Helping or Hurting?: Understanding Women’s Perceptions of Male Allies

Authors

Shannon K. Cheng, Rice UniversityFollow
Linnea C. Ng, Rice UniversityFollow
Allison M. Traylor, Rice UniversityFollow
Eden B. King, Rice UniversityFollow

DOI

https://doi.org/10.25035/pad.2019.02.006

Abstract

In the past decade, organizational scholars have begun to explore the role of allies in mitigating workplace discrimination toward women and members of minority groups. However, this nascent literature has, to this point, failed to consider the perspective of targets of ally behavior. That is, we do not yet know how targets of discrimination experience others’ intervention or advocacy. To begin to understand these issues, we examine target perceptions of allyship through a qualitative critical incident approach, asking women to describe experiences in which a man has effectively and ineffectively acted as an ally to them in the workplace. Our findings from surveying 100 women provide new insights regarding who engages in ally behaviors, what behaviors these allies enact, when and where the behaviors take place, and why participants believed their male ally engaged in this behavior.

Recommended Citation

Cheng, Shannon K.; Ng, Linnea C.; Traylor, Allison M.; and King, Eden B. (2019) "Helping or Hurting?: Understanding Women’s Perceptions of Male Allies," Personnel Assessment and Decisions: Number 5 : Iss. 2 , Article 6.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.25035/pad.2019.02.006
Available at: https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/pad/vol5/iss2/6

Corresponding Author Information

Shannon Cheng

shannon.k.cheng@rice.edu

Department of Psychology, Rice University Houston, TX 77005