Social Representation Theory (Moscovici, 1961/2008) was especially developed to investigate hot social topics. Social representations (SRs) are common-sense knowledge about socially significant phenomenon shared by collectives. Social groups form SRs in relation to their anticipated “future for us”. SR Theory is ideal to study socio-political change and related resistance.
Statutory women quotas (WQs) are a highly controversial gender equality policy in academics. Studying WQs within Social Representation Theory contributes to better understand resistance against this policy. To distinguish between gender and beneficiary-status as source of resistance, WQs were juxtaposed with men quotas (MQs), whose introduction in German academics was recently discussed.
Within Social Representation Theory the use of mixed-methods designs is embraced. In this study, the associative-network-technique was applied. Participants freely associated to WQs or MQs. For each association, participants indicated its value (positive, neutral, negative) and its emotional content. Indices of polarity, neutrality, and emotionality were calculated. Analyses of variance and t-tests were conducted to pin down effects of stimulus (WQs vs. MQs), gender and beneficiary-status. The word associations were investigated with a nucleus-analysis to outline central ideas.
340 undergraduate medicine students participated. 194 associated with WQs and 146 with MQs. Gender-distributions were balanced. Overall, associations of WQs and MQs were negative. Women perceived WQs significantly more negative than MQs. Men perceived WQs significantly less neutral and more emotional than MQs. The content of the associations was polarized. Contradictory associations (fair vs. unfair, discrimination vs. equality, necessary vs. unnecessary) were central to WQs and MQs. Words related to beneficiary-stigmatization were solely associated with WQs.
In sum, women dislike quotas they benefit from; men dislike quotas they don’t benefit from. Resistance against WQs might stem from a gender-specific anticipation of a “future for us” that will be discussed in this contribution.
