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8 Powerful Ways Managers Can Support Equality, from leanin.org

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8 Powerful Ways Managers Can Support Equality, from leanin.org

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Closing the gender leadership gap is an imperative for organizations that want to perform at the highest levels. Leveraging the full talents of the population provides a competitive advantage; companies with more women in leadership roles perform better, and employees on diverse and inclusive teams put in more effort, stay longer, and demonstrate more commitment. To change the numbers, gender bias and stereotypes have to be understood and counteracted.

1. Challenge the "Likeability Penalty"

Success and likeability are positively correlated for men and negatively correlated for women.

When a man is successful, his peers often like him more; when a woman is successful, both men and women often like her less. This trade-off between success and likeability creates a double-bind for women. If a woman is competent she does not seem nice enough, but if a woman seems really nice, she is considered less competent. This can have a big impact on a woman's career. Ask yourself: Who are you more likely to support and promote, the man with high marks across the board or the woman who has equally high marks but is just not as well liked?

This bias often surfaces in the way women are described, both in passing and in performance reviews. When a woman asserts herself-for example, by speaking in a direct style or promoting her ideas-she is often called "aggressive," "ambitious," or "out for herself." When a man does the same, he is seen as "confident" and "strong."

Listen for the language of the likeability penalty, particularly when making hiring decisions and evaluating performance.

When you hear biased language-such as "bossy," "pushy," and "shrill"-request a specific example of what the woman did and then ask, "Would you have the same reaction if a man did the same thing?" In many cases, the answer will be no. Remember that you can fall into the same bias traps, so think carefully about your own response to female coworkers.

2. Evaluate Performance Fairly

Male performance is often overestimated compared to female performance, starting with mothers overestimating boys' crawling ability and underestimating girls'.

This bias is even more pronounced when review criteria are unclear, making individuals more likely to rely on gut feelings and personal inferences. Over time, even small deviations in performance evaluation have a significant impact on women's careers. This difference in the perceived performance of men and women also helps explain why women are hired and promoted based on what they have already accomplished, while men are hired and promoted based on their potential.

Look for opportunities for gender-blind evaluations in hiring.

When evaluating performance, make sure managers are aware of gender bias. Be specific about what constitutes excellent performance, and make sure goals are set in advance, understood, and measurable. Ask managers to explain the reasons for their evaluations-and do the same yourself. When people are accountable for their decisions, they are more motivated to think through them carefully.

3. Give Women Credit

Women and men ascribe their success to different things.

Men typically attribute success to innate qualities and skills, while women often attribute success to external factors such as "working hard," "getting lucky," or "help from others." Women and men also differ when it comes to explaining their failures. When a man fails, he attributes it to situational factors like "didn't practice enough" or "not interested in the subject." When a woman fails, she is more likely to attribute it to lack of ability.

Moreover, women are often undervalued by others. When women and men work together on tasks, women are given less credit for successful outcomes and blamed more for failure.

Because women receive less credit-and give themselves less credit-their confidence often erodes. As a result, they are less likely to put themselves forward for promotions and stretch assignments.

Make sure women get the credit they deserve and look for opportunities to publicly acknowledge their accomplishments.

Push back when women say that they're "not ready" or "not qualified" for an opportunity-or when others say that about a woman-and encourage women to take stretch assignments. Make sure success and blame are attributed fairly.

4. Get the Most Out of Meetings

Compared to women, men tend to talk more and make more suggestions in meetings, while women are interrupted more, given less credit for their ideas, and have less overall influence.

This starts in school, where girls get less airtime and are interrupted more, even by the most well-intentioned teachers. If you watch men and women at the same level, you will notice that more of the men sit in the front and center seats, while women tend to gravitate toward the end of the table and edge of the room-away from positions that convey status.

Without full participation in meetings, you cannot tap everyone's skills and expertise, and this undermines team outcomes.

Encourage women to sit front and center at meetings.

If a female colleague is interrupted, interject and say you'd like to hear her finish. Openly ask women to contribute to the conversation. Be aware of "stolen ideas" and look for opportunities to acknowledge the women who first proposed them.

5. Share Office Housework

Women take on more "office housework"-service and support work such as taking notes, organizing events, and training new hires.

These tasks steal valuable time away from core responsibilities and can keep a team member from participating fully; the person taking diligent notes in the meeting almost never makes the killer point. In keeping with deeply held gender stereotypes, people expect help from women but not from men, so when women do favors at work, they earn no points for doing so-but when they say no, they are penalized. Men, on the other hand, gain points for saying yes and face minimal consequences for saying no.

Moreover, many women-including two-thirds of executive women in Fortune 200 companies-are in support roles, but line roles with profit-and-loss responsibility more often lead to senior leadership positions. Together, these dynamics can have a serious impact on women's career trajectories.

Audit who's doing service work and make sure it's distributed evenly between women and men-and that women are not doing additional work without additional reward.

Encourage rising stars to pursue line roles and celebrate the women who do to set an example for more junior women.

6. Make Work Work for Parents

Motherhood triggers assumptions that a woman is less competent and less committed to her career.

Many studies show that the pushback-or "maternal wall"-women experience when they have kids is the strongest gender bias. As a result, she is held to higher standards and presented with fewer opportunities.

This also impacts women who aren't mothers-and men, too. Women often face pushback as soon as they're engaged to be married, and fathers who leave work early or take time off for family pay a higher price than mothers. Studies show that fathers receive lower performance ratings and experience steeper reductions in future earnings after taking time away from work for family reasons.

Women also often "leave before they leave," compromising their careers in anticipation of family responsibilities they do not yet have. They turn down projects, don't apply for promotions, or choose more flexible paths to accommodate families they plan to have someday, closing doors to opportunities and limiting their options even before they become parents.

Don't make assumptions about mothers' willingness to take on challenging assignments or travel.

Avoid messages like "I don't know how you do it," which signal that good mothers should be at home. Let the women-and men-in your organization know you support their decisions to start families and take maternal or paternal leave. Establish an open-door policy for discussing pregnancy and adopt family-friendly policies, which increase productivity and employee retention. If you're a parent, be vocal about the time you spend away from work with your children; this gives other parents in your organization permission to do the same.

7. Make Negotiating a Norm

Women negotiate as often as men - but they face pushback when they do.

We expect men to be assertive and advocate on their own behalf, so there's little downside when they negotiate. In contrast, we expect women to be communal and collaborative, so when they negotiate or advocate for themselves, we often react unfavorably.

Make sure the women in your organization are encouraged to negotiate and applauded, not penalized, when they do.

Review compensation regularly to ensure that you are paying women and men fairly.

8. Support Mentorship & Sponsorship

Mentorship and sponsorship are key drivers of success, yet women can have a harder time finding mentors and sponsors, especially ones with influence.

Mentoring relationships often form between individuals with common interests, and junior women and senior men often avoid mentoring relationships out of concern that time spent together will look inappropriate. In fact, according to a recent report, almost two-thirds of male senior leaders are hesitant to have one-on-one meetings with a more junior woman. As a result, men end up mentoring other men, and women miss out.

We need more male managers to mentor and sponsor women, and we should reward them when they do.

Establish formal mentorship and sponsorship programs and encourage informal interactions between the women and men in your organization-it's these personal connections that lead to relationships that can propel careers. Start Lean In Circles at work to tap into the power of peer mentorship. LeanIn.Org provides the materials and technology to run a successful Circles program, and 75 percent of Circle members attribute a positive change in their life to their Circle.

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8 Powerful Ways Managers Can Support Equality - Lean In

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Closing the gender leadership gap is an imperative for organizations that want to perform at the highest levels. Leveraging the full talents of the population provides a competitive advantage; companies with more women in leadership roles perform better, and employees on diverse and inclusive teams put in more effort, stay longer, and demonstrate more commitment.

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"50 Ways to Fight Bias" from  internationalwomensday.com

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"50 Ways to Fight Bias" from  internationalwomensday.com

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Points from "How the Best Bosses Interrupt Bias on Their Teams," from The Harvard Business Review

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Points from "How the Best Bosses Interrupt Bias on Their Teams," from The Harvard Business Review

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Watch for who interrupts whom in meetings

Set up a rotation for “office housework” or less popular tasks, and don’t ask for volunteers

Mindfully design and assign people to high-value projects

Make sure women get credit for their ideas

Invite people to weigh in at meetings so all voices are heard

(and more)

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Executive Summary

Companies spend millions on antibias training each year in hopes of creating more-inclusive-and thereby innovative and effective-workforces. Studies show that well-managed diverse groups perform better and are more committed, have higher collective intelligence, and excel at making decisions and solving problems. But research also shows that bias-prevention programs rarely deliver. So what can you, as an individual leader, do to ensure that your team is including and making the most of diverse voices? How can one person fix what an entire organization can't?

Although bias itself is devilishly hard to change, it is not as difficult to interrupt. The authors have identified several practices that managers can use to counter bias (and avoid its negative effects) without spending a lot of time or political capital. In hiring, leaders should insist on a diverse pool, precommit to objective criteria, limit referral hiring, and structure interviews around skills-based questions. Day to day, they should ensure that high- and low-value work is assigned evenly and run meetings in a way that guarantees all voices are heard. In evaluating and developing people, they should clarify criteria for positive reviews and promotions, stick to those rules, and separate potential from performance and personality from skill sets.

Lars Leetaru

Companies spend millions on antibias training each year. The goal is to create workforces that are more inclusive, and thereby more innovative and more effective. Studies show that well-managed diverse groups outperform homogeneous ones and are more committed, have higher collective intelligence, and are better at making decisions and solving problems. But research also shows that bias prevention programs rarely deliver. And some companies don't invest in them at all. So how can you, as an individual leader, make sure your team is including and making the most of diverse voices? Can one person fix what an entire organization can't?

Although bias itself is devilishly hard to eliminate, it is not as difficult to interrupt. In the decades we've spent researching and advising people on how to build and manage diverse work groups, we've identified ways that managers can counter bias without spending a lot of time-or political capital.

The first step is to understand the four distinct ways bias plays out in everyday work interactions: (1) Prove it again: Some groups have to prove themselves more than others do. (2) Tightrope: A narrower range of behaviors is accepted from some groups than from others. (3) Maternal wall: Women with children see their commitment and competence questioned or face disapproval for being too career focused. (4) Tug-of-war: Disadvantaged groups find themselves pitted against one another because of differing strategies for assimilating-or refusing to do so.

The second step is to recognize when and where these forms of bias arise day-to-day. In the absence of an organizational directive, it's easy to let them go unaddressed. That's a mistake. You can't be a great manager without becoming a bias interrupter. Here's how to do it.

Picking Your People

Bias in hiring has been extensively documented. In one study, "Jamal" needed eight more years of experience than "Greg" to be seen as equally qualified. Another found that men from elite backgrounds were called back for interviews more than 12 times as often as identical candidates from non-elite backgrounds. Other studies have found that women, LGBT+ candidates, people with disabilities, women in headscarves, and older people are less likely to be hired than their peers.

Fairness in hiring is only the first step toward achieving diversity, but it's an important one. Here are four simple actions that will yield the best candidates by eliminating artificial advantages:

1. Insist on a diverse pool.

Whether you're working with recruiters or doing the hiring yourself, make it clear from the outset that you want true diversity, not just one female or minority candidate. Research shows that the odds of hiring a woman are 79 times as great if at least two women are in the finalist pool, while the odds of hiring a nonwhite candidate are 194 times as great with at least two finalist minority applicants. For example, when Kori Carew launched the Shook Scholars Institute at Shook, Hardy & Bacon, she designed it to bring a diverse mix of students into the law firm and offered career development and mentoring that prompted many of them to apply for summer associate positions.

2. Establish objective criteria, define "culture fit," and demand accountability.

Implicit biases around culture fit often lead to homogeneity. Too often it comes down to shared backgrounds and interests that out-groups, especially first-generation professionals, won't have. That's why it's important to clarify objective criteria for any open role and to rate all applicants using the same rubric. When one insurance company began hiring in this way, it ended up offering jobs to 46% more minority candidates than before. Even if your organization doesn't mandate this approach, ensure that everyone on your team takes it. Write down the specific qualifications required for a particular position so that everyone can focus on them when reviewing résumés and conducting interviews. For example, when Alicia Powell was managing chief counsel at PNC Bank, she made a point of listing the qualities that would make new team members successful in their roles: proactive in managing risk, self-disciplined, patient, customer focused, and independent. Powell shared this information with the rest of her team and candidates, ensuring that everyone was on the same page. You should hold people accountable in the same way. Waive criteria rarely, and require an explanation for those exceptions; then keep track of long-term waiving trends. Research shows that objective rules tend to be applied rigorously to out-groups but leniently to in-groups.

