3 - Maintaining but also changing hierarchies

Summary

Sands (2009) reports some interesting observations about gender bias in theater. If you went to see a Broadway play recently, the odds are about seven to one that the play you saw was written by a man. These odds are roughly consistent with real differences in submission rates for these scripts, organized by gender. In a subsequent study, however, Sands reported that female evaluators in the theatrical industry rated identical plays by pseudonymous female playwrights more stringently than male raters did, who did not discriminate along gender lines (Cohen, 2009).

As a manifestation of systemic discrimination, the overall picture here is not surprising. It is well known that in the theater and movie industry a gender hierarchy exists that favors not only male writers, but also male actors, producers, and directors. But why do female raters act so harshly with respect to female playwrights and thereby contribute to inequality at the expense of their gender? Social Dominance Theory (SDT) (see, e.g., Sidanius and Pratto, 1999), which is a theory of group-based social hierarchies, contends that “group oppression is very much a cooperative game” (p. 43). Low-status groups are enmeshed in the very system that produces negative outcomes for them, and they paradoxically and often inadvertently support their own oppression. This example indicates how SDT explains, at least partially, the maintenance of social hierarchies.