ABSTRACT
The idea of female subordination can be found in various Thai social contexts, and it has a detrimental effect on the ways of life and individuals’ attitudes, especially among women in male-dominated fields. There is a Thai idiom, “Husband is elephant’s front legs, wife is elephant’s hind legs”, implying males always lead, and females always follow. Another Thai proverb, “Sa-ne plai chawak, phua rak chon tai”, literally means that the charm at the tip of the ladle (symbolising the charm of the cooking) can make a husband love his wife forever. These two proverbs reflect the mainstream perception that women are expected to behave in stereotypically feminine ways and have an inferior role. Despite much of the empirical work on sexism indicating that experiencing sexist behaviours can elicit feelings of stereotype threat, disengagement in threatened domains, and performance decrement, little research has been conducted in Eastern cultures. This chapter provides a review of factors that might alter the degree of perceived sexism’s influence on feelings of stereotype threat and misidentification with negatively stereotyped domains and performance deficits, and it discusses some buffering techniques against the detrimental effects among Thai female employees.