3. Limit referral hiring.

If your organization is homogeneous, hiring from within or from employees' social networks will only perpetuate that. So reach out to women and minority groups. Google partners with historically black colleges such as Spelman and Florida A&M University and with Hispanic-serving institutions such as New Mexico State and the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez. As an individual leader, you can work with the same organizations or recruit from similar ones in your industry or local community.

4. Structure interviews with skills-based questions.

Ask every person interviewed the same questions and make sure that each question directly relates to the desired knowledge and skills you've outlined. Rate the answers immediately-that will allow you to compare candidates fairly on a preestablished rubric and prevent favoritism. You should also use skills assessments: Rather than ask "How comfortable are you with Excel?" say "Here's a data set. How would you find out X?" For more-complex skills, such as project management, pose a problem or a task that candidates are likely to encounter on the job and ask them to describe in detail how they would handle it.

Managing Day-to-Day

Even good leaders sometimes fall into bad habits when it comes to the daily management of their teams. Women report doing about 20% more "office housework." on average, than their white male counterparts, whether it's literal housework (arranging for lunch or cleaning up after a meeting), administrative tasks (finding a place to meet or prepping a PowerPoint), emotional labor ("He's upset-can you fix it?"), or undervalued work (mentoring summer interns). This is especially true in high-status, high-stakes workplaces. Women engineers report a "worker bee" expectation at higher rates than white men do, and women of color report it at higher rates than white women do. Meanwhile, glamour work that leads to networking and promotion opportunities, such as project leadership and presentations, goes disproportionately to white men. When the consultancy GapJumpers analyzed the performance reviews of a tech company client, it found that women employees were 42% more likely than their male colleagues to be limited to lower-impact projects; as a result, far fewer of them rose to more-senior roles.

Meetings are another problem area. Research shows that men are more likely than women to dominate the conversation, and that whereas men with expertise tend to be more influential, women with expertise tend to be less so. Our study of lawyers found that half of women report being interrupted in meetings at a higher rate than their male peers are. Another study found that in meetings that included more men than women (a common scenario), women typically participated about 25% less often than their male coworkers did. Double standards and stereotypes play out whenever diverse identities come together. Is a woman "emotional," or a black man "angry," while a white male is "passionate"? We once heard from a woman scientist that she was sharply criticized as "aggressive" when she brought up a flaw in a male colleague's analysis; after that she felt she needed to just "bring in baked goods and be agreeable." A black tech company executive we know told us about a meeting during which she said little while the only other woman, an Asian-American, said a lot. But she later heard that people thought she had "dominated" the conversation while her Asian-American peer had been "very quiet."

Unsure whether this sort of thing is happening on your team? Start tracking assignments and airtime in meetings. Use our free online tools to find out which work done by your group is higher- or lower-profile and who's doing what. For meetings, pay attention: Who's at the table? Who's doing the talking? Is someone taking notes when he or she could be leading the conversation? If you find a problematic dynamic, here are some ways to change it:

1. Set up a rotation for office housework, and don't ask for volunteers.

"I always give these tasks to women because they do them well/volunteer" is a common refrain. This dynamic reflects an environment in which men suffer few consequences for bypassing or doing a poor job on low-value work, while women who do the same are seen as "prima donnas" or incompetent. Particularly when administrative staff is limited, a rotation helps level the playing field and makes it clear that everyone is expected to contribute to office housework. If you ask for volunteers, women and people of color will feel powerful pressure to prove they are "team players" by raising their hands.

2. Mindfully design and assign people to high-value projects.

Sometimes we hear "It's true, I keep giving the plum assignments to a small group-but they're the only ones with the skills to do them!" According to Joyce Norcini, formerly general counsel for Nokia Siemens Networks, if you have only a tight circle of people you trust to handle meaningful work, you're in trouble. Her advice: Reconsider who is capable of doing what these important jobs require; chances are someone not on your usual list is. You may need to move outside your comfort zone and be more involved in the beginning, but having a broader range of trained people will serve you well in the end.

3. Acknowledge the importance of lower-profile contributions.

"Diversity" hires may lag behind their majority-member peers because they're doing extra stuff that doesn't get them extra credit. If your organization truly prioritizes inclusion, then walk your talk. Many bosses who say they value diversity programming and mentorship don't actually take it into account when promotion or comp time becomes available. Integrating these contributions into individual goal setting and evaluating them during performance reviews is a simple start. And don't be afraid to think big: A law partner we know did such a great job running the woman's initiative that the firm begged her to stay on for another year. She said she would if the firm's bosses made her an equity partner. They did.

4. Respond to double standards, stereotyping, "manterruption," "bropriating," and "whipeating."

Pay close attention to the way people on your team talk about their peers and how they behave in group settings. For example, men tend to interrupt women far more often than the other way around; displays of confidence and directness decrease women's influence but increase men's. If a few people are dominating the conversation in a meeting, address it directly. Create and enforce a policy for interruptions. Keep track of those who drown others out and talk with them privately about it, explaining that you think it's important to hear everyone's contributions. Similarly, when you see instances of "bropriating" or "whipeating"-that is, majority-group members taking or being given credit for ideas that women and people of color originally offered-call it out. We know two women on the board of directors of a public company who made a pact: When a man tried to claim one of their ideas, the other would say something like "Yes, I liked Sandra's point, and I'm glad you did too." Once they did this consistently, bropriating stopped.

5. Ask people to weigh in.

Women, people of Asian descent, and first-generation professionals report being brought up with a "modesty mandate" that can lead them to hold back their thoughts or speak in a tentative, deferential way. Counter this by extending an invitation: "Camilla, you have experience with this-what are we missing? Is this the best course of action?"

6. Schedule meetings inclusively.

Business meetings should take place in the office, not at a golf course, a university club, or your favorite concert venue. Otherwise you're giving an artificial advantage to people who feel more comfortable in those settings or whose personal interests overlap with yours. Whenever possible, stick to working hours, or you risk putting caregivers and others with a demanding personal life at a disadvantage. Joan once noticed that no mothers were participating in a faculty appointment process because all the meetings were held at 5:30 PM. When she pointed this out to the person leading them, the problem was fixed immediately. This colleague had a stay-at-home wife and simply hadn't thought about the issue before.

7. Equalize access proactively.

Bosses may meet with some employees more regularly than others, but it's important to make sure this is driven by business demands and team needs rather than by what individuals want or expect. White men may feel more comfortable walking into your office or asking for time. The same may be true of people whose interests you share. When Emily Gould Sullivan, who has led the employment law functions for two Fortune 500 retail companies, realized that she was routinely accepting "walking meeting" invitations from a team member who was, like her, interested in fitness, she made a point of reaching out to others to equalize access.

Developing Your Team

Your job as a manager is not only to get the best performance out of your team but also to encourage the development of each member. That means giving fair performance reviews, equal access to high-potential assignments, and promotions and pay increases to those who have earned them. Unfortunately, as we've noted, some groups need to prove themselves more than others, and a broader range of behaviors is often accepted from white men. For example, our research shows that assertiveness and anger are less likely to be accepted from people of color, and expectations that women will be modest, self-effacing, and nice often affect performance assessments. One study found that 66% of women's reviews contained comments about their personalities, but only 1% of men's reviews did. These double standards can have a real impact on equity outcomes. PayScale found that men of color were 25% less likely than their white peers to get a raise when they asked for one. And gender norms stunt careers for women. PayScale found that when women and men start their careers on the same rung of the professional ladder, by the time they are halfway (aged 30-44), 47% of men are managers or higher, but only 40% of women are. These numbers just worsen over time: Only 3% of the women make it to the C-suite, compared with 8% of the men.

Take these steps to avoid common pitfalls in evaluations and promotions:

1. Clarify evaluation criteria and focus on performance, not potential.

Don't arrive at a rating without thinking about what predetermined benchmarks you've used to get there. Any evaluation should include enough data for a third party to understand the justification for the rating. Be specific. Instead of "She writes well," say "She can write an effective summary judgment motion under a tight deadline."

2. Separate performance from potential and personality from skill sets.

In-groups tend to be judged on their potential and given the benefit of the doubt, whereas out-groups have to show they've nailed it. If your company values potential, it should be assessed separately, with factors clearly outlined for evaluators and employees. Then track whether there's a pattern as to who has "potential." If so, try relying on performance alone for everyone or get even more concrete with what you're measuring. Personality comments are no different; be wary of double standards that affect women and people of color when it comes to showing emotion or being congenial. Policing women into femininity doesn't help anyone, and-as courts have pointed out-it's direct evidence of sex discrimination. If that's not motivation enough, evaluators can miss critical skills by focusing on personality. It's more valuable, and accurate, to say someone is a strong collaborator who can manage projects across multiple departments than to say "She's friendly and gets along with everyone."

3. Level the playing field with respect to self-promotion.

The modesty mandate mentioned above prevents many people in out-groups from writing effective self-evaluations or defending themselves at review time. Counter that by giving everyone you manage the tools to evaluate their own performance. Be clear that it's acceptable, and even expected, to advocate for oneself. A simple two-pager can help overcome the modesty mandate and cue majority men (who tend toward overconfidence) to provide concrete evidence for their claims.

4. Explain how training, promotion, and pay decisions will be made, and follow those rules.

As the chair of her firm's women's initiative, one lawyer we know developed a strategy to ensure that all candidates for promotion were considered fairly. She started with a clear outline of what was needed to advance and then assigned every eligible employee (already anonymized) to one of three groups: green (meets the objective metrics), yellow (is close), and red (doesn't). Then she presented the color-coded list to the rest of the evaluation team. By anonymizing the data and pregrouping the candidates by competencies, she ensured that no one was forgotten or recommended owing to in-group favoritism.

All the evaluators were forced to stick to the predetermined benchmarks, and as a result, they tapped the best candidates. (Those in the yellow category were given advice about how to move up to green.) When it comes to promotions, there may be limits to what you can do as an individual manager, but you should push for transparency on the criteria used. When they are explicit, it's harder to bend the rules for in-group members.

CONCLUSION

Organizational change is crucial, but it doesn't happen overnight. Fortunately, you can begin with all these recommendations today.

A version of this article appeared in the November-December 2019 issue of Harvard Business Review.

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How the Best Bosses Interrupt Bias on Their Teams

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Executive Summary Companies spend millions on antibias training each year in hopes of creating more-inclusive-and thereby innovative and effective-workforces. Studies show that well-managed diverse groups perform better and are more committed, have higher collective intelligence, and excel at making decisions and solving problems. But research also shows that bias-prevention programs rarely deliver.

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Shadowing opportunities

Mock interviews / situations

Pitching ideas and carrying them out

Mentoring and coaching arrangements

Invitations to network

Celebrating successes publicly

Presenting and writing

Connect with WomenEd!

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Champion representation and diversity

Offer suggestions for improved recruitment and hiring

Weigh in on how evaluation is done

Promote flexible working practices

Refuse the gender pay gap

Serve as mentors

Challenge the “likeability penalty”

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"To Land Top Jobs, Women Need Different Types of Networks Than Men," from The Kellogg School of Management

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"To Land Top Jobs, Women Need Different Types of Networks Than Men," from The Kellogg School of Management

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Skip to content

Simply being well-connected is not enough.

Yevgenia Nayberg

Among other things, that may mean establishing relationships with male colleagues. For instance, one business journal urges women to "get in the game" by golfing with male coworkers, while a careers website proclaims that "beer is for bonding," advising women to socialize with male peers over drinks. Engaging in the same networking activities as men, the logic seems to go, will increase women's exposure to work opportunities.

But a new study suggests this advice isn't quite right. While it's true that highly connected women tend to land better jobs, the most successful women also have something they cannot get through "beers with the boys": close ties with female peers.

The researchers came to this conclusion by analyzing social-network and job-placement data for graduates of an MBA program. They found an important gender difference: for men, the most significant factor affecting job status after graduation was how "central" they were in their networks-that is, how many highly connected people they have relationships with.

Successful women also tended to be more central, but that alone was not enough to land them a top job. The most successful women often had a tight-knit circle of female colleagues as well.

