Scholars have noted that while the preponderance of evidence shows that maternal employment has no adverse effect on young children’s development, maternal employment in the first year of life has been linked with lower cognitive development and behavior issues for some children. Several factors moderate these findings, ranging from the level of parental sensitivity to the quality of the care babies receive. See Jane Waldfogel, “Parental Work Arrangements and Child Development,” Canadian Public Policy 33, no. 2 (2007): 251–71.
Whether care is provided by a parent or another caregiver, studies consistently find that it is the quality of the caretaking that matters most. Children need to receive care that is sensitive and responsive to their particular needs. For a discussion, see Jane Waldfogel, What Children Need (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006).
26. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Findings for Children up to Age 4½ Years; National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Early Child Care and Research Network, “Fathers’ and Mothers’ Parenting Behavior and Beliefs as Predictors of Children’s Social Adjustment and Transition to School,” Journal of Family Psychology 18, no. 4 (2004): 628–38.
27. NICHD Early Child Care and Research Network, “Child-Care Effect Sizes,” 113.
28. A UK study of eleven thousand children revealed that the children who demonstrated the highest measures of well-being came from families in which both parents worked outside the home. Controlling for maternal education and household income, children from two-job families, especially girls, had the fewest number of behavioral difficulties, such as being hyperactive or feeling unhappy and worried. See Anne McMunn et al., “Maternal Employment and Child Socio-Emotional Behavior in the UK: Longitudinal Evidence from the UK Millennium Cohort Study,” Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health 66, no. 7 (2012): 1–6.
29. Robin W. Simon, “Gender, Multiple Roles, Role Meaning, and Mental Health,” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 36, no. 2 (1995): 182–94.
30. Marie C. Wilson, Closing the Leadership Gap: Add Women, Change Everything (New York: Penguin, 2007), 58.
31. Melanie Rudd, Jennifer Aaker, and Michael I. Norton, “Leave Them Smiling: How Small Acts Create More Happiness than Large Acts,” working paper (2011), http://faculty-gsb.stanford.edu/aaker/pages/documents/LeaveThemSmiling_RuddAakerNorton12–16–11.pdf.
32. Mary C. Curtis, “There’s More to Sheryl Sandberg’s Secret,” Washington Post, April 4, 2012, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-people/post/theres-more-to-sheryl-sandbergs-secret/2012/04/04/gIQAGhZsvS_blog.html.
10. LET’S START TALKING ABOUT IT
1. Gloria Steinem, “In Defense of the ‘Chick-Flick,’ ” Alternet, July 6, 2007, http://www.alternet.org/story/56219/gloria_steinem%3A_in_defense_of_the_‘chick_flick’.
2. Marianne Cooper, “The New F-Word,” Gender News, February 28, 2011, http://gender.stanford.edu/news/2011/new-f-word.
3. Susan Faludi, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women (New York: Crown, 1991).
4. Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008).
5. Corinne A. Moss-Racusin et al., “Science Faculty’s Subtle Gender Biases Favor Male Students,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 109, no. 41 (2012): 16474–79.
6. For a study on job applicants, see Rhea E. Steinpreis, Katie A. Anders, and Dawn Ritzke, “The Impact of Gender on the Review of Curricula Vitae of Job Applicants and Tenure Candidates: A National Empirical Study,” Sex Roles 41, nos. 7–8 (1999): 509–28. For a study on gender bias and scholarships, see Christine Wennerås and Agnes Wold, “Nepotism and Sexism in Peer Review,” Nature 387 (1997): 341–43. For the study on bias in orchestra tryouts, see Claudia Goldin and Cecilia Rouse, “Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of ‘Blind’ Auditions on Female Musicians,” The American Economic Review 90, no. 4 (2000): 715–41.
7. Economists Claudia Goldin and Cecilia Rouse examined the hiring practices among top orchestras in the United States and found that changing to blind auditions, in which judges could hear but not see the applicant, reduced discrimination against women. They estimate that the switch to blind auditions accounts for 30 percent of the increase in the proportion of women among new hires. See Goldin and Rouse, “Orchestrating Impartiality,” 715–41.
8. Emily Pronin, Thomas Gilovich, and Lee Ross, “Objectivity in the Eye of the Beholder: Divergent Perceptions of Bias in Self Versus Others,” Psychological Review 111, no. 3 (2004): 781–99; Emily Pronin, Daniel Y. Lin, and Lee Ross, “The Bias Blind Spot: Perceptions of Bias in Self Versus Others,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 28, no. 3 (2002): 369–81.
