Four patterns of gender bias and how to ensure they don’t derail your career

1. Four patterns of gender bias and how to ensure they don’t derail your career Distinguished Professor Joan C. Williams 1066 Foundation Chair University of California, Hastings College of the Law Washington State University Aug. 26, 2010

2. The challenge in academia “It did not look like what we thought discrimination looked like.” (MIT, 1999)

3. Four types of gender bias • Maternal wall • Glass ceiling: Prove it again! • Glass ceiling: The tightrope • Gender wars • Double jeopardy: gender bias differs by race

4. The Maternal Wall

5. The maternal wall • Motherhood is a key trigger for gender stereotyping • Even women who dodge the glass ceiling may hit the maternal wall Source: Biernat, Crosby & Williams, 2003

6. Maternal wall bias • Strongest form of gender bias • In matched resume study, mothers • 79% less likely to be hired • 100% less likely to be promoted • Offered $11,000 less in salary • Held to higher performance and punctuality standards Source: Correll, Benard & Paik, 2008

7. Descriptive bias • The elderly, blind, “retarded,” disabled – and housewives • “If you…have your child on campus, colleagues who recognize you when you are by yourself now only see you as a walking uterus and ignore you.” • Role incongruity • “as a mother of two infants, she had responsibilities that were incompatible with those of a full-time academician” Sources: Fiske & Glick 2002; Eckes 2002; Mason 2003

8. Descriptive bias • Attribution bias • An absent man is giving a paper; an absent women is with her children • Leniency bias • Professor received stellar reviews until she had children; then her office hours (but no one else’s) scrutinized

9. Bias avoidance • Only 1/3 of nonmothers on tenure track ever have children • “At my campus, most women are afraid to admit that they even have children” Sources: Drago & Colbeck; Mason & Goulden; Toolkit

10. Prescriptive bias • Hostile prescriptive • member of tenure committee told professor to stop worrying about tenure - just go home & have more babies • Benevolent Sources: Schneider 2000; Schneider, 1996

11. Double jeopardy • “I think gender biases work differently for women of different groups-race/ethnicity, immigration status, class of family of origin, and language. It’s not just heightened for ‘other’ women. For example, the stereotype that women of certain groups have ‘too many babies’ affect perceptions of which women take time for family leave.”

12. Frigid climate for fathers • “Fathers” held to lower performance and punctuality standards • Fathers who took even a short leave due to a family conflict: lower rewards and performance evaluations • >40% of faculty men wished but did not ask to take parental leave Sources: Correll, Benard & Paik, 2008; Butler & Skattebo2004; Colbeck & Drago.

13. Frigid climate for fathers • Untenured professor told mentor he did not dare even to ask about parental leave, much less take it • “My request for parental leave was met with a sneering denial by my chair.” Sources: Confidential; UC Toolkit

14. Survival strategies • …..are not solutions!

15. Survival strategies • Counter descriptive bias and benevolent prescriptive bias with information • After a trip • When out of the office • That you intend to pursue your career

16. Survival strategies • If you are willing to travel, say so • If you are the primary earner, say so • If your partner is willing to follow you, say so

17. Survival strategies • Hostile prescriptive • “I guess people are really different….” • What’s illegal • Denying parental leave to either men or women is illegal • So is penalizing either women or men for taking it is illegal • So is treating family leave any differently than other disability leaves

18. Tone control • Humor, humor, humor, humor, humor, humor, humor • Anger • Comfort and privilege • “I think sometimes to be honest isn’t really nice because it is not going along….” Source: Bettis & Adams [under review]

19. Prove It Again!

20. Prove it again! • “The past isn’t dead – it’s not even past.” • Only 37.5% of FT faculty are women • Nearly 80% of full professors are men • The higher the status of the institution, the lower the % of women • Lack of fit • Men seem to fit; women don’t Source: Heilman

21. General principle • Stereotype-affirming information tends to be noticed, remembered and used in analyzing causation • He’s skilled, she’s lucky • Sources: Heilman, Krieger

22. Recall bias • Women’s mistakes are noticed more, and remembered longer “My achievements have been underplayed and my faults exaggerated greatly in comparison to my male colleagues.” Source: Lunbeck

23. Attribution bias • “A man takes a big risk and makes a mistake, that’s considered risky, but he’s taking a chance; a woman does it, then it’s just a big mistake.” Source: Focus groups

24. Not competent enough • Dept. chairs given identical ♀ & ♂ CVs • Significantly more likely to hire man as associate, women as assistant, professor • For men: “brilliant and original” • For women: “reliable, responsible, meticulous” Sources: Wilson, 2004; Toolkit, 2007

25. Double standards • Men tend to be judged on potential; women strictly on their achievements • Women’s mistakes are noticed more, and remembered longer • “A man takes a big risk and makes a mistake, that’s considered risky, but he’s taking a chance; a woman does it, then it’s just a big mistake.” • Objective rules tend to be applied leniently to men but rigidly to women • “You follow the same path in doing a particular task as the men that you’ve seen do it, and then you get slapped on the wrist…I just saw 5 men do it…[in] the past 6 months!”

26. Leniency bias • “We expect papers at scholarly conferences to be vetted by a program committee, usually anonymously, and to show signs of significance, originality, and serious scholarship. I and my two female colleagues in musicology have worked to these department and disciplinary standards, but our male colleague has not…[He] seems to be passing successfully through his 3rd-year review and re-appointment even though he has not met the burden of the requirements for ‘research and creative activity.’" Source: Gender Bias Learning Project

27. Polarized evaluations • “I was the eighth woman professor in a row at a leading institution that had few women faculty and a poisonous atmosphere. And the eighth woman to get terrible student evaluations--really vicious evaluations of a type we did not get at our own institutions. They hurt my career, and the career of every other one of those women.”

