Gender Bias Still Plagues the Workplace: Looking at Derailment Risk and Performance With Self–Other Ratings

Abstract

Whereas overt forms of discrimination against women at work have decreased over time with the passage of formal antidiscrimination laws, implicit biases against women still plague organizations. To understand how implicit biases may appear in the workplace today, we examined how dissimilar outcomes may emerge for men and women leaders when their self-ratings differ from others’ (e.g., subordinates, peers) ratings. Drawing upon role congruity theory of prejudice toward female leaders and the status incongruity hypothesis, we theorized and found that women who overrated their leadership behaviors received lower performance ratings and higher perceived risk of derailment scores from their supervisors than did women who underrated their leadership behaviors. Men, however, experienced fewer negative consequences (than women) when they overrated. Given these findings, especially in light of discovering that most self–other agreement (SOA) research does not explicitly address gender as a main variable of interest, we question some of the field’s previous findings. We discuss the implications of our results for both practice and research regarding how SOA plays a role in the development of one’s career, highlighting the potential importance of implicit gender biases.

A two-nation investigation of leadership self-perceptions and motivation to lead in early adulthood: the moderating role of gender and socio-economic status

“…We specifically examine how gender and SES play a role in young adults' self-image as leaders, their beliefs in their future ability to lead and their motivation to pursue leadership in their future career. The focus on gender is pertinent because while considerable changes have taken place over the last 30 years regarding women in leadership roles, research suggests that implicit gender bias and the “glass ceiling” is still very much in place (Braddy et al , 2020; Greenhalgh and Maxwell, 2019; Hoyt and Simon, 2016; Sczesny, 2003) and minority groups including women remain underrepresented in leadership positions (Hoyt and Simon, 2016; Simon and Hoyt, 2012). Similarly researchers have long argued and presented robust empirical data to suggest that SES can have deleterious effects on careers and life prospects (Baldry, 2016; Polidano et al , 2013).…”

Indonesian students' perception of gender equity in education

“…They said it had become a habit and was just continuing from before. It means that gender bias has remained in the subconscious (Braddy et al, 2020;Madsen & Andrade, 2018). The gender bias that often occurs in schools or academic environment is often not only unconsciously by men but also by women as objects.…”

Relating Cultural Distance to Self-Other Agreement of Leader–Observer Dyads: The Role of Hierarchical Position

“…We controlled for industry ( Brutus et al, 1998 ), leader and observer (similarity in) age and gender ( Ostroff et al, 2004 ; Fleenor et al, 2010 ; Braddy et al, 2020 ), and hierarchical position ( Lee and Carpenter, 2018 ), as they have been shown to be sources of self-other agreement. Furthermore, given cultural influences on self-other agreement ( Atwater et al, 2009 ; Kossek et al, 2017 ), we included fixed effects for leader and observer nationality, to ensure that they do not distort our cultural distance effects ( Kirkman et al, 2006 ; Harzing and Pudelko, 2016 ; Beugelsdijk et al, 2017 ).…”