9. Eric Luis Uhlmann and Geoffrey L. Cohen, “Constructed Criteria: Redefining Merit to Justify Discrimination,” Psychological Science 16, no. 6 (2005): 474–80. Overall, this study found that when a man possessed a particular characteristic or trait, then that quality was rated as a more important hiring criterion than when he did not possess that quality. Even typically female qualities such as “being family oriented” or “having children” were rated as more important hiring criteria when a man had these qualities than when he did not. This kind of favoritism was not shown toward the female applicant. In fact, when it came to possessing a strong educational record, the study found a trend toward the reverse in that when a female applicant had a strong educational record that quality was rated as a less important hiring criterion then when she did not possess a strong educational record. However, this reversal trend did not reach statistical significance.
This study found that evaluators redefine hiring criteria for gender-stereotypical jobs to match the specific experiences and credentials that a candidate of the desired gender happens to possess. For the stereotypically male job of police chief, the male candidate was favored. But when the authors conducted the same kind of experiment for a stereotypically female job of women’s studies professor, the female applicant got a boost. In this case, having a strong record of public advocacy on women’s issues was rated an important hiring criterion when the female candidate had the strong record and not important when the female candidate did not have a strong record. No such favoritism was extended to the male candidate. Other research supports the idea that evaluators can subtly shift the criteria they base their hiring decision upon to the detriment of gender- or racial-atypical candidates. For example, a 2008 study by Phelan et al. examined the hiring criteria used to evaluate male and female agentic (highly competent, confident, ambitious) or communal (modest, sociable) managerial job applicants. The results found that evaluators “weighed competence more heavily than social skills for all applicants, with the exception of agentic women, whose social skills were given more weight than competence.” The authors conclude that “evaluators shifted the job criteria away from agentic women’s strong suit (competence) and toward their perceived deficit (social skills) to justify discrimination.”
Uhlmann and Cohen report that in the police chief experiment the pro-male bias was driven largely by the male evaluators. While both male and female evaluators tended to construct hiring criteria favorable to the male candidate, men exhibited this bias more. When it came to hiring evaluations, male evaluators gave more positive evaluations to the male applicant than to the identical female applicant, while women gave equivalent evaluations. In the women’s studies professor experiment the bias was driven by the female evaluators. It was the female evaluators, not the male evaluators, who redefined hiring criteria to the female applicant’s benefit and who favored the female candidate over the male candidate in hiring evaluations. Importantly, this study found that when evaluators were asked to commit to the hiring criteria that were important for a job before learning about the applica
nt’s gender, neither men nor women showed gender bias in their hiring evaluations. This finding suggests that to reduce discrimination, unambiguous standards of merit should be agreed upon prior to the review of job candidates.
This study illustrates that people can shift hiring criteria so that they fit with the experiences and credentials of the person (male or female) they would like to hire, particularly for gender-stereotypical jobs, thereby using “merit” to justify discrimination. Since those who felt most confident about their powers of objectivity showed the most bias in the police chief experiment, the authors suggest that this group 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” (p. 478). Due to time constraints, the authors did not assess self-perceived measures of objectivity in the women’s studies professor experiment. Also see Julie E. Phelan, Corinne A. Moss-Racusin, and Laurie A. Rudman, “Competent Yet Out in the Cold: Shifting Criteria for Hiring Reflect Backlash Toward Agentic Women,” Psychology of Women Quarterly 32, no. 4 (2008): 406–13. For more research showing that belief in one’s objectivity is linked with an increase in gender discrimination, see Eric Luis Uhlmann and Geoffrey L. Cohen, “ ‘I Think It, Therefore It’s True’: Effects of Self-Perceived Objectivity on Hiring Discrimination,” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 104, no. 2 (2007): 207–23.
10. Sreedhari D. Desai, Dolly Chugh, and Arthur Brief, “Marriage Structure and Resistance to the Gender Revolution in the Workplace,” Social Science Research Network (March 2012). http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2018259. This study also found that like men in traditional marriages, men in neotraditional marriages (men married to women who work part-time) were more likely than men in modern marriages to hold negative attitudes and beliefs about women in the workplace.
11. For a discussion of benevolent sexism, see Peter Glick and Susan T. Fiske, “The Ambivalent Sexism Inventory: Differentiating Hostile and Benevolent Sexism,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 70, no. 3 (1996): 491–512.
12. Melissa Korn, “Choice of Work Partner Splits Along Gender Lines,” Wall Street Journal, June 6, 2012, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303506404577448652549105934.html.