28. Achievement v. potential • Men tend to be judged on potential; women strictly on their achievements • He’s a “nascent scholar…soon to blossom”; she lacks publications Source: Lam 1991

29. Prove it again! • Dept. chairs given identical ♀ & ♂ CVs • Significantly more likely to hire man as associate, women as assistant, professor • For men: “brilliant and original” • For women: “reliable, responsible, meticulous” Sources: Wilson, 2004; Toolkit, 2007

30. Prove it again! strategies • Senior women: important to speak up • “If that’s the standard we are applying, we should go back and reassess every candidate against it.” • Sometimes an individual can bring it up herself • First question: to whom? • “My situation seems pretty comparable to Jim’s, can you help me understand how they are different?

31. The tightrope “To get ahead here [at MIT], you have to be so aggressive. But if women are too aggressive they’re ostracized…and if they’re not aggressive enough they have to do twice the work.” Do women need to choose between being liked but not respected…or respected but not liked? Sources: Nedis, Glick & Fiske

32. Liked but not respected • Warm • Considerate • Nice • Pamela Bettis Source: Bettis & Adams [under review]

33. Liked but not respected • Mother, princess, pet: Are women who play stereotypically feminine roles taken into the in-group, while other are stigmatized? Source: Eagly; Deaux

34. Liked by but respected: Colleagues • Women in some departments expected to be “restrained and endlessly supportive” • “It’s hard work being nice.” Sources: English; Bettis & Adams [under review]

35. Liked but not respected: Colleagues • I’d been doing this committee and…I said it’s time for somebody else to do it. They just said, “Oh boy well there just isn’t anybody else I can ask because, you know well there’s so-and-so but he’s writing a book, I can’t ask.” I said, “He’s writing a book? I’m writing a book! How come his book counts more?” Source: Focus groups

36. Liked but not respected: Students • “I think the undergraduates are still full of sexist stuff….They expect the women teachers to be kinder and warmer and fuzzier and let them take a make-up even if they don’t have a good enough reason…Students expect their female instructors to be like their mother and forgive everything...” Source: Focus groups

37. Respected but not liked • Direct • Outspoken • Assertive • Competitive

38. Respected but not liked • “So if you’re stern …or you say no, then the immediate reaction is to call that woman a bitch, fight? If you’re a man, it’s just a no.” • “’Well, you toasted that guy! You were aggressive!’ And they felt like I has gone a little bit too far.’” • “[T]hey can’t handle a woman who is forthright and who is not presenting herself as nice.” Sources: Focus groups; Bettis & Adams [under review]

39. Respected but not liked • “I remember…finally…disagreeing with people and realizing that people found that offensive sometimes. And that’s gotten worse.” • “You think highly of yourself, don’t you?” Sources: Bettis & Adams [under review]; confidential

40. Respected but not liked • “A male colleague wrote a hostile, nasty e-mail to me and copied all the faculty members in my department. He was not reprimanded. When I wrote an e-mail asking a colleague about data errors in a report, my department head read my message to the assembled faculty and said she would not tolerate such hostility in the workplace.” • “When men assert themselves, it’s quirky, funny or amusing. When a woman does it, it’s a temper.” Sources: Focus groups, Bettis & Adams [under review]

41. Double jeopardy • Stereotypes differ by race • White women • African-American women • Asian-American women (?) • Latina women (?)

42. Tightrope strategies • “If you have to choose between competent and nice, choose competent.” • Doormat nice v. gender-neutral considerate • “Do not call me nice!.. Because nice is a putdown. It’s to get you in your place.” • Stand your ground, with softeners • “Be relentlessly pleasant but ask for what you want” • Should we have to do this? Source: Bettis & Adams [under review]; Gender Bias Learning Project

43. Tightrope strategies • Strategies re anger • If possible, plan it • If you lose it, more contact is better than less • How you characterize it influences how people remember it • Strategies re self-promotion • The posse • The team

44. Gender wars: tomboys • “I’ve seen lots of women, senior women, behave that way. And even not just as far as the working long hours, but even adopting male mannerisms. I don’t know how to describe it, but sort of really aggressive and not putting up with any crap and almost having a chip on their shoulder and also going out of their way to not mentor young women…. [I]t usually turns out that they’re the worst.” • “My…mentors,…they’ve all been females outside my department....they’ve been very supportive.”

45. Gender wars: femmes • “…I’m on kind of a backlash mission almost….I wear dresses, I bake cookies for my group meetings, I bring my child to class with me…. I’ve just…stuck it out there and said…I’m a woman, I’m someone’s mother. And you get the whole package….[I]t is kind of a conscious choice on my part that I’m not going to compete as a boy because I’m not a boy.”

46. Gender wars: tokenism • “If you’re used to being the one woman, and you’ve had to be that much smarter and that much better, then all of a sudden…it’s almost like you can’t work with other women because you’re so used to being the ”only woman”

47. Mommy wars • Tomboys: played by the men’s rules • Ideal worker women • Childfree women: are mothers reinforcing stereotypes? • Childless women may ask: I played by the rules; I couldn’t have it all, why should she? • “Tired of children and breeders getting all the consideration all the time.” (Chronicle message board)

48. Gender wars signal bias • Gender wars are the result of gender discrimination, not proof that “this is not a gender problem”

49. Gender wars strategies • All women are disadvantaged by masculine norms • How to start a conversation • Not easy…

50. Conclusion • Bad things happen to successful people • Self-doubt and self-stereotyping • Resilience • The stream • And the terrier