Glass Ceiling

Discrimination and Perceptual Biases

Although sex discrimination has been outlawed in virtually all developed countries, there is evidence that it still plays a role in both selection and promotion. Studies in which people are given résumés or descriptions of a theoretical employee's performance have found that even with identical backgrounds or performance, those with male names are more likely to get hired and are rated more highly than those with female names. In controlled experiments where female and male actors give the exact same speech, the speed has been rated more positively when given by the male actor. Studies in the sciences examining grant application success rates have shown that women need to have significantly higher research productivity than men in order to have the same likelihood of being awarded grant support. A [Page 330]variety of evidence suggests that women need to perform better than their male peers in order to get the same level of opportunities.

Most people would not like to think that they are acting in a discriminatory way, yet research suggests that many people discriminate. One reason for this may be that unconscious perceptual biases related to gender stereotypes prevent people from fairly evaluating others. Gender stereotypes of women hold that they are relational, nurturing, helpful, and kind, whereas stereotypes of men suggest that they are assertive, competitive, self-reliant, and ambitious. Collectively, stereotypes of women are characterized as “communal,” whereas stereotypes of men are characterized as “agentic.” Agentic traits are more likely than communal traits to be associated with leadership. Women who express agentic traits are frequently viewed as “unladylike,” or worse, so women who aspire to leadership often experience a double bind: They can act in a way that is consistent with the demands of gender stereotype but are unlikely to be noticed for a leadership position, or they can act in way that is consistent with leadership perceptions, but inconsistent with the stereotype of their gender, resulting in negative evaluations of them as people.

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