Just don't call me a feminist: senior and junior women managers' perceptions of communication dilemmas at work

Barrett (2004) found senior women managers evaluated workplace communication strategiesdifferently according to whether they thought a man or a woman was using the strategy. Butorganisationally junior younger women often reject overt feminist standpoints and might evaluatethese strategies differently. To test this, 255 junior women managers evaluated strategies for the samedilemmas older women had. When evaluating strategies for short and medium term dilemmas (egbeing interrupted, getting credit for an idea), junior women managers evaluate less than older womenmanagers on the basis of the communicator's gender. However with longer term dilemmas (eg gettingachievements noticed for promotion), junior women managers avoid some strategies they believe areeffective, and which they think men would use. Implications and limitations of these findings andfurther research possibilities are discussed.