Delusions of Gender

by Cordelia Fine

  The women certainly found the article threatening, and put some effort towards challenging its findings and conclusions. But it still had an effect on them. Women who read the nonthreatening article identified equally with feminine characteristics believed to be both relevant and irrelevant to maths-related careers. But the women who had read the Science article about maths and gender identified less with female characteristics regarded as a liability in quantitative domains. Parts of their identity were being hurled overboard in an attempt to remain afloat in male-dominated waters. If these are particularly cherished parts of the self-concept that must be abandoned then, in the end, the woman may prefer for the boat to sink.

  The behaviour of colleagues may also sometimes make it harder to keep female and work identities compatible in male-dominated domains. The recent Athena Factor report conducted by the Center for Work-Life Policy found that a quarter of women in corporate engineering and technology jobs thought that their colleagues believed their sex to be intrinsically inferior in scientific aptitude. ‘[M]y opinions and reasoning are always questioned, “Are you sure about that?”’ complained one focus group participant, ‘whereas what the men say is taken as gospel.’ The focus groups of the Athena report told tale after tale with a common theme: female engineers whom men assumed were administrative assistants; senior women assumed to be the most junior person in the room; double takes in the meeting room at the sight of a woman.28 In reaction to the Athena report, a woman in a senior engineering position blogged that ‘[m]any of our clients think I’m in the meetings to take notes for the men … some even apologise for boring me with the technical discussions, assuming I have no idea what they’re talking about.’29 It’s not hard to see that these sorts of attitudes and assumptions could not only rapidly become rather tiresome but also chip away at women’s sense of belonging. Echoing Emily Pronin and her colleagues’ discovery that mathematically inclined women shed the feminine attributes they perceived as a liability, the Athena report sketches a disquieting picture of the psychological changes that take place in women who remain in SET careers. For the easiest solution to the problem of being female in a setting in which women are made to feel that they are inferior and do not belong is to become as unfeminine as possible. At the most superficial level, makeup, jewellery and skirts – icons of femininity that draw attention to their wearer’s femininity – were rarely in evidence, the researchers noted. The women also took up antifemale attitudes, denigrating other women as emotional, and ‘heaped scorn’ on women-focused programmes and any work-related gatherings dominated by women. ‘By definition nothing important is going on in this room: In this company men hold the power’, was how one female engineer explained her policy of avoiding female work gatherings. The awful, intractable incompatibility of being a woman in a male-dominated SET workplace was starkly encapsulated by one woman quoted in the report who described how, more and more, she had developed a ‘discomfort with being a woman.’30

  As the arguments that women lack the necessary intrinsic talent to succeed in male-dominated occupations become less and less convincing, the argument that women are just less interested has grown and flourished.31 Yet as we’ve seen in this chapter, interest is not impervious to outside influence, at least in the young adult samples with which most of this research is done. It is remarkably easy to adjust the shine of a career path for one sex. A few words to the effect that a Y chromosome will serve in your favour, or a sprucing up of the interior design, is all that it takes to bring about surprisingly substantial changes in career interest. Having seen what effect on career interests a simple, brief manipulation in the lab can have, one can’t help but wonder at the cumulative influence of that giant, inescapable social psychology lab known as life. The existing gender inequality of occupations, the sexist ads, the opinions of presidents of high-profile universities, not to mention all the ‘brain facts’ that we’ll get to later – these all interact with, and shape, our minds.

  And then, there are people in our lives whose minds, just like ours, are richly endowed with implicit and explicit attitudes about gender. The tilting of the playing field that their half-changed minds and behaviour create, as we’ll see in the final few chapters of this part of the book, are still an important part of the half-changed world.

  In her book Scientists Anonymous, Patricia Fara describes how, around the turn of the nineteenth century, botanist Jeanne Baret and mathematician Sophie Germain were obliged to present themselves as men to carry out their research.1 Unlike Baret, today’s female biologists do not have to pretend to be men to carry out fieldwork. Nor do contemporary female mathematicians need to employ Germain’s subterfuge, studying by correspondence under cover of a male identity. Yet even today, the evidence suggests that it would be a shrewd career move for a woman to disguise herself as a man. People who have transformed their identity in this way – namely, female-to-male transsexuals – report decidedly beneficial consequences in the workplace. Ben Barres is a professor of neurobiology at Stanford University, and a female-to-male transsexual. In an article in Nature he recalls that ‘[s]hortly after I changed sex, a faculty member was heard to say “Ben Barres gave a great seminar today, but then his work is much better than his sister’s.”’2 Similar stories cropped up in a recent interview study of twenty-nine female-to-male transsexuals. Kirsten Schilt, a Research Fellow at Houston’s Rice University, interviewed the men about their work experiences both before and after their transition from women to men. Her study reveals that many immediately enjoyed greater recognition and respect. Thomas, an attorney, related how a colleague praised the boss for getting rid of Susan, whom he regarded as incompetent. He then added that the ‘new guy’, Thomas, was ‘just delightful’ – not realising, of course, that Thomas and Susan were one and the same. Roger, in retail, found that now that he is a man people bypass his female boss and beeline straight to him with their questions. Paul, continuing his work in secondary education, suddenly found himself being continually called upon in meetings to offer his newly valuable opinions. And several blue-collar workers reported that work is a great deal easier since transition.3

  As Barres rightly acknowledges, anecdotes are not data. But these insights from the experiences of people who have lived on both sides of the gender divide offer an intriguing glimpse into the possibility that a person’s talents in the workplace are easier to recognise when that person is male. Empirical research points to the same conclusion.

