Let’s talk about what #KamalaHarris means for the future of women leaders. A celebratory GIF-filled thread./1
Leaders of all genders are bound by norms of “appropriate” expressions in the workplace. But the margins of appropriate and acceptable are significantly narrower for women vs. men./2
Women are socially and economically penalized for expressing masculine-typed emotions like anger and pride. Why? Because dominance is proscribed, or forbidden, for women. On the whole, we believe they shouldn't display it and we sanction them when they do./3
At the same time, women are judged as irrational and lacking control when they express "too much" of most emotions, especially feminine-typed ones like sadness./4
In turn, their competence and legitimacy are undermined. This is how gender stereotypes constrain women leaders into an impossibly narrow range and degree of emotions they're "allowed" to express without negative consequence./5
BUT Not. 👏🏾 All. 👏🏾 Women. 👏🏾

You see: until shamefully recently, most basic gender stereotype research has examined "women" as a monolith, thus overlooking the rich and nuanced diversity of prescriptions, proscriptions and experiences among women./6
Over the past decade or so, several lines of research have converged to show that Black women experience a greater degree of emotional latitude compared to other women. In turn, Black women incur fewer & weaker penalties than their counterparts for expressing dominant emotions./7
This happens both because Black women are perceived as more congruent with professional (aka masculine) prototypes AND because feminine stereotypes are more weakly applied to them./8
This latitude of course has its boundaries. For example, Black women are evaluated more negatively than both White women and Black men after making a professional mistake./9

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2012-14809-001
This latitude also says nothing about Black women’s likelihood of attaining high-status positions in the first place. Case in point: To this day, only ONE Black woman has served as (non-interim...) CEO of a Fortune 500 company‼️/10
This is why yesterday is such a huge f-ing deal for women in leadership. The most viable way to disrupt gender bias is to change stereotypes themselves and the only way to do that is by "letting" women lead./11
When that woman is Black, she has far greater potential to help dismantle the patriarchy compared to a White woman, the very persona around whom the patriarchy was tailored./12
Black women have relative latitude but lack opportunity. We bend stereotypes but need prototypes. Kamala's example will elevate the possibilities for the entire gender, which is very on brand for Black woman./13
To be clear, @KamalaHarris is not our savior. (As @AyannaPressley said recently, elected officials are partners, not saviors, and doors, not destinations.) But the future feels boundless to me today!/end
You can follow @ErinLThomasPhD.
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