The reason for this difference may come down to the types of information that men versus women need to succeed. Presumably, having numerous connections provides ready access to what the researchers call "public information," such as which companies are hiring and which types of candidates they're seeking. For men, that alone may be enough to land a good job. "Men really need a network that's going to maximize their access and exposure to market information," says study coauthor Brian Uzzi, a professor of management and organizations at Kellogg.

Women, however, "need the same thing men need and one thing more," Uzzi says. Specifically, women need "private information," which may include insider tips about a company's leadership culture and politics, or hints about how to make an impression in a male-dominated industry, for example.

However, women are only likely to put faith in such private information when it comes from trusted contacts with whom they have established relationships. Furthermore, only fellow women can provide the sensitive, gender-specific information that will be useful in a career context-hence the benefit of having connections who are both close and are women.

But there is a caveat, the researchers warn: if the contacts in a woman's network do not have sufficiently diverse networks of their own, she may find herself in an echo chamber, hurting her chances of success.

Identical Resumes, But Very Different Networks

Uzzi and his coauthors, Kellogg research assistant professor Yang Yang and Nitesh Chawla of the University of Notre Dame, wanted to know how, exactly, social networks influence career trajectories, especially for individuals pursuing leadership roles.

After all, most graduates of MBA programs are highly qualified, with similar test scores, GPAs, and work experience, Uzzi says. "The men and women should look fairly indistinguishable on paper."

But the researchers suspected that the connections students form in school would not be so identical.

They knew that many connections between students were weak, "arm's-length" links: these students wouldn't exchange deeply personal information, but they might chat about job opportunities and typical salaries.

Other connections, however, were stronger, "embedded" relationships. These exist between close friends who share sensitive, subjective information, such as details about what it's like to work at a particular firm, or (for women) tips for getting ahead in a male-dominated industry.

Uzzi and colleagues wanted to know how different kinds of relationships influenced career success, and whether the answer varied for men and women.

To investigate, the team obtained anonymized data on alumni who graduated from a top MBA program in 2006 and 2007. The data included the students' entrance test scores, undergraduate major, GPA, work experience, nationality, and gender, as well as each person's starting salary upon graduation.

The researchers normalized salaries by region and industry, then used the salaries to assign each job a ranking.

Uzzi's team also obtained anonymized information on more than 4.5 million emails sent between the students during their time in the program. The researchers could not read the messages, but they could see which students were communicating with one another and when.

The researchers used an algorithm to determine who was in a student's social network based on their emails. They then classified each student-to-student relationship as strong or weak based on a number of characteristics gleaned from the emails. For instance, if two people communicated more than would be expected by chance, regularly exchanged emails on weekends, and replied to each other quickly, they probably had a strong tie. Meanwhile, a pair that emailed less frequently likely had a weak connection.

The team also measured how central each person was in their network. Uzzi notes that in this study, centrality does not mean the number of contacts a person has, but rather the number of highly connected individuals they communicate with. The distinction is important, he says, because a person with relatively few contacts can still be highly central if their contacts have lots of connections. "Even a small network can provide a wide reach," he says.

Finally, the researchers counted how many strong and weak bonds each graduate had, and the gender breakdown of their network. Using statistical techniques, the researchers then analyzed which factors most affected the graduates' job rankings.

Business Networking for Women Versus Men

The students' on-paper qualifications, such as test scores and work experience, did not seem to influence job placement, probably because the candidates were already very close on these measures. "It's like if you had a basketball team where everybody was 6'5" or 6'7" or 6'6"," Uzzi explains. "Height is probably not going to be the thing that determines which one of them is the best player."

But sizeable differences emerged when the researchers examined social networks.

Among men, the most successful graduates were more central: men in the top quartile of centrality achieved a job rank 1.5 times higher than men in the bottom quartile.

That is significant, Uzzi says, especially considering that the pay level for someone's first job after graduation will likely carry forward to future positions. Throughout their career, the higher salary "just compounds over and over and over again," he says.

Notably, the men's connections did not have to be strong to be effective. If they had many weak ties to people with many weak connections, they still performed well. Furthermore, the gender composition of men's networks did not affect their placement levels. "What men need to do well in job placement is just get 'public' information," which anyone can provide, Uzzi says.

How Women Can Network Successfully

Centrality also mattered for women. Yet having a robust network still wasn't enough to bring women's job rankings up to the level of men. "Women who have networks that resemble those of high-placing men are low-placing," even when their qualifications are stellar, the authors write.

However, a different social characteristic did go hand in hand with success.

About three-quarters of the highest-ranking women emailed constantly with a few other women. And, when combined with a well-developed network, these close friends offered a large career boost: women with both high centrality and close ties with female peers had an average job ranking 2.5 times higher than women whose networks lacked those two features.

Uzzi speculates that a male-heavy network may not be especially helpful because only women are likely to share the kinds of private information that female candidates need. For instance, since recruiters sometimes assume women aren't as committed as men, a female friend might suggest questions to ask during an interview to demonstrate serious interest in a position. A male friend-even a well-connected one-may not think to offer that kind of advice, since he has never faced that obstacle.

"You need that private information to understand how to negotiate within a world where you're being held to different standards," Uzzi says.

The Value of a Diverse Network for Women

Uzzi was a bit surprised by the results. After all, having a close circle of friends could have meant that women were living in an echo chamber, cut off from important insights. Closer analysis revealed why that was not the case.

The most successful women had close friends who tended to be connected to many different groups of people, and who could therefore provide new information. If a woman's inner circle had mainly redundant connections, she did not perform as well-perhaps because she was more likely to get the same perspective repeatedly, "which could create a lot of blind spots," Uzzi says.

The researchers point out several caveats to their findings. Since they did not read actual emails for privacy reasons, they had to make assumptions about the types of information peers provided. Thus, they can't say for sure that strong and weak connections provided private and public information, respectively. And more research is needed to see if the results hold true in a range of other contexts.

Still, the results are more than correlations, which strongly suggest that "social networks matter in job placement," he says. "And they matter differently for men and women."

Understanding the effects of social networks is particularly important in the age of LinkedIn and Facebook, when people are paying more attention than ever to their connections. "You may find that more and more women are trying to emulate men's networks, which, according to our findings, doesn't really help women," Uzzi says.

Previously a Research Assistant Professor at Kellogg

Richard L. Thomas Professor of Leadership and Organizational Change; Co-Director, Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO); Professor of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences, McCormick School (Courtesy); Professor of Sociology, Weinberg College (Courtesy)

Roberta Kwok is a freelance science writer based near Seattle.

Yang, Yang, Nitesh V. Chawla, and Brian Uzzi. "A network's gender composition and communication pattern predict women's leadership success." Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1721438116. https://www.pnas.org/content/116/6/2033

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To Land Top Jobs, Women Need Different Types of Networks than Men

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Simply being well-connected is not enough.

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"Tips for Reducing Bias in Performance Evaluation," by ncwit.org

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"Tips for Reducing Bias in Performance Evaluation," by ncwit.org

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Education yourself and others about unconscious bias

Use an "evidence-based" approach to evaluations and promotion

Evaluate performance review instruments for bias

(and more)

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National Center for Women & Information Technology

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Educate yourself and others about unconscious biases.

Raising awareness about the types and prevalence of unconscious bias is an important first step. Use the Performance Evaluation and Promotion Fact Sheet to help raise this awareness. Regular and ongoing learning conversations about bias are an improvement over one-off trainings, as the impact of any one training can wear off over time. Education equips employees with a framework for recognizing bias and a language for discussing it.

Use an "evidence-based" approach to evaluations and promotion.

Bias is more prevalent when performance criteria are ambiguous and when evaluations are based on general impressions. Establish clear performance criteria, refer to these criteria when writing evaluations, and use concrete, specific evidence to back your judgments and evaluations. Use formal practices to reduce ambiguity, check for consistency, and take pressure off individual decision makers. Examples include manager-peer review of name-redacted evaluations and the Structured Free Recall Intervention (page 11).

Evaluate performance review instruments for bias.

Bias is often written into formal criteria and procedures. When this happens, biased outcomes are bolstered by a pretense of objectivity. Interrogate "common sense" assumptions about work and merit expectations. Ask yourself who has defined the expectations, who do the expectations benefit, and whether there is another way to conceptualize or evaluate performance. For example, are employees who consistently work late in the office rewarded more than employees who work different hours, but are still highly productive? Also, examine whether definitions of success are broad enough to allow for a diverse range of effective styles.

When writing evaluations:

Focus on comparing the employee's performance with the requirements of the job.

Avoid overuse of gendered adjectives or descriptions. When describing things that women are "stereotypically" supposed to do well, ask yourself whether these characteristics are relevant to the job.

Avoid grindstone adjectives (e.g., "hardworking") and/or make sure these are balanced with adjectives that reflect an employee's ability or talent.

Be consistent in your use of last names and titles (e.g., "Dr.") for both men and women. Avoid using first names inconsistently (more or less often) for one gender.

While it is usually important to talk about the interpersonal skills of the employee, avoid unnecessary emphasis on personality and needless repetition regarding these attributes.

Avoid "risk management" bias. Sometimes, concern about protected groups prevents accurate or helpful reviews that further marginalizes these employees. When women and other members of underrepresented groups receive blasé́ performance reviews with no instructive comments, they face difficulty advancing and may not see the same gains as employees who receive constructive feedback and the opportunity to improve their performance. Most employees want clear and specific feedback supported by evidence. This type of feedback is far less likely to be perceived as biased or unfair, as is vague feedback based on overall impressions.

Be open to adjustments and seek input from others. If an employee presents significant new information, consider adjusting your rating. Perhaps you overlooked an accomplishment that merits evaluation. Gather information from other team members (e.g., 360 evaluations), and consider having employees complete self-evaluations, if your company does not already do so. Compare and contrast this information to your own evaluation of the employee.

Examine completed evaluations for the above biases.

Also, compare your evaluations of different candidates to check for other instances of unintentional bias, such as length or evidence of hasty writing.

Remember that equity in performance review goes beyond the formal performance evaluation.

Even when bias at the performance review stage is reduced, employees with similar performance reviews receive dissimilar promotions and/or compensation. To avoid this, examine all stages of the talent management system for bias. For more on this, see Supervising-in-a-Box Series: Performance Review/Talent Management.

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Tips for Reducing Bias in Performance Evaluation

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Educate yourself and others about unconscious biases. Raising awareness about the types and prevalence of unconscious bias is an important first step. Use the Performance Evaluation and Promotion Fact Sheet to help raise this awareness. Regular and ongoing learning conversations about bias are an improvement over one-off trainings, as the impact of any one training can wear off over time.

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Points from "Why Most Performance Evaluations Are Biased, and How to Fix Them" from The Harvard Business Review

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Points from "Why Most Performance Evaluations Are Biased, and How to Fix Them" from The Harvard Business Review

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Create a rubric for evaluations

Create better prompts

Run a consistency check

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Daniel Grill/Getty Images

For many companies, performance review season is kicking off with the new year. Although every organization relies on a different evaluation process, most follow a predictable pattern: First, they invite employees to write about their accomplishments and what they need to improve. Then managers write assessments of their work, offer feedback, and rate their performance on a scale of how well they met expectations.

Underlying this process is the belief that by reflecting on people's performance and codifying it in an evaluation form, we will be able to assess their merits objectively, give out rewards fairly, and offer useful feedback to help them develop in the next year. But while we may strive to be as meritocratic as possible, our assessments are imperfect and all too often biased.

As innocuous as the typical form may seem, our research has found that it often allows for our implicit biases to creep in. The problem is the "open box." Most forms ask managers broad questions about their employees-e.g., "Describe the ways the employee's performance met your expectations" or "What are their significant accomplishments?"-and offer a blank space or open box that managers can fill with assessments, advice, and criticisms as they see fit.

The ambiguity of these questions is by design: They are general and open-ended precisely because they must apply to everyone in the organization, regardless of level or function. So when the form states "Describe the ways the employee's performance met your expectations," managers are expected to remember or figure out on their own what the specific expectations were for that particular employee.

The trouble is, when the context and criteria for making evaluations are ambiguous, bias is more prevalent. As many studies have shown, without structure, people are more likely to rely on gender, race, and other stereotypes when making decisions - instead of thoughtfully constructing assessments using agreed-upon processes and criteria that are consistently applied across all employees.

