. Taken together, their survey responses formed a kind of map of social ties within the Tech.com training program. Bromistas were more likely to hold central positions in this web of social relationships. Put another way, they enjoyed higher esteem or status than non-bromistas as a rule. For the male trainees, however, an opposite effect was evident: The more they participated in sexist banter, the lower their status on the whole.
A follow-up survey sent to a separate set of participants in the United States, produced similar results. Respondents were each shown a description of an imaginary co-worker and asked to rate the hypothetical person’s status and social skills. There were four versions of the description, with the gender of the co-worker and their participation (or not) in sexist banter being the only differences. Again, women who participated were rated higher on both counts, while men were penalized for participation.
The second study suggests that the “sexist culture of joviality” and its implications for social status are not specific to Tech.com or the Latin American cultural context.
For O’Neill and Alonso, social sophistication helps explain these unexpected findings. Bromistas are rewarded for fitting into a culture where sexist humor is a common pastime. But men who enthusiastically promote this culture are seen as lacking tact – like a boy still behaving according to the rules of the “no girls allowed” clubhouse after his friends have all discovered dating. Therefore, it seems that even as men and women go along with the culture of bros and bromistas, they may secretly resent it and view it as out of date.
While this study appears to show that women can thrive within masculine cultures over a fairly short period, there are long-term consequences to keep in mind. O’Neill’s 2010 paper in Journal of Organizational Behavior found that MBAs who preferred an “aggressive”, masculine working culture – regardless of their sex -- earned more money four years after graduation, with women benefiting even more than men from this preference. Eight years post-degree, however, the men in the sample had pulled ahead, while the women had begun to disengage from their careers. In a world that still has pronounced gender disparities, the old cultural values won’t get us to equality.
O’Neill’s past work has shown that workplace joviality can be channeled in directions that are emotionally healthier for both men and women. Her 2017 Academy of Management Journal article explored the emotional culture of another male-dominated world – that of U.S. firefighters. Firehouses where goofing around took place within an atmosphere of companionate (caring and compassionate) love had fewer problems with self-destructive behavior and health issues, O’Neill found. Despite being a small minority in this extremely masculine setting, women firefighters were very much included in the playful, supportive environment. Tech start-ups, take note.