Towards Workplace Gender Equality: An Introduction

Gender stereotypes are a generalised view or a preconception about the attributes and characteristics of a particular group. In the case of this study, those specific groups are women professionals and leaders. Gender stereotype threat is the fear that a person’s behaviour may confirm an existing stereotype of a group with which that person identifies, which can negatively impact an individual’s behaviour. This book investigates the potential of arts-based methods in management education to moderate the impact of gender stereotype threat for women. Gender in organisations is a mature field that has been given much attention over the past 30 years. Meanwhile, arts-based approaches in management education are an adolescent field that has gained momentum since the early 2000s. The literature in both fields is extensive, and specifically, there is an ever-growing interest in the impact of gender stereotypic behaviour in the workplace (Eagly and Heilman, 2016) and the untapped potential of arts-based methods (Sutherland and Jelinek, 2015). Further, Roberts and Creary (2013) suggested that navigating ‘the self’ is critical for working in a diverse world and can actively engage individuals in shaping, and sustaining their own identity, which may serve well to challenge the complexities in a gendered work environment. This notion is a good fit with arts-based learning that revolves around emotional and subjective outcomes with the potential to influence the current dominant pedagogy in management education