Gender Bias by the Numbers

by Ben Weber,

A killer work ethic and unflagging drive can lead to success, even if men still set the rules of engagement in the corporate world.

A less empowering, but arguably more realistic, view comes from Anne-Marie Slaughter, an international lawyer, ex-State Department official, and former dean of Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. No stranger to navigating ultracompetitive work environments, Slaughter argues that women, even when they adhere to Sandberg’s advice, have a difficult time finding a balance between home and the office. The lucky few who scale the peaks of professional stature are wealthy, superhuman, or self-employed. The economic and cultural obstacles standing in the way of equal treatment for women in the workforce are formidable, in her view.

So who’s right? Both arguments are thought-provoking, yet they’re not based on hard data. The current debate over the career challenges facing women is understandably passionate and sometimes ideologically charged. Yet maybe it’s time for data analytics and rigorous social science to play a more prominent role in the conversation.

One data point everyone agrees on is that women and men face huge disparities at the office. In the U.S., female workers are still paid only 77¢ for every dollar their male colleagues make. A mere 4.2 percent of chief executive officers at Fortune 500 companies are women. To my mind, there are several possible explanations for this persistent divide.

The traditional theory about workplace inequality focuses on biology—childbearing, maternity leave, and child care hold women back. Then there are the deeply ingrained cognitive biases that rig the game in favor of men.

To get a better read on the contrasting styles of men and women in the workplace, I’ve set out over the past year to analyze behavior and career outcomes at three different U.S. companies. … To my knowledge, however, this is the first attempt to analyze behavioral differences between men and women at different organizations using hard behavioral data.

At the call center, the one company where we have quantifiable productivity metrics, women were more productive than men, … no differences in workplace performance or collaborative styles were observed at the company … [and] women were disadvantaged when it came to winning promotions and reaching the upper echelons of management.

At the pharmaceutical company … [o]nce again, we found little evidence of contrasting work styles between men and women. When we examined the probability of promotion based on traits such as the ability to interact and lead other groups, there was again no significant difference between men and women. Yet only 13 percent of top executives at the company are female despite a 50-50 gender split in the overall workforce.

What about the “maternity leave” theory? Various studies show that married and single women without children also lag behind male colleagues when it comes to pay and career advancement. For working mothers, gender bias in hiring and recruitment exacerbates the special challenges they already face.

… cognitive bias is the far greater challenge. Attitudes hard-wired into the minds of men (and women) are very difficult to change. Characteristics admired in alpha male executives—boldness, decisiveness, and intensity—aren’t always valued in female ones. Conflicting attitudes about the primacy of a mother’s role in raising children complicate a woman’s career in ways most men need not worry about.

… here’s something …: Do we really want to tolerate a business culture in which men get bonus points for being fathers and women are penalized for being mothers? Eliminating gender inequality in the workplace will require a sustained and generational effort, not unlike other civil rights movements in U.S. history. It’s all in the data.

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