  First, there are experimental studies showing that men’s qualifications, talents, and achievements shine brighter and provide a better fit with the demands of a nonfeminine job – even when identical to those of a woman.4 For example, in one recent study more than 100 university psychologists were asked to rate the CVs of Dr. Karen Miller or Dr. Brian Miller, fictitious applicants for an academic tenure-track job. The CVs were identical, apart from the name. Yet strangely, the male Dr. Miller was perceived (by both male and female reviewers) to have better research, teaching and service experience than the luckless female Dr. Miller. Overall, about three-quarters of the psychologists thought that Dr. Brian was hireable, while only just under half had the same confidence in Dr. Karen.5 The same researchers also sent out applications for the position of tenured professor, again identical but for the male and female name at the top. This time, the application was so strong that most of the raters thought that tenure was deserved, regardless of sex. However, the endorsement of Karen’s application was four times more likely to be accompanied by cautionary caveats scrawled in the margins of the questionnaire: such as, ‘I would need to see evidence that she had gotten these grants and publications on her own’ and ‘We would have to see her job talk’.6

  A meta-analysis of the employment prospects of so-called paper people (fictitious job applicants evaluated in the lab) found that, overall, men are indeed rated more favourably than identical women for masculine jobs (while participants are biased against paper men applying for stereotypically feminine jobs, like s
ecretarial work or teaching home economics).7 What is the problem for women seeking a job outside the ‘pink ghettos’ of secretarial work, teaching and health? One possibility is the ‘lack of fit’ between the communal stereotype of women and demanding professional roles. As one of the leading researchers in this area, New York University’s Madeline Heilman, has explained:

  Essential to understanding how the female gender stereotype can obstruct women from advancing up the organizational hierarchy is the realization that top management and executive level jobs are almost always considered to be ‘male’ in sex-type. They are thought to require an achievement-oriented aggressiveness and an emotional toughness that is distinctly male in character and antithetical to both the stereotyped view of what women are like and the stereotype-based norms specifying how they should behave.8

  In other words, both the descriptive (‘women are gentle’) and the prescriptive (‘women should be gentle’) elements of gender stereotypes create a problem for ambitious women. Without any intention of bias, once we have categorised someone as male or female, activated gender stereotypes can then colour our perception. When the qualifications for the job include stereotypically male qualities, this will serve to disadvantage women (and vice versa). In one classic study, Monica Biernat and Diane Kobrynowicz gave undergraduates a job description and a candidate résumé.9 For every participant, the job description was identical except for the job title: either executive secretary or executive chief of staff. (Of course, the latter was intended to come across as more masculine, higher status and better paid.) Each participant also received the same résumé, except some evaluated Kenneth Anderson and the remainder evaluated Katherine Anderson. These evaluations revealed a favouring of, and greater confidence in, female secretaries and male chiefs of staff.10

  The lack-of-fit bias may act particularly strongly against mothers. Using the cover story that a start-up communications company was looking for a head for its marketing department, sociologist Shelley Correll and colleagues found that, compared with paper nonmothers, identical paper mother applicants were rated about 10 percent less competent, 15 percent less committed to the workplace and worthy of $11,000 less salary. Moreover, only 47 percent of mothers, compared with 84 percent of nonmothers were recommended for hire.11 One only hopes that the little paper children are worth the career sacrifice. As a follow-up, over the course of eighteen months Correll and her colleagues sent out a total of 1,276 fictitious résumés and cover letters for real marketing and business jobs advertised in the press. Each employer was sent two applications from two equally qualified applicants. They were both the same sex (sometimes both male, other times both female), but only one was identifiable as a parent. (The researchers counterbalanced which applicant was the parent.) Then the researchers sat back and waited to see who got the most callbacks from the potential employers. While parenthood served as no disadvantage at all to men, there was evidence of a substantial ‘motherhood penalty’. Mothers received only half as many callbacks as their identically qualified childless counterparts. Ongoing research is investigating whether these days it is especially mothers who are discriminated against.12

  While stereotypes can distort our perception of others, they are not so powerful that they can blind us to actual evidence that a female candidate has the necessary confidence, independence and ambition to succeed in leadership roles. Now, however, the female candidate comes up against the prescriptive part of the gender stereotype:

  There is no form of human excellence before which we bow with profounder deference than that which appears in a delicate woman, adorned with the inward graces and devoted to the peculiar duties of her sex; and there is no deformity of human character from which we turn with deeper loathing than from a woman forgetful of her nature, and clamorous for the vocation and rights of men.13

