Qualities that are traditionally thought of as
“feminine” -- communicative, kind, and agreeable --
could be working against women in the workplace, even in this day
and age.
A study of recommendation letters for men and women applying to the
same position found drastic differences in the way they were
described, and those differences may hurt a woman’s chance of
being hired or promoted.
Researchers reviewed 624 letters of recommendation for 194
applicants for eight junior faculty positions at a U.S. university.
They found that letter writers conformed to traditional gender
schemas when describing candidates.
Female candidates were described in more communal (social or
emotive) terms and male candidates in more agentic (active or
assertive) terms.
Words in the communal category included adjectives such as affectionate, helpful, kind, sympathetic, nurturing, tactful, and agreeable, and behaviors such as helping others, taking direction well and maintaining relationships.
Agentic adjectives included words such as confident, aggressive, ambitious, dominant, forceful, independent, daring, outspoken and intellectual, and behaviors such as speaking assertively, influencing others and initiating tasks.
“Communal characteristics mediate the relationship between gender and hiring decisions in academia, which suggests that gender norm stereotypes can influence hireability ratings of applicants,” Martin adds.
The researchers also rated the strength of the letters, or the likelihood the candidate would be hired based on the letter.
They removed names and personal pronouns from the letters and asked faculty members to evaluate them.
The researchers controlled for such variables as the number of years candidates were in graduate school, the number of papers they had published, the number of publications on which they were the lead author, the number of honors they received, the number of years of postdoctoral education, the position applied for and the number of courses taught.
A follow-up study funded by the National Institutes of Health is under way and includes applicants for faculty and research positions at medical schools.
In the new study, enough applicants and positions will be included so that the researchers can use the actual decisions of search committees to determine the influence of letters’ communal and agentic terms in the hiring decisions.
The “pipeline shortage of women” in academia is a well-known and researched phenomenon, but this study is the first of its kind to examine the recommendation letter’s role in contributing to the disparity and evaluate it using inferential statistics and objective measures.
It’s also the first study to show that gender differences in letters actually affect judgments of hireability.
“This research not only has important implications for women in academia but also for women in management and leadership roles,” says study co-author Michelle Hebl, professor of psychology and management. “A large body of research suggests that communality is not perceived to be congruent with leadership and managerial jobs.”
The research team also notes that letter writers included more doubt raisers when recommending women, using phrases such as, “She might make an excellent leader” versus what they used for male candidates, “He is already an established leader.”
“Subtle gender discrimination continues to be rampant,” Hebl says. “And it’s important to acknowledge this because you cannot remediate discrimination until you are first aware of it. Our and other research shows that even small differences—and in our study, the seemingly innocuous choice of words—can act to create disparity over time and experiences.”
The work was funded by the National Science Foundation and details of the study are reported in the Journal of Applied Psychology.
