The Boys Club: Engineering a More Positive Environment for Women in Male-Dominated Majors

Sexual harassment has been widely studied in the workforce, but the factors that contribute to hostile educational environments for women have received less attention. The present study focuses on male dominance, gender harassment, gender threats, masculinity, and their influences on creating a hostile environment for women in academia. One hundred and forty-two male participants from a private university in the Southwestern United States self-reported their masculinity, completed a group task with a female confederate leader serving as a gender threat in half the conditions, and had their subsequent affect, perceptions of leadership effectiveness, and behavioral aggression measured. Men from male-dominated majors and men who had received a gender threat did not differ from men from gender-equivalent majors and men who had not received a gender threat on affect, perceptions of leadership effectiveness, or behavioral aggression (ps > 0.201, ηp2s ≤ 0.007). However, post-hoc analyses revealed that as masculinity increased among men from male-dominated majors under gender threat, they became significantly more behaviorally aggressive (b = 5.92, p = 0.003) and perceived their female leader as less effective (b = −0.83, p = 0.076). Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.