Gender(ed) performances: Women’s impression management in stand-up comedy
研究女性在男性主导和性别多元两种单口喜剧场景中如何调整性别化表演，发现女性在男性主导场景中表现更少性别化，在多元场景中表现更多性别化，并提炼出第五种社会身份印象管理策略。
How do women navigate and make space for themselves in workspaces where they are not perceived to fit? Women in male-dominated careers often face perceptions of role misfit, leading them to engage in impression management. Using a mixed-methods design, we investigate if women stand-up comedians present as female gendered at work in two settings – one dominated by male performers ( N = 257) and one featuring more gender diverse performers ( N = 843). Women, as compared with men, presented more gendered in the more gender diverse performer setting and less gendered in the male-performer dominated setting. Using Lorber’s taxonomy of feminisms as a lens, assessment of how women presented their gender further implied greater constraint on women in the male-dominated, compared with the diverse, setting. Our findings support Roberts’ theory of social identity-based impression management (SIM) in the novel context of stand-up comedy, refine the theory by presenting a fifth SIM strategy, and demonstrate how women are able to adapt their feminism to the characteristics of the situation, thus helping secure their position in settings where they may be unwelcomed. These findings have theoretical implications for impression management and feminism, and practical implications for workplace equality initiatives.