The Professionalism Paradox: Feminine in Content, Masculine in Consequence
Professionalism is often treated as a neutral behavioural standard, yet both its meaning and its consequences may be gendered. Across three studies (N = 1,409), we examine professionalism as a shared evaluative prototype, asking what professionalism means, who is imagined as professional, and how gender shapes who receives its benefits. In a trait-nomination paradigm (N = 890), professionalism and unprofessionalism emerged as related but distinct higher-order constructs: professionalism centered on warmth, competence, and conscientiousness, whereas unprofessionalism centered on incivility and incompetence. Professional traits were mildly feminine overall, while unprofessional traits were more strongly masculine. In a reverse-correlation study (N = 219), the mental prototype of a person likely to behave professionally was perceived as more feminine, whereas the unprofessional prototype was perceived as more masculine. Yet these feminine associations did not translate into an advantage for women. In a field study (N = 300 raters; 100 entrepreneurial pitch videos from Shark Tank), more gender-typical men were perceived as more professional, which in turn predicted stronger endorsement. This indirect pathway was significant for men but not women. Together, these findings reveal a professionalism paradox: although professionalism is represented in relatively feminine terms, its evaluative benefits accrue to men who more closely embody a masculine gender prototype. Professionalism may therefore function less as a neutral behavioural standard than as a gendered evaluative system in which the content of the ideal and the distribution of its rewards diverge.
Sonia Kang
Sonia Kang holds the Canada Research Chair in Identity, Diversity, and Inclusion, and is a Professor of Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management at the University of Toronto, where she is also a Faculty Research Fellow at the Rotman School of Management’s Institute for Gender and the Economy (GATE) and Chief Scientist, Organizations in the Behavioural Economics in Action Research Centre at Rotman (BEAR). Sonia is also Special Advisor on Anti-Racism & Equity at the University of Toronto Mississauga. Sonia earned a B.Sc. (Hons) in Psychology from the University of Alberta, an M.A. and Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Toronto, and completed a SSHRC Post-Doctoral Fellowship at Northwestern University.