And while ambiguity opens the door to bias, our research shows that individuals can take actions to reduce that ambiguity and be more objective when filling in the open box.

Open box = open to bias

Our research team at the Stanford VMware Women's Leadership Lab conducted in-depth studies of evaluation processes at three companies based in the U.S. We uncovered patterns of ambiguity in how performance reviews are written that can lead to a disadvantage for women.

In analyzing men's and women's written performance reviews, we discovered that women were more likely to receive vague feedback that did not offer specific details of what they had done well and what they could do to advance. Women were more likely to be told, for example, to "do more work in person" with no explanation about the issue to overcome or the goal of the change. Men were more likely to receive longer reviews that focused on their technical skills, compared to shorter reviews for women that were more concerned with their communication skills.

Next we observed some performance discussions at two companies in what are known as "calibration" or "talent review" meetings. At these sessions, leaders have a fixed period of time-for example, three minutes-to provide rationale for an employee's rating, and then they discuss and align their ratings. As with written reviews, these oral presentations had a wide degree of variation in what was covered.

In some, the conversation focused on the employee's accomplishments and strengths. In others, a balanced view was given including opportunities to improve. People varied in what criteria was important or valued, and these patterns of variance often followed gendered expectations. The majority of criticisms of women's personalities were about being too aggressive, where the majority for men's were about being too soft.

The informal format allowed leaders to override one another's presentations with simple phrases like, "The style stuff doesn't matter. He is great, and it is irrelevant." And lack of structure led to very different reviews that tended to advantage men-describing them in ways that align with leadership and providing them the coaching they need to advance, while offering women less praise and less actionable guidance to work with.

This kind of variance in evaluations did not surprise many managers. In one project, only 15% of women and 24% of men managers had confidence in the performance evaluation process, while most viewed it as subjective and highly ambiguous.

"Constrain" the Open Box

At one site, we explored how the team could fix the ambiguity in their performance management. We agreed that an overhaul of their performance review system was not the answer. A new system would not necessarily change how managers wrote evaluations differently for men than for women. Instead, we identified a set of discrete actions that managers could take to make their evaluations fairer and more effective.

Since open boxes in performance review documents were inviting bias, we looked for ways to require specificity in managers' assessments. With the input of the managers, we created a checklist to help them consistently reference specific and predetermined data when filling the open boxes. First, it asked "Did you collect the following evidence/data for this employee over the past 6 months" to ensure that comparable data was collected for all employees. Then the checklist asked managers to use the same criteria for all employees by prompting, "While writing your evaluations did you consider the following (previously agreed criteria)?"

Guided by these questions, managers were able to offer more specific and evidence-based feedback to their employees. At the end of our engagement, 90% of the managers told us that they felt the process helped them be more consistent and fairer. They also felt more confident; one told us, "Before I was lost, I admit. Now I had clear criteria and I was judging everyone the same."

In another site, when managers consistently applied their criteria to employees, there was a reduction in the gender gaps in ratings, eliminating the overrepresentation of men in the top performance category and women in the middle.

You can make your performance reviews fairer and more consistent too, even if your organization does not change the review form. Here are three small, simple, yet impactful, things you can do to "constrain" the open box:

Create a rubric for evaluations. Managers often report that they start writing their evaluations without first reviewing their employees' original goals or establishing a methodology to ensure the assessments are fair. An effective rubric first defines the criteria against which the employee's performance will be assessed. Then, it requires taking evidence from the employee's outcomes to assess whether they did or did not meet expectations.

By first creating a rubric, then filling in the open box with your assessment and feedback, you will be less prone to be influenced by your gut reactions. Research shows that when you first agree to the criteria used in the assessment and then you make the evaluation, you are less likely to rely on stereotypes and your assessments are less biased.

Create better prompts. When writing reviews, managers often vary in what they cover, how much they write, and even how specific or vague the comments are. It might be tempting to think this variation reflects the employee's actual performance ("He's great! Of course I have a lot to say about him."), when in fact it might be implicit bias in action. Better prompts can help you approach each review in a similar manner, ensuring everyone is evaluated and considered in a consistent and equal way. Take the query: "Describe the ways the employee's performance met your expectations." To be fairer and more consistent, you might prompt yourself to identify three specific, measurable outcomes for each of your employees.

Run a consistency check. Get in the habit of re-reading all reviews for consistency. Even if you have clarified the criteria and created checklists to guide your assessments, you may still fall into patterns that are more favorable to some employees. By looking for uniformity-or patterns of variation-you may find additional ways to remove bias.

Boosting everyday performance

Constraining the open box can be a tool for formal performance evaluations, but also during everyday interactions. At one mid-sized tech company, we shared this approach for blocking bias with a group of managers. One Dev manager instantly saw how this applied to his weekly one-on-one meetings with his team. He often asked open-ended questions about what support each person needed. Upon reflection, the manager realized that the men tended to ask for his support on technical issues, while the women often asked for guidance on effectively engaging with their teams.

This variance in feedback could lead to different expertise being developed by the men and women on his team, but also to different career trajectories. What he needed was for each employee to be both a technical expert and competent team leader. As a result, he said he would no longer use broad, open questions, but specifically prompt his employees about both technical and management issues.

What the Dev manager-and the many people we have engaged-learned is that ambiguity in assessments can lead to bias. They take this insight and find ways to use rubrics and prompts to be consistent and fair. It might be tempting to think we can just trust our instincts. But the challenge is that implicit bias creep in, and it's really difficult to see and therefore stop it in its tracks. These three seemingly simple strategies are powerful precisely because they help us bypass our imperfect and often compromised impressions-and to deliver on our intention to be fair to everyone.

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Why Most Performance Evaluations Are Biased, and How to Fix Them

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For many companies, performance review season is kicking off with the new year. Although every organization relies on a different evaluation process, most follow a predictable pattern: First, they invite employees to write about their accomplishments and what they need to improve.

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"For Women Job Seekers, Networking Like a Man Isn't Enough," from Wired

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"For Women Job Seekers, Networking Like a Man Isn't Enough," from Wired

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Women need access to key kinds of information that men don’t. And how can they get it? From other women.

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Casey Fiesler, professor of social computing at the University of Colorado Boulder, says the conclusions about women relying on advice from other women jibes with her personal experience. "But we don't know why some women have these networks and some don't," she notes. "Is there something about the women who sought out other women that's just something different about them? It could mean that they are more outgoing."

The researchers did attempt to account for sociability in their control variables, though they ranked it based on how interested students reported being in team sports. As Fiesler noted, she's a very outgoing person but would have scored low on that question.

But overall, she and other scientists WIRED spoke to about this study called it impressive. "It's cool, I liked it. I thought it was a very interesting piece of work, kind of a really nice combination of Big Data and randomization to get a causal inference," says network scientist Christopher Riedl of Northeastern University, who wasn't involved in the study.

The study's conclusions, according to Riedl, are surprising, given that normally network scientists have found that any sort of "cliquish networks" have negative impacts on people. "They are able to quite convincingly show that these cliquish networks [for women job seekers] do add a surprisingly high amount of contacts, one degree removed, like friends of friends. I have not seen this anywhere else before," he says.

The findings have interesting implications for how women can best approach building a supportive network for career advancement. First of all, it reinforces the idea that for women, women-only networking opportunities are important. Increasingly, there's a trend toward affinity-group networking events and and spaces, and one takeaway from this study is that such groups are useful for women. However, Uzzi cautions that these groups also risk becoming insular, where everyone within the group only has connections to each other. That won't help people get ahead.

This study suggests women need a women-only inner circle and a larger, well-connected network. Men don't seem to benefit from having a same-sex inner circle at all. So, as much as the all-male bowling team might be a fun way to make friends, it likely won't have the same impact on a man's job search as, say, an all-women bowling league might.

Additionally, Uzzi stresses that the inner circle that so helps women has a few unique characteristics. First, the relationships are fairly intense, with lots of communication and time spent investing in each other. Second, the women in each other's inner circles offer each other access to their broader networks, which do not overlap. "Women have to work smarter. Women have to pay more attention [than men do] to connecting to people whose third-party contacts are otherwise not connected to them already," Uzzi adds.

So if you're a woman reading this, you might wonder: How can I foster that kind of diverse, well-connected inner circle of supportive women? Uzzi says what led to the most successful female networks in the study was a certain amount of randomness. Women met many of the women who formed their inner circle through classes they were semi-randomly assigned to, which put them in contact with people they might otherwise not have met. The takeaway here is don't rely only on your immediate network, like your colleagues or college friends. They're likely to know all the same people as you. Put yourself in situations where you are more likely to meet women from other backgrounds who will give you access to networks you would never otherwise encounter. Organizations, such as the women-focused workspace the Wing, have sprung up to provide exactly this.

"You need to do the standard type of networking that everyone says you need to do, but then there is something else you need to be doing," says Riedl.

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For Women Job Seekers, Networking Like a Man Isn't Enough

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Casey Fiesler, professor of social computing at the University of Colorado Boulder, says the conclusions about women relying on advice from other women jibes with her personal experience. "But we don't know why some women have these networks and some don't," she notes.

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Flexible Working case studies, from The Chartered College of Teaching

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Flexible Working case studies, from The Chartered College of Teaching

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Many examples of successful flexible working schemes

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A collection of case studies that demonstrate how schools have used a range of flexible working practices to the benefit of individual employees, organisations and pupils. You can get in touch with any of these schools as they are happy to have a conversation about their practice.

One of the DfE's Recruitment and Retention Strategy priorities is to 'build a career offer that remains attractive to teachers as their careers and lives develop', which includes support for headteachers to transform approaches to flexible working in schools. Teachers and leaders want help in adopting flexible working practices or in requesting flexible working.

Get in touch with schools that use a wide range of flexible working practices that have benefitted individuals, organisations and pupils and start a conversation to see which practices may support you or your organisation.

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A collection of case studies that demonstrate how schools have used a range of flexible working practices to the benefit of individual employees, organisations and pupils. You can get in touch with any of these schools as they are happy to have a conversation about their practice.

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"Language in school job ads puts women off headteacher roles," from The Guardian

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"Language in school job ads puts women off headteacher roles," from The Guardian

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t the Harrold primary academy in Bedford, governors are looking to recruit a "driven, ambitious and self-motivated natural leader" as executive principal. Ormiston Endeavour academy in Ipswich says that educational leadership is "not for the faint of heart" and is advertising for a head of school who will embrace its "no excuses" culture. At All Saints academy, Dunstable, they are after a head of school with "relentless drive, energy and ambition". Salaries range from £70,000 to £103,000. These are the top jobs in education, and they want the best.

But who are they imagining will respond to such thrusting language? Vivienne Porritt, a former headteacher, has been analysing the wording used in advertisements for headships and school leaders. She believes much of the recruitment material for these jobs demonstrates evidence of "gendered" language - the types of words and phrases that lead to inequality.

"It's the combination and frequency of these types of words, rather than the fact that they are being used at all," says Porritt, a founder member of WomenEd, an organisation of female school leaders that campaigns to increase the proportion of women in senior positions. She believes words such as "driven" and "ambitious" - especially when repeated within a three or four-paragraph job advert - are a turn-off for women seeking to apply for senior roles. "It's just not how they see themselves or how they want to do leadership when they get there," says Porritt.

Philippa Latham, a secondary school headteacher, agrees. "You often see words [on job adverts] like 'authoritative', 'dynamic', 'strong on behaviour' and 'challenging'," she says. And the language is not the only problem. "I saw a man's photo in the advert for a CEO role last year."

Language is not the only problem. I saw a man's photo in the advert for a CEO role last year

Macho phrases such as "is not afraid to stand up to people" are also common - something Jennifer Morton, a senior teacher, started to notice when she came back to work after having a baby. "Adverts suggested a commitment level that I didn't feel I could offer. They wanted pretty much 24/7."

She has left teaching and moved into higher education, where she feels her family commitments are not viewed as a drawback.

Unconscious gender bias in job adverts is not just a problem in education. Research by the recruitment website TotalJobs last year analysed more than 75,000 job adverts over a six-week period and found an average of six stereotypically "male" and "female" words in each advert. A recent analysis of thousands of job ads in the US has found that marketing for jobs that are typically associated with women - nurse practitioner and healthcare assistant, for example - typically use more feminine language than those commonly associated with men, such as cartographer or wind-turbine technician.

