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Chapter 4

Confronting Gender Bias

We’ve all heard the studies finding that assertive men are rewarded, while assertive women are viewed as “bossy,” “bitchy,” or “too aggressive.” We all know that women are expected to be emotional, while men who display emotion are viewed as “weak.” But those basic gender biases are just the tip of the iceberg.

Whether we’re aware of it or not, gender stereotypes affect our thoughts and decisions, and they contribute significantly to women’s workplace inequality. There’s an entire array of leadership skills, competence, and expertise that we unconsciously associate with men. These biases often lead us to automatically devalue women’s achievements and qualifications. In one revealing study, evaluators were given identical resumes, yet they were sixty percent more likely to say they’d hire the applicant when the resume had a man’s name on top, rather than a woman’s.

Even after women get hired and perform well, gender bias creates constant headwinds for advancement. Men receive the benefit of presumed competence, while women have to prove their ability again and again. Women are judged on their performance, while men are often judged merely on their potential. This is doubly unfair for women, whose actual performance tends to be underestimated, while evaluators overestimate the performance of men. Objective requirements are also applied rigorously to women but leniently to men. This means that women’s mistakes get noticed more and remembered longer than men’s. On the flip side, women’s successes are often attributed to luck, while men’s are attributed to skill. Women get less credit for accomplishments than men, and men tend to take credit for women’s ideas far more than the reverse. Men also interrupt women more than they interrupt other men (and they interrupt far more than they get interrupted by women).

When women speak up and assert themselves, however, people like them less. In one study of actual performance reviews, sixty-six percent of women received negative feedback about their personalities—for example, “You can sometimes be abrasive”—while only one percent of men received similar comments. But it’s a no-win situation. When women are nice and agreeable, they also get penalized—people still like them, but they’re viewed as less competent. Agreeable women also don’t get credit for the extra work they agree to do, while men get rewarded for doing the same things. One study of workplace evaluations discovered that men who stayed late to help prepare for a meeting got a fourteen percent increase in their performance reviews, while women who also stayed late got no increase at all. So if women agree to extra office tasks, they aren’t rewarded, but if they refuse, they’re penalized.

As harmful as gender stereotypes are for women in general, they’re even harsher for women with children. When women become moms, their bosses and co-workers tend to view them as less competent, less intelligent, and less committed to their jobs. In one survey, forty-one percent of workers said they perceived working moms as less devoted to their careers than other workers, and more than a third judged mothers negatively for needing a flexible work schedule. It’s no wonder that the percentage of women who report being worried to tell their bosses when they’re pregnant has doubled in the last five years.

As a result of these gender stereotypes, employers set higher expectations on working mothers. That means that when moms perform just as well as other workers, they receive lower evaluations. When moms are late to work, for example, they’re punished more severely than other employees who are also late. These harsher performance standards contribute to lower salaries and fewer promotions. While the gender pay gap for women overall is about eighty cents on the dollar, mothers get paid an average of only seventy-one cents for every dollar paid to men.

Gender biases also make it harder for moms to get hired in the first place. Stanford Sociology Professor Shelley Correll documented this bias by sending fake resumes to hundreds of employers. The resumes all had identical content, except that some mentioned the applicant’s membership in a parent-teacher association. That tiny trigger indicating the applicant was a parent had dramatic effects on how employers responded. For women, the applicants whose resumes indicated they were moms were half as likely to be offered an interview.

The results were opposite for men. Men whose resumes indicated they were dads were slightly more likely to be offered an interview than other men. Other research has found a similar positive bias for fathers. When men have kids, they aren’t viewed as less competent or less committed to their jobs. Instead, men tend to get more raises and promotions after becoming dads.

The differences in evaluations, pay, and promotions aren’t because women actually become less productive and men actually work harder when they become parents. The disparity is because that’s what employers believe they will do. That’s the power of gender stereotypes. In implicit association tests, a large majority of both men and women more readily associate the word “career” with men and the word “family” with women, which spills into the workplace. Employers are acting on deeply ingrained biases that dads are breadwinners and moms are caregivers, and the effects are undermining women’s equality. When asked to rate their most desirable employees, employers rank fathers at the top, followed by childless women and childless men, followed by mothers at the bottom.

Gender biases are particularly pernicious in male-dominated arenas. A survey of over 200 experienced women in the tech industry found extensive gender bias in everyday interactions. Many of these biases reflect a lack of respect for women’s status and skills. For example, eighty-eight percent of the women said they’d watched a client or a co-worker ask a male colleague a question that should have been addressed to them. Forty-seven percent said they’d been asked to do “office housework” that male colleagues weren’t asked to do, like taking notes in meetings or ordering food.

Women in tech also walk a tightrope navigating gender stereotypes about work and family. On one hand, women feel compelled to hide their status as mothers because of the career stigma that attaches to motherhood. Seventy-five percent of women reported being asked about their marital status and children during interviews, and forty percent felt the need to speak less about their family to be taken more seriously at work. On the other hand, being too explicit about career goals also had negative effects. Eighty-four percent of the women had been told they were “too ambitious”—a trait that’s generally viewed positively for men.

Acting on gender bias often happens unintentionally by individuals who genuinely believe they’re being fair and objective. So taking aim at gender stereotypes isn’t cause for shaming or accusing men of wrongdoing—in fact, women hold implicit gender biases as well. But the unintentional and sometimes unconscious nature of gender bias doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have real consequences. It also doesn’t mean that there’s nothing we can do about it. Social scientists are discovering many ways that we can start disrupting gender biases and reducing their negative effects.

Dads of daughters are well-positioned to be leaders in this challenge, in part because daughters help dads question gender expectations. Dads of daughters are less likely than other men to believe that men should be breadwinners and women should be homemakers, for example. One study found that men’s support for traditional gender norms decreased by eight to eleven percent while parenting school-aged girls. That’s a great foundation for dads of daughters to start exploring unconscious bias and learning how to reduce its effects at work and at home.

Testing Your Bias

Clarissa Farr grew up in a family of teachers. After falling in love with Henry James’s novels, she decided to become a teacher too. For fifteen years, she taught English and drama until setting her sights on running her own school. With a one-year-old baby in tow, she headed to Hertfordshire, England to become the Principal of a boarding school, where she served for ten years. Her dedication was rewarded in 2006 when she was named the High Mistress of St. Paul’s Girls’ School in London.

St. Paul’s is one of England’s most prestigious schools for academically gifted girls. Clarissa adored spending time with so many engaged and hardworking young women. “It’s so energizing. It’s so rejuvenating. They make me laugh. They challenge me. I learn something from my pupils every single day,” she says. But most of all, Clarissa loved giving young women an extraordinary platform for success.

St. Paul’s alumnae—known as “Paulinas”—include leaders in politics, science, law, education, and the arts. Parliamentarian Harriet Harman, politician Shirley Williams, author Petronella Wyatt, economist Joan Robinson, and scientist Rosalind Franklin all spent their childhood at St. Paul’s. Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher chose St. Paul’s for her daughter, Carol, who became a journalist and author.