Same Behavior, Different Consequences: Gender Bias at Work

During the Liesel Beckmann Symposium, three leading researchers presented their findings on gender and diversity in organizations. Here is part one – stay tuned for the next two parts!

Descriptive Gender Stereotypes

Prof. Madeline E. Heilman of New York University has done groundbreaking research on gender bias in a business context. Through her research, she was able to identify descriptive gender stereotypes as consistent across society and many countries around the world. Descriptive stereotypes convey beliefs about persons’ attributes. They prevail over many years and consequently are very difficult to alter. That said, these stereotypes are in the minds of men and women. At this point you might wonder why these descriptive gender stereotypes actually are a problem. One issue is that they are inconsistent. This means that the attributes of women and those of managers do not match – we perceive women to have a lack of fit for managerial positions. Therefore, we (and again, I mean men and women) expect women to be unsuccessful in managerial, “think manager – think male” jobs. This influences the performance evaluation of women negatively.

Prescriptive Gender Stereotypes

Apart form descriptive gender stereotypes, there are also prescriptive gender stereotypes. These are stereotypes that describe what we think women and men actually should be like. The difficulty with prescriptive gender stereotypes is that if a woman behaves in a male-stereotyped way, for example by behaving in an agentic and managerial manner, she is penalized for this behavior. And if she behaves in a communal and nurturing manner, she is rewarded. Of course the same principle applies to men vice versa. To me, men’s prescriptive gender stereotypes are critical. Picture a new father in a senior executive role who wants to take time off after his child is born, or maybe even reduce his job to part-time. This man is sure to be subject to gender bias and therefore receive some nasty comments down the alley of “wimpy”, “unmanly” or even “lazy”. And ladies let’s be honest, we all know that there is hardly anything more manly than a guy with a baby stroller!

How to Fix the Problem

Gender bias can result from descriptive and prescriptive stereotypes. I want to stress that women and men behave in the same way towards gender bias. This means that all of us need to keep consciously reminding ourselves of the gender stereotypes we have in our head to avoid behaving in a gender-biased way.

Annamarie