Conclusion
This paper examines one possible reason that women are underrepresented in advertising creative departments, where they are outnumbered by males by a ration of 2.3 to 1. The present theory builds on research by Norton, Vandello and Darley (2004), which found that individuals are often biased against females when they are selecting a candidate to fill a position that is typically male. Participants often cloak their decision to choose a male candidate over a female candidate by stressing the importance of the male's qualifications.
We propose that individuals are influenced by the current gender norms associated with advertising creative departments. Because the creative department is a typically male domain, we propose that individuals are likely to use gender information when making a decision about candidate qualifications. Because people are not willing to choose a male candidate based on gender information alone (Yzerbyt, Schadron, Leyens and Rocher 1994), yet they are biased by their pre-existing expectations (Kunda 1990; Schaller 1992; Klaczinski, Gordon and Fauth 1997), participants may be motivated to reason based on expectations of gender norms. Research by Norton, Vandello & Darley (2004) would suggest that participants will choose the male candidate more often, yet they will cloak this decision in terms of the male candidate's superior qualifications. People will be motivated to enhance the importance of the male's qualifications in order to justify their preference for the male candidate. Like Dunning and Sherman (1997), we propose that the male preference may occur on a subconscious level, as people may not realize they are impacted by gender norms. Further, the role congruity theory (Eagley and Karau 2002) suggests that as positions become defined in more masculine terms, females are less likely to be hired. Because becoming a leader in a male-dominated domain is more incongruent with typically female norms than simply obtaining a position in a male domain, we expect that females will be chosen less frequently in the position of creative director than in the position of junior creative.
Taken together, the body of research on motivated reasoning suggests that people are motivated to maintain existing, self-enhancing information. People are willing to exert extra cognitive effort in order to maintain existing beliefs, and they are also willing to accept flawed information and small sample sizes if it supports their beliefs. One of the ways that individuals can come to be biased by expectations is through the use of social norms and stereotypes as cues. Social norms tell us how a particular person should act in a given situation.
Further, research on social category bias has shown that stereotypes about a social group can influence the techniques we use when processing, recalling and gathering information. The desire to favor the in-group or to see one's self in a favorable light can bias our information processing. The proportion of males in the creative department could have an impact on the group norms within the department. With a greater percentage of males, there is an increased likelihood that this will be seen as a norm within the department. The ambiguity associated with team work could lead to the attribution of female's successful joint outcomes to their male counterparts. Further, social norms brought on by the overrepresentation of males may impact the overall atmosphere of the creative department, causing a motivated bias in favor of males' work.
This paper proposes that preexisting views about the type of person that typically holds a position as an advertising creative can have an impact on many processes downstream. If there are preexisting views about who holds this position, this could affect advertising students' choices about an area of study, recruiters' choices when hiring creatives, and creatives' views of their colleagues in the field.