Porritt believes unconscious gender bias in job adverts and inequality in education leadership may well be linked. Women are both under-represented in senior roles in education - and are paid less than their male counterparts. And while female teachers make up 64% of the secondary teaching workforce, they represent just 38% of secondary heads. The recent publication of the gender pay gap in education shows there are far more men in higher paying senior positions in schools than there are women.

But language used in job adverts may only be part of the problem. Two years ago, when Maria Fanning went for a deputy head role, she found herself in a room with seven male candidates. "The icebreaker question was 'pick your favourite rugby or cricket team,'" she recalls.

Rachel Holmes also found herself on an otherwise all-male shortlist for a headship role. She did not make it past the first day of interviews - the only candidate not to go through to the second stage of selection - with the school citing a "lack of authority and gravitas as the reason".

Anna Leigh recently had an almost identical experience. "I went for a [headteacher] job. I was already a head, and it was down to two people. The feedback from the CEO of the trust was that the other male [candidate] had more 'gravitas'."

Leigh asked what exactly they meant by "gravitas" to which, she recalls, there was no reply. "So I asked 'how does one gain gravitas?' and they were completely lost."

In spite of the appointment of headteachers being a key part of their role, there is no legal requirement for governors to undertake any kind of training in recruitment best practice, equality and discrimination law. Emma Knights, chief executive of the National Governance Association, says that while training is offered to governors, "courses on recruitment don't get much take up".

TotalJobs has created an online gender-bias decoder to help employers write adverts. So how should schools be targeting their recruitment efforts so as not to fall foul of gender stereotypes?

"The best adverts emphasise a need for inspirational leadership, which allows for people to bring their own individual style and approach," says Holmes.

"You want proven and effective practitioners, people who've done innovative curriculum design and can show they've been able to build strong communities within and outside school. Of course, leaders need to be authoritative, but they also need to be caring, with the ability to move between the two.

"And overall, a focus by the governors on children's welfare and ability to progress, rather than simply the school's results, always feels like an encouraging place from which to start," she says.

Porritt says: "It's important to highlight your commitment to diversity, inclusion and flexible working practices in your advert as this will encourage more women to apply."

The Harrold job got a balanced pool of applicants, and a woman was appointed as executive principal. Ormiston academy has not yet appointed a head of school and says it would be inappropriate to comment on the application process. The trust said it was committed to promoting equality, diversity and inclusion, and that more than half of its senior leaders are women.

At All Saints in Dunstable, though nobody was appointed, there were equal responses to the advert from both genders. Liz Furber, the academy principal, says she "used words I use to describe myself and can't see why words like ambitious, driven and unrelenting would be seen as gendered language."

The problem, suggests Furber, may lie not in the words but in the way they are interpreted. "Is it ambitious for self or for students? To me it [means] ambitious for your students. And these are qualities needed to turn schools around, regardless of who is doing it."
Some names and details have been changed

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Job ads can give men a head start in school leadership selection

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t the Harrold primary academy in Bedford, governors are looking to recruit a "driven, ambitious and self-motivated natural leader" as executive principal. Ormiston Endeavour academy in Ipswich says that educational leadership is "not for the faint of heart" and is advertising for a head of school who will embrace its "no excuses" culture.

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Suggestions based on "Gender-equitable recruitment and promotion," from Gov.au

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Suggestions based on "Gender-equitable recruitment and promotion," from Gov.au

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Avoid gendered wording in job adverts

Do a blind review of candidates for interview invitations

Do not penalise women for entering into salary negotiation (likeability penalty)

(and more)

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Gender bias is pervasive at work and in organisations, creating inequalities at every stage of the employment cycle. Gender-based stereotypes affect which candidates get recruited for certain roles and which do not, which candidates get selected for those roles and why, how salaries are negotiated, how managers provide feedback to their employees, and which employees receive career development opportunities and career encouragement and which do not. Each of these factors compounds across women's careers, producing and sustaining gender inequality from recruitment to selection to promotion.

Decades of research has made one thing clear: gender biases are nearly always present in employment decisions, subtly influencing our assessments about who is the 'right' or 'best' person for the job. This insight paper highlights some of the research examining how gender bias operates at work and provides evidence-based suggestions for creating more equitable recruitment and promotion systems.

Gender bias in recruitment and selection

Gendered wording in job advertisements. It has long been unlawful to advertise positions specifically for women or men or to discriminate on the basis of sex*. However, research has shown that the language used in job advertisements can subtly filter men and women into separate occupations and industries.

Advertisements in male-dominated occupations and industries are more likely to contain masculine-stereotyped words like 'competitive' and 'dominant' than advertisements for jobs in female-dominated occupations and industries (Gaucher et al., 2011). When presented with such advertisements, women are more likely than men to rate these jobs as unappealing; they also tend to believe that women are not well represented in these roles. Use of such language is unlikely a deliberate attempt to exclude. However, gender-coded language in job advertisements may not only deter individual women from applying for certain jobs, it can also reinforce wider social beliefs about who 'belongs' in those jobs and who does not (Gaucher et al., 2011).

Gender bias in interview invitations. Multiple studies have demonstrated that when women apply for jobs, they receive fewer interview invitations than equally qualified men - an effect that is compounded for older women, women with children and women from certain ethnic or racial groups (Abrams et al., 2016; Bertrand and Mullainathan, 2004; Correll et al., 2007; Moss-Racusin et al., 2012; Neumark, 2010; Riach and Rich, 2006; Weichselbaumer, 2016). Research from Australia and the United Kingdom has shown that men are similarly disadvantaged when applying for entry-level roles (Riach and Rich, 2006) or jobs in heavily female-dominated occupations (Booth and Leigh, 2010).

In each of these studies, researchers sent out matched pairs of applications, which differed only in candidates' identifying information, to thousands of actual job advertisements and monitored interview invitation rates. Because this approach effectively controls for other factors, such as work history or education, it is widely seen to be the most reliable indicator of gender-based employment discrimination in the initial recruitment stage (Neumark, 2010). If all else is equal, and men receive more interview invitations than identically-qualified women, logic dictates that managers must be using gender to assess candidates' employability (Foley and Williamson, 2018).

* Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth

Gender bias in evaluation of credentials. Research has shown how women face tougher evaluation of their credentials during the initial recruitment stage. A Yale University study asked 127 science faculty at research-intensive universities to rate the job application materials of a prospective laboratory manager who was randomly assigned either a female or male name (Moss-Racusin et al., 2012). Both male and female evaluators rated the male candidate as more competent and 'hireable' than the female candidate, even though both applications were otherwise identical. Evaluators also recommended higher starting salaries for the male applicant and offered more mentoring opportunities.

In another study, 238 academic psychologists in the United States were randomly assigned to evaluate one of two identical resumes (either 'Karen Miller' or 'Brian Miller') for a candidate applying for an academic role (Steinpreis et al., 1999). Although participants said they liked the female candidate better than the male candidate, they were more likely to recommend the male candidate for the job. Interestingly, participants were four times more likely to write cautionary remarks in the margins of the female candidate's application, questioning the independence and legitimacy of her accomplishments, such as: 'I would need to see evidence that she had gotten these grants and publications on her own'.

These findings suggest that women face more rigorous scrutiny and are held to higher standards than equally qualified men and that, consciously or unconsciously, managers associate candidates' genders with their likelihood of job-related success (for a comprehensive and accessible account of gender differences in job evaluations, see Bohnet, 2016; Fine, 2011).

The 'likeability' penalty in job interviews and salary negotiation. Women are sometimes encouraged to 'lean in' (Sandberg, 2013) by displaying confidence and assertiveness in their careers. However, studies have repeatedly demonstrated that women who appear to be overly confident or assertive are frequently judged to be less 'likeable' than women who conform to a more traditional feminine stereotype (Eagly and Karau, 2002; Heilman, 2001; Rudman and Glick, 2001).

Job interviews. Researchers at Rutgers University videotaped male and female actors interviewing for a role as a computer lab manager (Phelan et al., 2008). In one experimental condition, the actor-candidates presented as self-confident, ambitious and competitive; in the other condition, the actor-candidates presented as competent, but modest and cooperative.

A sample of 428 participants, who believed they were evaluating real job candidates, were then asked to rate the candidates by competence, social skills and employability. When assessing employability, the participants rated competence above social skills for all candidates except for the female candidates who presented as self-confident, ambitious and competitive. For these 'agentic' women, social skills were deemed to be the most important employability factor. Thus, relative to other applicants, confident women were penalised for violating traditional feminine stereotypes (Phelan et al., 2008).

Men also pay a penalty when acting against stereotypes. A subsequent study found that men applying for a managerial role that required both technical and social skills were penalised relative to women if evaluators perceived the men to be overly modest (Moss-Racusin et al., 2010).

Salary negotiations. Women also face a 'likeability' penalty if they attempt to negotiate for higher pay. In a series of controlled experiments, researchers at the universities of Harvard and Carnegie Mellon found that female candidates who advocated on their own behalf for better salaries were judged less favourably than men who did the same, particularly if the evaluator was male (Bowles et al., 2007). When researchers examined candidate behaviour, they found that women were significantly less likely than men to consider asking a male manager for a better salary package, suggesting that women are well attuned to the social risk of attempting to negotiate for a better deal.

Given that men hold most senior management positions in Australia and therefore control the allocation of financial rewards in many organisations, these findings are problematic for women seeking to address the gender pay gap on their own. If 'women are justifiably less inclined than men to initiate negotiations with men, then they may have fewer opportunities to increase their compensation and promotion potential' (Bowles et al., 2007, p. 99).

Gender bias in the application of selection criteria. Evaluators frequently use selection criteria to determine which candidate to hire or promote. However, research has shown that when selection criteria are not given preassigned weightings, evaluators may subtly shift the importance of certain criteria to favour candidates who fit a gender stereotypical profile.

In one U.S.-based experiment, researchers asked 93 participants to consider both male and female applicants for a construction manager position (Norton et al., 2004). When the applicants' genders were concealed, participants rated education as a more important criterion for success on the job than prior work experience and were more likely to prefer the more educated candidate. However, when the applicants' genders were revealed, and the highly educated applicant with low work experience was a woman, participants rated prior work experience as more important than education, to the advantage of the male applicant (Norton et al., 2004).

A similar experiment by Yale University researchers asked participants to evaluate one of two hypothetical candidates for the role of police chief (Uhlmann and Cohen, 2005). One of the candidates was a streetwise but well-liked police officer with little formal education, while the other candidate was a highly educated, media savvy official who lacked street-based experience. Participants were asked to rate the candidates by the various education or street experience criteria. Next, participants were asked to rate the importance of each criterion to the role of police chief. Participants who evaluated the male candidate ('Michael') amplified the importance of formal education or street-experience when he possessed these attributes and downplayed their importance when he lacked these attributes. The female candidate ('Michelle') received no such accommodation, regardless of her qualifications or experience.

The participants did not overtly downgrade Michelle because of her gender. Instead, evaluators simply reframed 'merit' - the skills, experience and attributes deemed essential to the job - to fit Michael's credentials. The evaluators may have 'felt that they had chosen the right man for the job, when in fact they had chosen the right job criteria for the man' (Uhlmann and Cohen, 2005, p. 479). In a subsequent study, the researchers found that evaluators shifted selection criteria to favour female applicants over male applicants when the job in question was stereotypically feminine - i.e. a professorship in Women's Studies - regardless of the male applicant's skills or experience (Uhlmann and Cohen, 2007).

Evaluators in all three studies justified their prejudicial decisions by emphasising different selection criteria depending on the gender of the candidate. Interestingly, evaluators who engaged in the process of shifting criteria were more likely to rate their decisions as more 'objective' than evaluators who did not shift criteria to fit the gender-typical candidate (Uhlmann and Cohen, 2007). These findings suggest that selection processes grounded in flexible criteria may consciously or unconsciously enable evaluators to justify or conceal prejudicial decisions under the guise of objectivity.

Should organisations anonymise job applications?

Many organisations have turned to anonymous recruitment procedures, removing names and other identifiers from job applications and resumes, in order to minimise the effect of biases in hiring, but this approach has produced mixed results. Although some studies have shown that anonymous recruitment can increase the proportion of women receiving interview invitations (Åslund and Nordström Skans, 2007; Krause et al., 2012b), other studies have shown that anonymous recruitment can result in fewer women being selected for interviews (Hiscox et al., 2017; Krause et al., 2012a).

