As an important pole in the labor market, women play an important role in family, labor market and society. They undertake the important tasks of intellectual contribution, physical contribution and social capital contribution in technological innovation work. Innovation is the first and foremost power to lead development, and is bound to become state will and social mainstream. However, how to trigger innovation and how to make innovation drive social development have become priorities in domestic academic and practical areas. The advancement of social technological innovation is often the result of mutual promotion of basic and applied sciences. Basic sciences include mathematics, physics, life science, medicine, chemistry, information science, and so on, and applied sciences include mechanical and vehicle engineering, energy and mining engineering, chemical engineering, metallurgy and materials engineering, information and electronic engineering, etc.Under the social construction of gender stereotype, female default image has conflicts and inconsistency with exceptional female innovators. Owing to these conflicts and inconsistency, female innovators lack identity legitimacy and role consistency in their innovative careers, leading to identity crisis. This, in turn, is causing recognition bias, cognitive bias, promotion and career risks, and then is shaping the pressure of public opinions inside and outside the innovation team. In this research, the situation is locked in the context of technological innovation, the female innovators are taken as the research object and the stereotype is used as the carrier. By a literature review of identity of consistency, a lack of fitness and legitimacy, backlash, double evaluation bias and the orientation of public opinions within the work, it can help to construct real organizational situation which female innovators face and arouse public attention from female innovators. Thus, it can explore the impact of stereotype on female innovators in this context, and systematically analyze the threats of female innovators in the process of technological innovation. On the basis of admitting threats, it puts forward that gender stereotype does not mean stereotype threat. Firstly, femininity allows female innovators to have contrast effects and get more tolerance. Technology innovation once becomes successful, it will make people form a larger contrast to low expectations and increase cognitive shocks to other people, thereby being conducive to the establishment of the images of female innovators. Even if the end result is a failure, people will also be more likely to be tolerant of women. Secondly, in the context of team cooperation and collaborative trend in technological innovation, it requires women’s ability to communicate and cooperate. Relational female innovators’ involvement in innovation teams can make role congruency and legitimacy be more likely to be recognized. Thirdly, as a defensive guarantee, marriage can enable female innovators to obtain their spouses’ information resources and social network resources, and also obtain support, trust and security from the marital relationship. Fourthly, female innovators have more social identities for role adjustment. Female innovators have both social and family identities, and these dual identities can be transferred and be supplemented by resources. If they want to avoid the identity inconsistency of innovators, they can initiate positive identity characteristics of other identities and highlight their positive self traits, making equal, independent and self-respecting women gain recognition from others. These can help gender stereotype threat to be intervened, and even will be development opportunities and favorable conditions for female innovators. As the pioneering attempt to use female innovators as the object in domestic innovation, this paper takes the gender stereotype of female innovators as the carrier, makes a systematic literature review of female, gender stereotype and so on in the context of technological innovation, and thereby deeply analyzes gender topic and gender effects in technological innovation research, to provide more research and reference at theory and practice levels for humanistic view of innovation theory and the overall development of female innovators in innovation object.
/ Journals / Foreign Economics & Management
Foreign Economics & Management
LiZengquan, Editor-in-Chief
ZhengChunrong, Vice Executive Editor-in-Chief
YinHuifang HeXiaogang LiuJianguo, Vice Editor-in-Chief
Gender Stereotype: The Threat or Opportunity for Female Innovators in Technological Innovation?
Foreign Economics & Management Vol. 39, Issue 11, pp. 45 - 60 (2017) DOI:10.16538/j.cnki.fem.2017.11.004
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References
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Cite this article
Wu Xintong, Chen Jin, Mei Liang, et al. Gender Stereotype: The Threat or Opportunity for Female Innovators in Technological Innovation?[J]. Foreign Economics & Management, 2017, 39(11): 45–60.
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