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WOMEN IN TOP LEADERSHIP POSITIONS ethnic groups. This threat, of the appearance of stereotypes, may have a negative affect on performance." The stereotype threat theory of Steele and Aronson has been confirmed in relation to other, negatively stereotyped social groups, like the performance of women in the field of mathematics, for example. Mara Cadinu, Anne Maass, Alessandra Rosabianca, and Jeff Kiesner conducted tests on the subject, surveying 60 women divided in two groups, asking them to solve complicated mathematical tasks. Their results, summarized in the study Why Do Women Underperform Under Stereotype Threat? Evidence for the Role of Negative Thinking, have shown, among other things, that negative thinking is one of the possible reasons for deficits in performance. Women under the phenomenon called stereotype threat (while they had to complete a difficult task) showed a sharp decrease in performance, which was the result of negative, domain-specific thinking. Thus, they have interiorised qualities assumed to be generally true to a certain demographic (in this case, women).“5 However, not only the negative, but the positive sex categories are also keeping women in their traditional roles. This is so-called benevolent sexism. The problem with this phenomenon is that women only become accepted in the eyes of society if they have feminine characteristics specific of the group. However, these are completely incompatible with leadership features (see leadership attitudes below). The reasons we have discussed and their various manifestations are therefore still predominantly present and hinder the career path of women. All these difficulties are further strengthened by the male environment, the “chilling climate”. This is based on the fact that the male majority at a particular workplace creates a “foreign” atmosphere for women, either through the characteristics of the group or the associated physical segregation. Beata Nagy summarises the situation that women are confronted with when entering the male world in her book Hattérben™ [In the Background]. Among other things, she highlights, for example, Gherardi’s typology of women travellers in a male 99 « world, distinguishing their positions as “the guest”, “the marginal”, "the holi» « » « 9147 daymaker”, “the snake in the grass”, “the newcomer” and “the intruder. 14 Cf. Steele, C. M. — Aronson, J.: Stereotype threat and the intellectual test performance of African Americans, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69(5), 1995, 797-811, https:// doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.69.5.797 Cadinu, M. — Maass, A. — Rosabianca, A. — Kiesner, J.: Why do women underperform under stereotype threat? Evidence for the role of negative thinking, Psychological Science, 16(7): 5, 2005, 576, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0956-7976.2005.01577.x 146 Nagy, B.: Hättérben, Budapest, L'Harmattan, 2014. 47 See Czibere, I. — Takács, I.: Nagy Beáta: Háttérben: Kísérlet egy szervezeti nemi rend feltárására. Újratervezés — a nők és a műszaki tudományok, Debreceni Szemle, 2016/3, 352—356. 145
