Tell him he can't and you will see

Do you know the best way to motivate a woman to aspire to a leadership position? Tell her that women apply for them less. It seems paradoxical, but it is exactly what research from Harvard, Pennsylvania, and Chicago universities published in Organization Science last October has shown.The experiment was developed on an executive selection platform and involved 4,245 women. Half received a message explaining that men were applying for more high-responsibility positions. The other half received a message about platform usage frequency, but without mention of gender. The result was that recipients of the message about the gender gap applied for 17% more jobs in the seven days following, and 29% more on the same day as the message. No empowerment campaign was needed. Just providing information about the difference. Furthermore, the research revealed an important nuance: the effect was significantly greater in women from ethnic minorities.For decades, a lot of energy has been spent convincing women that they can. And perhaps this is not enough. Because, according to the study, when a woman knows that she is constrained by a social expectation, she may feel the impulse to prove it wrong. And then she acts. This mechanism of activating when differences due to gender stereotypes are shown is called reactance. It is not new (social psychology has been talking about it since the seventies), but until now no one had systematically applied it to the gender gap in leadership. Statistical analysis confirmed that reactanceto gender stereotypes explained the effect on the decision to submit more job applications.Let's think about academic leadership. In Europe, women represent only 30% of the highest academic positions and are only 18% of rectors. It is often argued that they do not apply for everything that would allow them to climb positions. Calls for competitive funding, award nominations, main keynote proposals, or scientific director competitions do not have enough female candidates, and this is not explained by a lack of merit, no. Rather, it is due to internalized expectations about what is expected of them and not about their actual capabilities.What makes this research valuable is not the finding itself, meaning that women can be motivated by indignation as much as by inspiration, but its immediate translation into concrete, low-cost policies. Probably, large, expensive communication campaigns are not needed. It is enough to add a sentence to the calls for applications: "Women are underrepresented in these candidacies. Feel encouraged to apply." Information, not exhortation. Data, not slogans. Naturally, a message does not deactivate years of socialization nor does it change the structures that penalize women who do apply. But it is a good starting point.So now you know.