As a bias-reduction strategy, anonymous recruitment is grounded in the assumption that managers cannot rely on gender-based stereotypes in their assessment of candidates' employability if the primary trigger for such stereotypes (i.e. candidates' names) are removed from applications. However, one recent Australian study found that hiring managers may be able to deduce information about candidates' genders from implicit cues embedded in resumes (Foley and Williamson, 2018). For example, when managers noted extended periods of mid-career leave in anonymised applications, they perceived those resumes as likely belonging to female candidates, thereby making gender salient to their assessments and reintroducing the potential for bias.

Although anonymous recruitment aims to shift managers' focus away from applicants' genders to their job-related skills and qualifications, the process does not account for structural factors (such as women's disproportionate concentration in part-time work, or time out of labour market) that may affect their ability to accumulate job-related skills and qualifications at an equal rate. Thus, anonymous recruitment practices may subtly benefit candidates who are already advantaged in the labour market (Foley and Williamson, 2018; Rinne, 2014). Anonymisation may also prevent hiring managers from considering male and female candidates' achievements relative to time in the labour market and caring responsibilities, or from promoting diversity by engaging in affirmative action (Hiscox et al., 2017).

Further research is needed to assess the conditions under which anonymous recruitment is most effective at reducing discrimination. However, merely removing names and other identifiers from traditional job applications and resumes does not appear to be sufficient to remove bias from recruitment processes.

Gender bias in promotion

Gender biases also affect women's ability to advance within organisations. Gender differences can also be observed in the performance evaluation feedback women and men receive, the factors contributing to women's relatively lower representation in senior leadership roles, and the opportunities women receive for career development.

Language in performance evaluations. A study at Stanford University's Clayman Institute for Gender Research found that women were systematically less likely than men to receive 'specific feedback tied to outcomes' (Correll and Simard, 2016), regardless of whether the feedback was positive or negative. In an analysis of more than 200 performance reviews conducted in a large U.S. technology firm, the researchers found that 57 per cent of performance reviews of female employees contained vague feedback, such as 'you had a great year', compared to 43 per cent of reviews of male employees. Men were significantly more likely than women to be given a clear picture of what they were doing well, and specific guidance on how to improve (Correll and Simard, 2016).

Similarly, the language in performance evaluations can be strongly gendered. Researchers in the United States evaluated a large military dataset comprised of 81,000 performance evaluations of 4,000 employees (Smith et al., 2018). In positive evaluations, men were most often described as 'analytical', while women were described as 'compassionate'. In negative evaluations, men were most likely to be criticised for being 'arrogant', while women most likely to be accused of being 'inept'.

The language used in performance evaluations is a clear indicator of what is valued and respected in organisations (Smith et al., 2018). Although 'analytical' and 'compassionate' are both positive descriptors, the former is more likely than the latter to be regarded as integral to the mission and strategy of a military institution. Similarly, arrogance is more likely than ineptitude to be dismissed as an unfortunate but forgivable by-product of strong leadership. Thus, on both positive and negative feedback measures, women are penalised (Smith et al., 2018).

Australian research has shown that female employees perceive these differences. A survey of 4,481 employees in large and small Australian businesses, government and non-profit organisations found that women were twice as likely as men to report being told that they needed to display 'more confidence', and 30 per cent more likely to report being told that they needed 'more experience' to be ready for promotion (Sanders et al., 2017). However, only half of the women said they were given the opportunity to gain the experience required or received clear and specific feedback about what experience they needed to be deemed ready for promotion. Men were 50 per cent more likely than women to say that they had received clear and specific feedback about how to improve (Sanders et al., 2017).

Women receive fewer challenging assignments. Managers often perceive that women have lower levels of career motivation than men and may seek to 'protect' their female employees from overwork. Such assumptions contribute to women receiving fewer career development opportunities, such as challenging work assignments, training and development and career encouragement.

Researchers surveyed 112 employees and 52 managers at a Fortune 500 company in the United States to assess how managers perceived the career motivations of their employees, and how those perceptions influenced the distribution of career development opportunities (Hoobler et al., 2014). Managers perceived that female employees had lower motivation levels than male employees, irrespective of their seniority, tenure or promotion histories, and found a strong correlation between managers' perceptions of employees' career motivation and employees' reports of receiving career development opportunities. In other words, managers gave more career development opportunities to employees they perceived as being more motivated - mostly men. Moreover, employees who reported being given more career opportunities reported higher career aspirations, suggesting that career development opportunities feed career motivation and aspiration. When women are overlooked for career development opportunities because they are deemed to be less committed or motivated, their career aspirations suffer.

A series of studies in the United States has also found that women and men are equally likely to express interest in receiving challenging work, but male managers are less likely to give women challenging assignments out of a benevolent desire to protect women from overwork (King et al., 2012). Taken together, these findings suggest that stereotype-based beliefs about women's lower work commitment or need to be 'protected' - which run counter to findings from research (AWWF, 2017) - can contribute to women receiving fewer career development opportunities necessary to progress their careers.

Leadership aspirations and self-promotion. Australian research has shown that women and men have similar aspirations and ambition when it comes to their careers, but women are more likely than men to believe that 'feminine' leadership styles are undervalued in workplaces. Women also avoid self-promotion because they perceive - often correctly - that such behaviour will reflect poorly on them.

A survey of 842 members of the Australian business community found that 74 per cent of women and 76 per cent of men aspired to leadership roles (Sanders et al., 2011). However, significant differences emerged in in respondents' beliefs about why there were fewer women in senior management roles across Australia. Among respondents, 61 per cent of men said that women were less represented in senior leadership roles due to competing work-life priorities, compared to 22 per cent of female respondents (Sanders et al., 2011). In contrast, 78 per cent of female respondents said the shortage of women in senior leadership roles could be attributed to a lack of appreciation for stereotypically 'feminine' leadership styles. Respondents in this group said that men were more likely to 'appoint or promote someone with a similar style to their own' and that women were less likely than men to advocate on behalf of their own experience and capabilities, or self-promote (Sanders et al., 2011).
The perception that women are less likely than men to promote their accomplishments has been shown in multiple studies (for a review, see Budworth and Mann, 2010). However, women's reticence to engage in self-promotion may be a form of self-preservation. Evidence suggests that women may be well aware of the penalty faced by agentic women and may downplay their own achievements to avoid backlash (Eagly and Karau, 2002; Heilman, 2012, 2001; Rudman and Glick, 2001). Indeed, research has shown that women avoid self-advocacy at work if they perceive that doing so will reflect unfavourably on them (Battle, 2008 cited in Chrobot-Mason et al., 2019).

Sustained experiences of gender inequality in recruitment, selection and evaluation may contribute to women's under-representation in senior management (Brands and Fernandez-Mateo, 2017). Using a combination of field, survey and experimental data from the United Kingdom and the United States, researchers at the London Business School recently found that senior professional women were less likely than men to consider a job opportunity if they had been rejected by the firm in the past, and that experiences of rejection were more likely to trigger questions of belongingness in senior professional women, compared to men of similar professional rank (Brands and Fernandez-Mateo, 2017). The authors argued that women's experience of gender inequality at various stages in their careers may influence their tendency to scale back their ambitions - to 'lean out' - when considering senior leadership roles.

Gender bias and the myth of 'meritocracy'

Many organisations pride themselves on employing and promoting candidates based on their individual skills, attributes and qualifications, irrespective of gender or race. However, the evidence presented in this paper demonstrates the way in which cultural assumptions and stereotypes can sway managers' recruitment, selection and promotion decisions in a non-conscious fashion. Because we are all subtly influenced by these pervasive biases, it can be difficult for managers to determine which candidate truly has 'merit' and which does not.

In a series of three experiments involving 445 participants with managerial expertise, researchers in the United States have demonstrated that managers in organisations that explicitly promote themselves as meritocratic - recruiting, rewarding and promoting the 'best' people based on their individual merits - are more likely to favour men over equally qualified women (Castilla, 2008; Castilla and Benard, 2010). This so-called 'paradox of meritocracy' (Castilla and Benard, 2010) occurs because managers in these organisations are not forced to examine the subjective nature of their decisions, and how they might be affected by biases.

Unchallenged faith in the objectivity of merit can also act as a barrier to managerial support for policies and programs aimed at supporting women's entry into and progression within certain occupations and industries. A substantial body of research has demonstrated that belief in the fundamental 'rightness' and 'fairness' of merit is the primary source of opposition to affirmative action, such as gender targets and quotas (for an excellent discussion, see Son Hing et al., 2011, 2002). Even when managers accept that recruitment and promotion processes are plagued with biases and subjectivities, they nevertheless hold the ideal of merit paramount when presented with affirmative action measures, such as gender targets, as a potential solution (Foley and Williamson, 2019).

However, Australian research has shown that women are significantly less likely than men to perceive that their organisations are governed by merit. In one large survey of Australian employees, only 45 per cent of women said that they believed their organisations were truly meritocratic, compared to 61 per cent of men (Sanders et al. 2017). Surveys have repeatedly shown that only 30 per cent of women believe that qualified men and women have equal opportunity to be recruited or promoted into management and executive positions, compared with 60 per cent of men (Sanders et al., 2017, p. 7). There is clearly a gender gap in how employees perceive meritocracy in Australian organisations.

Conclusion

This paper has summarised key facets of gender bias that serve to undermine equality for women in the recruitment and selection process. This bias can be overtly and covertly reinforced through the gendered 'coding' of job advertisements; the gendered review of performance; and in the skewed ways in which applications are tracked and credentials compared in ways which benefit male applicants. Women can also experience significant barriers to career development because gender bias has limited their opportunities to undertake challenging job assignments; and because workplace culture either directly or indirectly discouraged them from assuming leadership styles at variance to men.

Gender-coded wording in job advertisements may dissuade women from applying for some jobs and may reinforce stereotypes about which genders are better suited to certain roles.

In many occupations and industries, women must send out substantially more applications to receive the same number of interview invitations as equally qualified men, an effect which is compounded for older women, women with children and women from certain racial or ethnic groups. Male applicants may also be disadvantaged when applying for roles in female-dominated occupations and industries.

Women and men are held to different standards in the recruitment processes, with women more likely to face tougher evaluation standards, or to have their achievements and qualifications more closely scrutinised.

Gender biases affect the way applicants are perceived in job interviews, and whether they are deemed to be likeable and competent.

Women are more likely than men to be penalised for attempting to negotiate for higher pay.

When selection criteria are not given pre-assigned weights, managers subtly shift the importance of certain selection criteria to favour candidates who fit a stereotypical profile, allowing managers to justify prejudicial decisions under the guise of objectivity.

Anonymous recruitment appears to be an attractive policy option to address hiring discrimination, but various experiments and trials have produced mixed results. Further research is necessary to establish the conditions under which anonymous recruitment is most effective.

Reviewers use different language to evaluate the performance of men and women, an effect which is clearly perceived by women workers. Vague, inconsistent or negative feedback can have significant impact on women's ability to be hired or to progress within their careers.

Stereotypical beliefs that women are less committed to their work or need to be protected from overwork limit women's exposure to the career development opportunities necessary to advance to senior leadership roles.

Women and men in Australia do not have materially different aspirations to senior leadership positions, but women are more likely than men to believe that 'feminine' leadership styles are undervalued in workplaces.

Many organisations that purport to be meritocratic are not, because the notion of merit provides a veneer of objectivity which allows biased decisions to go unchallenged. Furthermore, merit acts as a barrier to acceptance of gender targets and other affirmative action programs designed to circumvent biases in recruitment and promotion.

Download a PDF version of this paper below.

Abrams, D., Swift, H.J., Drury, L., 2016. Old and Unemployable? How Age-Based Stereotypes Affect Willingness to Hire Job Candidates. Journal of Social Issues 72, 105-121. https://doi.org/10.1111/josi.12158

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Gender Equitable Recruitment and Promotion

Gender bias is pervasive at work and in organisations, creating inequalities at every stage of the employment cycle. This insight paper highlights some of the research examining how gender bias operates at work and provides evidence-based suggestions for creating more equitable recruitment and promotion systems.

Abrams, D., Swift, H.J., Drury, L., 2016. Old and Unemployable? How Age-Based Stereotypes Affect Willingness to Hire Job Candidates. Journal of Social Issues 72, 105-121. https://doi.org/10.1111/josi.12158

Åslund, O., Nordström Skans, O., 2007. Do anonymous job application procedures level the playing field? (Working Paper No. 2007:31). IFAU-Institute for Labour Market Policy Evaluation, Uppsala.

