I, and most intelligent, strong women I know have been told – on more than one occasion – that we are intimidating.
A study published last month by the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology took a look at the gender differences on implicit self-esteem following the success or failure of a romantic partner.
The research was conducted with five different experiments, and 896 heterosexual couples participated, all of various age ranges — although the average age of the study participants was 18.9 years old.
It was discovered that subconsciously, men feel worse about themselves when their romantic partners succeeded — even if they said otherwise. And even if their partners succeeded in something completely unrelated to their own career or field of expertise. Men felt even worse if their partner succeeded at something they had personally failed at.
Aversely, men felt better about themselves if their female partners failed at something.
Women, on the other hand, had no such reaction. Their self-esteem remained unaffected whether their partner failed or succeeded.
The author offers a few explanations for this. The first is that a man will automatically interpret his partner’s success as his own failure, a result of men being more competitive in general. A second idea is that this is the result of ingrained and internalized gender stereotypes. The ones that say men are generally more intelligent, competent and successful than women. The third explanation researchers offer is that when women are successful, a man’s self-doubt about his own worthiness crops up and he fears he may lose her.
In reality, it’s probably a combination of all three, although all of which are either direct or indirect results of gender stereotypes and patriarchy. The idea that men are supposed to be — expected to be — more successful and intelligent than woman, is pretty ingrained in our culture. That’s why it’s news when we have “the first” female politician to be elected to a high public office, or when a businesswoman is picked as a CEO of a major Fortune 500 company.
And men do tend to be more competitive than woman … many studies show that. However, it could easily be argued that is also a product of gendered socialization in a world where boys are encouraged to be competitive, get outside, play dirty. And girls are encouraged to be nice, not bossy and to be ladies.
Granted, a limitation of this study is that this specifically examines the relationship between a man and a woman romantically involved. It would be interesting to see whether this rang true for same-sex couples, or a man and his guy friend who succeeds. Or a man and his female acquaintance.
In the end, the results for heterosexual couples are the same. Women succeed, their partners feel bad. Women fail, their partners feel good. It’s an unfortunate scenario for both men and women, but it isn’t impossible to overcome. The importance of bringing these issues to the forefront is that we can start a dialogue. And most of all, we can work to change our own attitudes.
Kaitlin Moroney can be reached at [email protected]