  Though professor of mathematics, lawyer, and political writer A. T. Bledsoe uttered the words above in 1856, there is still a residual unease – both conscious and implicit – with women in positions of power.14 When women display the necessary confidence in their skills and comfort with power, they run the risk of being regarded as ‘competent but cold’: the bitch, the ice queen, the iron maiden, the ballbuster, the battle axe, the dragon lady … The sheer number of synonyms is telling. Put bluntly, we don’t like the look of self-promotion and power on a woman. In experimental studies, women who behave in an agentic fashion experience backlash: they are rated as less socially skilled, and thus less hireable for jobs that require people skills as well as competence than are men who behave in an identical fashion. And yet if women don’t show confidence, ambition and competitiveness then evaluators may use gender stereotypes to fill in the gaps, and assume that these are important qualities she lacks. Thus, the alternative to being competent but cold is to be regarded as ‘nice but incompetent’.15 This catch-22 positions women who seek leadership roles on a ‘tightrope of impression management’.16 In February 2006, the chairman of the Republican National Committee claimed that Hillary Clinton was too angry to be elected president. As Maureen Dowd noted in the New York Times, the ‘gambit handcuffs Hillary: If she doesn’t speak out strongly against President Bush, she’s timid and girlie. If she does, she’s a witch and a shrew.’ In an empirical investigation of this damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t situation for women leaders, Victoria Brescoll and Eric Uhlmann found that while expressing anger often enhances men’s status and competency in the eyes of others, it can be very costly to women in terms of how they are perceived.17

  Motherhood, by the way, serves to upset an already delicate balance. Students rated a childless professional woman as more competent than warm, but an identical working mother as more warm than competent. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the working mother was thus also regarded as less valuable, less likely to be promoted and less worthy of training.18 Suspiciously, this penalising of working mothers was justified by some as being ‘because she telecommutes’, even though telecommuting was of no concern whatsoever when performed by childless women and men, or fathers.

  Rutgers University psychologist Laurie Rudman and her colleagues have recently discovered that what people find particularly objectionable in professional women are status enhancing behaviours like being aggressive, dominating and intimidating. For instance, in one study students read a letter of recommendation for an academic applying for promotion to English professor.19 The fictional candidate was superb, an internationally renowned and highly intelligent author and literary critic. To this information it was added either that the applicant’s style of literary criticism was tactful or ruthless. And, as you have already guessed, in one version of the letter the applicant was female (Dr. Emily Mullen) and, in the other, male (Edward). The tactful versions of Emily and Edward were equally well liked and rated equally hireable. However, the ruthless version of Edward was considered significantly more likeable and hireable than his female counterpart. The pitiless Emily was less hireable because she was disliked, and she was disliked because she was seen as more intimidating, dominant and ruthless than the identical Edward.

  Of course, student participants in a laboratory experiment know that their humble opinions of candidates have no consequence for that person’s career. They also do not face the prospect of having to confess, under probing by a hiring committee, that ‘I just didn’t like her.’ But other lab experiments show how a man can be rated as more suitable for a masculine job simply by virtue of his maleness, but in apparently legitimate fashion. If, for example, you were recruiting for the position of manager in a construction company, what would you think was more important: experience or education? Michael Norton and his colleagues made up applications in which one of the two strongest candidates had better educational qualifications but less industry experience, while the other strong candidate had experience but a less impressive educational background. When the sex of the participant wasn’t mentioned (probably most people assumed that both applicants were male), 76 percent of male undergraduates s
trongly preferred a better-educated candidate over one with more industry experience. Likewise, three-quarters of participants preferred a better-educated male candidate over a female candidate with more industry experience. In a fair and equal world, then, the better-educated female candidate would enjoy the same advantage over a lesser-educated, highly experienced male competitor. But she doesn’t. Only 43 percent chose her. But this wasn’t prejudice, you understand; or, at least, not of the conscious variety. After they ranked the candidates, the participants were asked to write down why they made the choice they did and the most important factor in their decision. Education was considered far more important when possessed to a greater degree by a male, rather than female, candidate. Yet even though gender clearly was influencing the evaluations, almost none of the participants mentioned it as a factor in their decision making.20

  In a similar study conducted at Yale University, undergraduate participants were offered the opportunity to use the same kind of casuistry to maintain the occupational status quo. The students evaluated one of two applicants (Michael or Michelle) for the position of police chief. One applicant was streetwise, a tough risk-taker, popular with other officers, but poorly educated. By contrast, the educated applicant was well schooled, media savvy, and family oriented, but lacked street experience and was less popular with the other officers. The undergraduate participants judged the job applicant on various streetwise and education criteria, and then rated the importance of each criterion for success as a police chief. Participants who rated Michael inflated the importance of being an educated, media-savvy family man when these were qualities Michael possessed, but devalued these qualities when he happened to lack them. No such helpful shifting of criteria took place for Michelle. As a consequence, regardless of whether he was streetwise or educated, the demands of the social world were shaped to ensure that Michael had more of what it took to be a successful police chief. As the authors put it, participants may have ‘felt that they had chosen the right man for the job, when in fact they had chosen the right job criteria for the man.’21 Ironically, the people who were most convinced of their own objectivity discriminated the most. Although self-reported endorsement of sexist attitudes didn’t predict hiring bias, self-reported objectivity in decision making did.