Australian Women's Work Futures (AWWF) Study. (2017) Available at: https://sydney.edu.au/content/dam/corporate/documents/business-school/research/women-work-leadership/women-and-the-future-of-work.pdf (Accessed: 24 June 2019).

Bertrand, M., Mullainathan, S., 2004. Are Emily and Greg more employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A field experiment on labor market discrimination. The American Economic Review 94, 991-1013.

Bohnet, I., 2016. What Works: Gender Equality by Design. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge.

Booth, A., Leigh, A., 2010. Do employers discriminate by gender? A field experiment in female-dominated occupations. Economics Letters 107, 236-238.

Bowles, H.R., Babcock, L., Lai, L., 2007. Social incentives for gender differences in the propensity to initiate negotiations: Sometimes it does hurt to ask. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 103, 84-103. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2006.09.001

Brands, R.A., Fernandez-Mateo, I., 2017. Leaning Out: How Negative Recruitment Experiences Shape Women's Decisions to Compete for Executive Roles. Administrative Science Quarterly 62, 405-442.https://doi.org/10.1177/0001839216682728

Budworth, M., Mann, S.L., 2010. Becoming a leader: the challenge of modesty for women. Journal of Mgmt Development 29, 177-186. https://doi.org/10.1108/02621711011019314

Castilla, E.J., 2008. Gender, race, and meritocracy in organizational careers. American Journal of Sociology 113, 1479-1526.

Castilla, E.J., Benard, S., 2010. The paradox of meritocracy in organizations. Administrative Science Quarterly 55, 543-676. https://doi.org/10.2189/asqu.2010.55.4.543

Chrobot-Mason, D., Hoobler, J.M., Burno, J., 2019. Lean In Versus the Literature: An Evidence-Based Examination. Academy of Management Perspectives 33, 110-130. https://doi.org/10.5465/amp.2016.0156

Correll, S.J., Benard, S., Paik, I., 2007. Getting a job: is there a motherhood penalty? American Journal of Sociology 112, 1297-1339.

Correll, S.J., Simard, C., 2016. Vague feedback is holding women back. Harvard Business Review.

Eagly, A.H., Karau, S.J., 2002. Role congruity theory of prejudice toward female leaders. Psychological Review 109, 573-598. https://doi.org/10.1037//0033-295X.109.3.573

Fine, C., 2011. Delusions of Gender: The real science behind sex differences, 2nd ed. Icon Books, London.

Foley, M., Williamson, S., 2019. Managerial perspectives on implicit bias, affirmative action, and merit. Public Administration Review 79, 35-45. https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12955

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Gaucher, D., Friesen, J., Kay, A.C., 2011. Evidence that gendered wording in job advertisements exists and sustains gender inequality. J Pers Soc Psychol 101, 109-128. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0022530

Heilman, M.E., 2012. Gender stereotypes and workplace bias. Research in Organizational Behavior 32, 113-135. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.riob.2012.11.003

Heilman, M.E., 2001. Description and prescription: How gender stereotypes prevent women's ascent up the organizational ladder. Journal of Social Issues 57, 657-674.

Hiscox, M., Oliver, T., Ridgway, M., Arcos-Holzinger, L., Warren, A., Willis, A., 2017. Going blind to see more clearly: Unconscious bias in Australian Public Service shortlisting processes. Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra.

Hoobler, J.M., Lemmon, G., Wayne, S.J., 2014. Women's Managerial Aspirations: An Organizational Development Perspective. Journal of Management 40, 703-730. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206311426911

King, E.B., Botsford, W., Hebl, M.R., Kazama, S., Dawson, J.F., Perkins, A., 2012. Benevolent Sexism at Work: Gender Differences in the Distribution of Challenging Developmental Experiences. Journal of Management 38, 1835-1866. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206310365902

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Phelan, J.E., Moss-Racusin, C.A., Rudman, L.A., 2008. Competent Yet Out in the Cold: Shifting Criteria for Hiring Reflect Backlash Toward Agentic Women. Psychology of Women Quarterly 32, 406-413.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-6402.2008.00454.x

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Sanders, M., Hrdlicka, J., Hellicar, M., Cottrell, D., Knox, J., 2011. What stops women from reaching the top? Confronting the tough issues [WWW Document]. Bain & Company. URL http://www.bain.com/offices/australia/en_us/publications/what-stops-women-from-reaching-the-top.aspx (accessed 2.22.17).

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Gender Equitable Recruitment and Promotion

Gender bias is pervasive at work and in organisations, creating inequalities at every stage of the employment cycle. This insight paper highlights some of the research examining how gender bias operates at work and provides evidence-based suggestions for creating more equitable recruitment and promotion systems.

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Gender equitable recruitment and promotion

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Gender bias is pervasive at work and in organisations, creating inequalities at every stage of the employment cycle. Gender-based stereotypes affect which candidates get recruited for certain roles and which do not, which candidates get selected for those roles and why, how salaries are negotiated, how managers provide feedback to their employees, and which employees receive career development opportunities and career encouragement and which do not.

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"How the Best Bosses Interrupt Bias on Their Teams," from The Harvard Business Review

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"How the Best Bosses Interrupt Bias on Their Teams," from The Harvard Business Review

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Insist on a diverse pool

Establish objective criteria, define “culture fit,” and demand accountability

Limit referral hiring

Structure interviews with skills-based questions

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Executive Summary

Companies spend millions on antibias training each year in hopes of creating more-inclusive-and thereby innovative and effective-workforces. Studies show that well-managed diverse groups perform better and are more committed, have higher collective intelligence, and excel at making decisions and solving problems. But research also shows that bias-prevention programs rarely deliver. So what can you, as an individual leader, do to ensure that your team is including and making the most of diverse voices? How can one person fix what an entire organization can't?

Although bias itself is devilishly hard to change, it is not as difficult to interrupt. The authors have identified several practices that managers can use to counter bias (and avoid its negative effects) without spending a lot of time or political capital. In hiring, leaders should insist on a diverse pool, precommit to objective criteria, limit referral hiring, and structure interviews around skills-based questions. Day to day, they should ensure that high- and low-value work is assigned evenly and run meetings in a way that guarantees all voices are heard. In evaluating and developing people, they should clarify criteria for positive reviews and promotions, stick to those rules, and separate potential from performance and personality from skill sets.

Lars Leetaru

Companies spend millions on antibias training each year. The goal is to create workforces that are more inclusive, and thereby more innovative and more effective. Studies show that well-managed diverse groups outperform homogeneous ones and are more committed, have higher collective intelligence, and are better at making decisions and solving problems. But research also shows that bias prevention programs rarely deliver. And some companies don't invest in them at all. So how can you, as an individual leader, make sure your team is including and making the most of diverse voices? Can one person fix what an entire organization can't?

Although bias itself is devilishly hard to eliminate, it is not as difficult to interrupt. In the decades we've spent researching and advising people on how to build and manage diverse work groups, we've identified ways that managers can counter bias without spending a lot of time-or political capital.

The first step is to understand the four distinct ways bias plays out in everyday work interactions: (1) Prove it again: Some groups have to prove themselves more than others do. (2) Tightrope: A narrower range of behaviors is accepted from some groups than from others. (3) Maternal wall: Women with children see their commitment and competence questioned or face disapproval for being too career focused. (4) Tug-of-war: Disadvantaged groups find themselves pitted against one another because of differing strategies for assimilating-or refusing to do so.

The second step is to recognize when and where these forms of bias arise day-to-day. In the absence of an organizational directive, it's easy to let them go unaddressed. That's a mistake. You can't be a great manager without becoming a bias interrupter. Here's how to do it.

Picking Your People

Bias in hiring has been extensively documented. In one study, "Jamal" needed eight more years of experience than "Greg" to be seen as equally qualified. Another found that men from elite backgrounds were called back for interviews more than 12 times as often as identical candidates from non-elite backgrounds. Other studies have found that women, LGBT+ candidates, people with disabilities, women in headscarves, and older people are less likely to be hired than their peers.

Fairness in hiring is only the first step toward achieving diversity, but it's an important one. Here are four simple actions that will yield the best candidates by eliminating artificial advantages:

1. Insist on a diverse pool.

Whether you're working with recruiters or doing the hiring yourself, make it clear from the outset that you want true diversity, not just one female or minority candidate. Research shows that the odds of hiring a woman are 79 times as great if at least two women are in the finalist pool, while the odds of hiring a nonwhite candidate are 194 times as great with at least two finalist minority applicants. For example, when Kori Carew launched the Shook Scholars Institute at Shook, Hardy & Bacon, she designed it to bring a diverse mix of students into the law firm and offered career development and mentoring that prompted many of them to apply for summer associate positions.

2. Establish objective criteria, define "culture fit," and demand accountability.

Implicit biases around culture fit often lead to homogeneity. Too often it comes down to shared backgrounds and interests that out-groups, especially first-generation professionals, won't have. That's why it's important to clarify objective criteria for any open role and to rate all applicants using the same rubric. When one insurance company began hiring in this way, it ended up offering jobs to 46% more minority candidates than before. Even if your organization doesn't mandate this approach, ensure that everyone on your team takes it. Write down the specific qualifications required for a particular position so that everyone can focus on them when reviewing résumés and conducting interviews. For example, when Alicia Powell was managing chief counsel at PNC Bank, she made a point of listing the qualities that would make new team members successful in their roles: proactive in managing risk, self-disciplined, patient, customer focused, and independent. Powell shared this information with the rest of her team and candidates, ensuring that everyone was on the same page. You should hold people accountable in the same way. Waive criteria rarely, and require an explanation for those exceptions; then keep track of long-term waiving trends. Research shows that objective rules tend to be applied rigorously to out-groups but leniently to in-groups.

3. Limit referral hiring.

If your organization is homogeneous, hiring from within or from employees' social networks will only perpetuate that. So reach out to women and minority groups. Google partners with historically black colleges such as Spelman and Florida A&M University and with Hispanic-serving institutions such as New Mexico State and the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez. As an individual leader, you can work with the same organizations or recruit from similar ones in your industry or local community.

4. Structure interviews with skills-based questions.

Ask every person interviewed the same questions and make sure that each question directly relates to the desired knowledge and skills you've outlined. Rate the answers immediately-that will allow you to compare candidates fairly on a preestablished rubric and prevent favoritism. You should also use skills assessments: Rather than ask "How comfortable are you with Excel?" say "Here's a data set. How would you find out X?" For more-complex skills, such as project management, pose a problem or a task that candidates are likely to encounter on the job and ask them to describe in detail how they would handle it.

Managing Day-to-Day

Even good leaders sometimes fall into bad habits when it comes to the daily management of their teams. Women report doing about 20% more "office housework." on average, than their white male counterparts, whether it's literal housework (arranging for lunch or cleaning up after a meeting), administrative tasks (finding a place to meet or prepping a PowerPoint), emotional labor ("He's upset-can you fix it?"), or undervalued work (mentoring summer interns). This is especially true in high-status, high-stakes workplaces. Women engineers report a "worker bee" expectation at higher rates than white men do, and women of color report it at higher rates than white women do. Meanwhile, glamour work that leads to networking and promotion opportunities, such as project leadership and presentations, goes disproportionately to white men. When the consultancy GapJumpers analyzed the performance reviews of a tech company client, it found that women employees were 42% more likely than their male colleagues to be limited to lower-impact projects; as a result, far fewer of them rose to more-senior roles.

Meetings are another problem area. Research shows that men are more likely than women to dominate the conversation, and that whereas men with expertise tend to be more influential, women with expertise tend to be less so. Our study of lawyers found that half of women report being interrupted in meetings at a higher rate than their male peers are. Another study found that in meetings that included more men than women (a common scenario), women typically participated about 25% less often than their male coworkers did. Double standards and stereotypes play out whenever diverse identities come together. Is a woman "emotional," or a black man "angry," while a white male is "passionate"? We once heard from a woman scientist that she was sharply criticized as "aggressive" when she brought up a flaw in a male colleague's analysis; after that she felt she needed to just "bring in baked goods and be agreeable." A black tech company executive we know told us about a meeting during which she said little while the only other woman, an Asian-American, said a lot. But she later heard that people thought she had "dominated" the conversation while her Asian-American peer had been "very quiet."

Unsure whether this sort of thing is happening on your team? Start tracking assignments and airtime in meetings. Use our free online tools to find out which work done by your group is higher- or lower-profile and who's doing what. For meetings, pay attention: Who's at the table? Who's doing the talking? Is someone taking notes when he or she could be leading the conversation? If you find a problematic dynamic, here are some ways to change it:

1. Set up a rotation for office housework, and don't ask for volunteers.

"I always give these tasks to women because they do them well/volunteer" is a common refrain. This dynamic reflects an environment in which men suffer few consequences for bypassing or doing a poor job on low-value work, while women who do the same are seen as "prima donnas" or incompetent. Particularly when administrative staff is limited, a rotation helps level the playing field and makes it clear that everyone is expected to contribute to office housework. If you ask for volunteers, women and people of color will feel powerful pressure to prove they are "team players" by raising their hands.

2. Mindfully design and assign people to high-value projects.

Sometimes we hear "It's true, I keep giving the plum assignments to a small group-but they're the only ones with the skills to do them!" According to Joyce Norcini, formerly general counsel for Nokia Siemens Networks, if you have only a tight circle of people you trust to handle meaningful work, you're in trouble. Her advice: Reconsider who is capable of doing what these important jobs require; chances are someone not on your usual list is. You may need to move outside your comfort zone and be more involved in the beginning, but having a broader range of trained people will serve you well in the end.

3. Acknowledge the importance of lower-profile contributions.

"Diversity" hires may lag behind their majority-member peers because they're doing extra stuff that doesn't get them extra credit. If your organization truly prioritizes inclusion, then walk your talk. Many bosses who say they value diversity programming and mentorship don't actually take it into account when promotion or comp time becomes available. Integrating these contributions into individual goal setting and evaluating them during performance reviews is a simple start. And don't be afraid to think big: A law partner we know did such a great job running the woman's initiative that the firm begged her to stay on for another year. She said she would if the firm's bosses made her an equity partner. They did.

4. Respond to double standards, stereotyping, "manterruption," "bropriating," and "whipeating."

Pay close attention to the way people on your team talk about their peers and how they behave in group settings. For example, men tend to interrupt women far more often than the other way around; displays of confidence and directness decrease women's influence but increase men's. If a few people are dominating the conversation in a meeting, address it directly. Create and enforce a policy for interruptions. Keep track of those who drown others out and talk with them privately about it, explaining that you think it's important to hear everyone's contributions. Similarly, when you see instances of "bropriating" or "whipeating"-that is, majority-group members taking or being given credit for ideas that women and people of color originally offered-call it out. We know two women on the board of directors of a public company who made a pact: When a man tried to claim one of their ideas, the other would say something like "Yes, I liked Sandra's point, and I'm glad you did too." Once they did this consistently, bropriating stopped.

5. Ask people to weigh in.

Women, people of Asian descent, and first-generation professionals report being brought up with a "modesty mandate" that can lead them to hold back their thoughts or speak in a tentative, deferential way. Counter this by extending an invitation: "Camilla, you have experience with this-what are we missing? Is this the best course of action?"

6. Schedule meetings inclusively.

Business meetings should take place in the office, not at a golf course, a university club, or your favorite concert venue. Otherwise you're giving an artificial advantage to people who feel more comfortable in those settings or whose personal interests overlap with yours. Whenever possible, stick to working hours, or you risk putting caregivers and others with a demanding personal life at a disadvantage. Joan once noticed that no mothers were participating in a faculty appointment process because all the meetings were held at 5:30 PM. When she pointed this out to the person leading them, the problem was fixed immediately. This colleague had a stay-at-home wife and simply hadn't thought about the issue before.

7. Equalize access proactively.

Bosses may meet with some employees more regularly than others, but it's important to make sure this is driven by business demands and team needs rather than by what individuals want or expect. White men may feel more comfortable walking into your office or asking for time. The same may be true of people whose interests you share. When Emily Gould Sullivan, who has led the employment law functions for two Fortune 500 retail companies, realized that she was routinely accepting "walking meeting" invitations from a team member who was, like her, interested in fitness, she made a point of reaching out to others to equalize access.

Developing Your Team

Your job as a manager is not only to get the best performance out of your team but also to encourage the development of each member. That means giving fair performance reviews, equal access to high-potential assignments, and promotions and pay increases to those who have earned them. Unfortunately, as we've noted, some groups need to prove themselves more than others, and a broader range of behaviors is often accepted from white men. For example, our research shows that assertiveness and anger are less likely to be accepted from people of color, and expectations that women will be modest, self-effacing, and nice often affect performance assessments. One study found that 66% of women's reviews contained comments about their personalities, but only 1% of men's reviews did. These double standards can have a real impact on equity outcomes. PayScale found that men of color were 25% less likely than their white peers to get a raise when they asked for one. And gender norms stunt careers for women. PayScale found that when women and men start their careers on the same rung of the professional ladder, by the time they are halfway (aged 30-44), 47% of men are managers or higher, but only 40% of women are. These numbers just worsen over time: Only 3% of the women make it to the C-suite, compared with 8% of the men.

Take these steps to avoid common pitfalls in evaluations and promotions:

1. Clarify evaluation criteria and focus on performance, not potential.

Don't arrive at a rating without thinking about what predetermined benchmarks you've used to get there. Any evaluation should include enough data for a third party to understand the justification for the rating. Be specific. Instead of "She writes well," say "She can write an effective summary judgment motion under a tight deadline."

2. Separate performance from potential and personality from skill sets.

In-groups tend to be judged on their potential and given the benefit of the doubt, whereas out-groups have to show they've nailed it. If your company values potential, it should be assessed separately, with factors clearly outlined for evaluators and employees. Then track whether there's a pattern as to who has "potential." If so, try relying on performance alone for everyone or get even more concrete with what you're measuring. Personality comments are no different; be wary of double standards that affect women and people of color when it comes to showing emotion or being congenial. Policing women into femininity doesn't help anyone, and-as courts have pointed out-it's direct evidence of sex discrimination. If that's not motivation enough, evaluators can miss critical skills by focusing on personality. It's more valuable, and accurate, to say someone is a strong collaborator who can manage projects across multiple departments than to say "She's friendly and gets along with everyone."

3. Level the playing field with respect to self-promotion.

The modesty mandate mentioned above prevents many people in out-groups from writing effective self-evaluations or defending themselves at review time. Counter that by giving everyone you manage the tools to evaluate their own performance. Be clear that it's acceptable, and even expected, to advocate for oneself. A simple two-pager can help overcome the modesty mandate and cue majority men (who tend toward overconfidence) to provide concrete evidence for their claims.

4. Explain how training, promotion, and pay decisions will be made, and follow those rules.

As the chair of her firm's women's initiative, one lawyer we know developed a strategy to ensure that all candidates for promotion were considered fairly. She started with a clear outline of what was needed to advance and then assigned every eligible employee (already anonymized) to one of three groups: green (meets the objective metrics), yellow (is close), and red (doesn't). Then she presented the color-coded list to the rest of the evaluation team. By anonymizing the data and pregrouping the candidates by competencies, she ensured that no one was forgotten or recommended owing to in-group favoritism.

All the evaluators were forced to stick to the predetermined benchmarks, and as a result, they tapped the best candidates. (Those in the yellow category were given advice about how to move up to green.) When it comes to promotions, there may be limits to what you can do as an individual manager, but you should push for transparency on the criteria used. When they are explicit, it's harder to bend the rules for in-group members.

CONCLUSION

Organizational change is crucial, but it doesn't happen overnight. Fortunately, you can begin with all these recommendations today.

A version of this article appeared in the November-December 2019 issue of Harvard Business Review.

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How the Best Bosses Interrupt Bias on Their Teams

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Executive Summary Companies spend millions on antibias training each year in hopes of creating more-inclusive-and thereby innovative and effective-workforces. Studies show that well-managed diverse groups perform better and are more committed, have higher collective intelligence, and excel at making decisions and solving problems. But research also shows that bias-prevention programs rarely deliver.

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Questions based on "Eight ways to understand your organisation's gender pay gap," from Gov.uk

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Questions based on "Eight ways to understand your organisation's gender pay gap," from Gov.uk

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Do people get “stuck” at certain levels?

Is there gender imbalance in promotions?

Are women more likely to be recruited into lower paid roles?

Do men and women leave us at the same rates?

Do aspects of pay (i.e. starting salaries and bonuses) differ by gender?

Are men and women judged in the same way?

Do we support part-time employees’ opportunities to progress?

Do we support men and women to take on caring responsibilities?

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The gender pay gap service uses cookies which are essential for the site to work. We also use non-essential cookies to help us improve government digital services. Any data collected is anonymised.

Skip to main content

This is a new service - your Beta feedback will help us to improve it.

Key questions for employers to ask that will help you to identify different potential causes of your gender pay gap.

Overview

The gender pay gap (GPG) data that you have reported provides a basic understanding of what the gender pay balance looks like within your organisation. However, to be able to target resources effectively to improve your GPG, it is essential to know more about the specific causes of any imbalance.

In this guide, you will find eight key questions to ask that will help you to identify different potential causes of the GPG. You will need some additional data to be able to be able to answer these questions, but you may already collect this data as part of your human resources processes.

As 77% of organisations reporting in 2017/18 have a gender pay gap in favour of men, this guidance mostly refers to actions to support women. However, the majority of actions could equally be used to support men where the GPG is in favour of women.

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Eight ways to understand your organisation's gender pay gap

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The gender pay gap service uses cookies which are essential for the site to work. We also use non-essential cookies to help us improve government digital services. Any data collected is anonymised. Skip to main content This is a new service - your Beta feedback will help us to improve it.

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The Paradox of Meritocracy in Organisations, from Harvard's Gender Action Portal

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The Paradox of Meritocracy in Organisations, from Harvard's Gender Action Portal

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Participants were asked to take on managerial roles, review profiles of fictional employees (male and female) and make compensation decisions. Participants were randomly assigned to receive different information on the core values of the organization they pretended to be working for - one set of values emphasized meritocracy and the other did not. When merit was emphasized, research participants provided, on average, higher rewards to a male employee over an equally qualified female employee (in the same job, with the same supervisor, and with equivalent performance evaluations).

Participants who were assigned to play the role of a manager in the company that emphasized meritocracy, rewarded male employees a bonus that was $46 higher, on average, than equally performing females (mean bonus of $418.8 vs. $372.4).

Participants, who were assigned to the set of core values that emphasized managers' discretion (the non-meritocratic condition) rewarded female employees a bonus that was $51 higher, on average, to that of an equally performing male employee (mean bonus of $419.7 vs. $368.2). The authors speculate that this effect might be driven by the fact that managerial discretion was emphasized in the non-meritocratic condition and this might have signaled that the evaluations were biased against women. Participants may have felt the need to correct for this bias by favoring females.

In an additional experiment, when the language emphasizing managerial discretion was removed from the non-meritocratic condition, participants no longer favored female employees over male employees and there was no significant difference in the bonuses assigned.

The gender bias displayed on the merit condition was most salient in participants' decisions to assign bonuses, and smaller (and not statistically significant) in other measures of their assessment of employees such as hires, promotions, and terminations.

In short, emphasizing meritocratic values at the organizational level had a counterintuitive effect, which strengthened biases in favor of men over equally performing women. This is the "paradox of meritocracy", a situation where people can show greater levels of gender bias when they are in a context that emphasizes meritocracy. Ironically, working in an environment that highlights meritocracy might make individuals believe that they are fair and objective, and as a result, make them more likely to display their biases. The authors suggest that promoting less managerial discretion, more accountability, and transparency in the workplace can mitigate these negative effects.

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The Paradox of Meritocracy in Organizations

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Most people would agree that evaluating and rewarding employees based on merit is fair and legitimate. However, merit-based practices may not naturally increase workplace equity. In fact, by adopting a purely meritocratic environment, where gender and social disadvantages are not acknowledged, biases and stereotypes may actually be accentuated.

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Resources and guidance

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PaternityTeacher

Support and entitlements for pregnant and expectant staff.

Networking, coaching and professional development during parental leave.

Return to work workshops and coaching support.

Family- and life-friendly schools.

Making teaching a sustainable career choice.

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MTPT | The Maternity Teacher / Paternity Teacher Project

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PaternityTeacher Support and entitlements for pregnant and expectant staff. Networking, coaching and professional development during parental leave. Return to work workshops and coaching support. Family- and life-friendly schools. Making teaching a sustainable career choice.