13. A 2012 report by Dow Jones found that successful, venture-backed start-ups have a higher median proportion of female executives (7.1 percent) compared to unsuccessful start-ups (3.1 percent). Likewise, Herring (2009) found that racial and gender diversity in business organizations were associated with positive performance outcomes like increased sales revenue and greater relative profits. However, Kochan et al. (2003) found no significant direct effects of gender or racial diversity on business outcomes. Since diverse teams have access to different perspectives, skill sets, and ways of approaching problems, they have the potential to outperform less diverse groups. Yet studies have found that this potential is often thwarted by issues of group process such as communication breakdowns, for example, the hesitancy among those in the minority to voice an opinion that differs from the majority. Thus, in order for diverse teams to thrive, organizations need to create environments that foster trust, social cohesion, and a tolerance for divergent viewpoints among team members. See Jessica Canning, Maryam Haque, and Yimeng Wang, Women at the Wheel: Do Female Executives Drive Start-Up Success?, Dow Jones and Company (September 2012), http://www.dowjones.com/collateral/files/WomenPE_report_final.pdf; Cedric Herring, “Does Diversity Pay? Race, Gender, and the Business Case for Diversity,” American Sociological Review 74, no. 2 (2009): 208–24; Elizabeth Mannix and Margaret A. Neale, “What Difference Makes a Difference? The Promise and Reality of Diverse Teams in Organizations,” Psychological Science in the Public Interest 6, no. 2 (2005): 31–55; and Thomas Kochan et al., “The Effects of Diversity on Business Performance: Report of the Diversity Research Network,” Human Resource Management 42, no. 1 (2003): 3–21.
14. Cynthia C. Hogan, e-mail message to the author, March 30, 2012.
15. Information about Harvard Business School’s efforts to create a more inclusive learning environment was provided to the author in discussions during a visit there on May 23, 2012.
16. Sean Alfano, “Poll: Women’s Movement Worthwhile,” CBS News, February 11, 2009, http://www.cbsnews.com/2100–500160_162–965224.html.
11. WORKING TOGETHER TOWARD EQUALITY
1. For analysis of the “rhetoric of choice,” or the pervasive belief that women, but not men, freely choose whether or not to work in spite of ideological, familial, and institutional obstacles that can prevent them from successfully combining work and family life, see David Cotter, Joan M. Hermsen, and Reeve Vanneman, “The End of the Gender Revolution? Gender Role Attitudes from 1977 to 2008,” American Journal of Sociology 117, no. 1 (2011): 259–89; Pamela Stone, Opting Out? Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007); and Joan Williams, Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What to Do About It (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
2. Professor Deborah H. Gruenfeld, discussion with the author, June 26, 2012.
3. Patricia Sellers, “New Yahoo CEO Mayer is Pregnant,” CNNMoney, July 16, 2012, http://postcards.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2012/07/16/mayer-yahoo-ceo-pregnant/.
4. “German Family Minister Slams Yahoo! CEO Mayer,” Spiegel Online International, August 1, 2012, http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-government-official-criticizes-yahoo-exec-for-short-maternity-leave-a-847739.html.
5. Kara Swisher, “Kara Swisher at Garage Geeks,” YouTube video, 9:33 minutes, posted by ayeletknoff, August 1, 2012, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFtdsRx2frI&feature=youtube.
6. For a discussion of how individual women are seen as representative of all women and how female scarcity leads to stereotyping, see Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Men and Women of the Corporation, 2nd ed. (New York: Basic Books, 1993).
7. The article “Sheryl Sandberg Is the Valley’s ‘It’ Girl—Just Like Kim Polese Once Was” can be found at the end of Eric Jackson, “Apology to Sheryl Sandberg and to Kim Polese [Updated],” Forbes, May 23, 2012, http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2012/05/23/apology-sheryl-sandberg-kim-polese/.
8. Kim Polese, “Stop Comparing Female Execs and Just Let Sheryl Sandberg Do Her Job,” Forbes, May 25, 2012, http://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinehoward/2012/05/25/stop-comparing-female-execs-and-just-let-sheryl-sandberg-do-her-job/.
9. Jackson, “Apology to Sheryl Sandberg and to Kim Polese [Updated].”
10. For a review of research related to the queen bee syndrome, see Belle Derks et al., “Gender-Bias Primes Elicit Queen Bee Behaviors in Senior Policewomen,” Psychological Science 22, no. 10 (2011): 1243–49; and Belle Derks et al., “Do Sexist Organizational Cultures Create the Queen Bee?,” British Journal of Social Psychology 50, no. 3 (2011): 519–35.
11. Elizabeth J. Parks-Stamm, Madeline E. Heilman, and Krystle A. Hears, “Motivated to Penalize: Women’s Strategic Rejection of Successful Women,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 34, no. 2 (2008): 237–47; Rocio Garcia-Retamero and Esther López-Zafra, “Prejudice Against Women in Male-Congenial Environments: Perceptions of Gender Role Congruity in Leadership,” Sex Roles 55, nos. 1–2 (2006): 51–61; David L. Mathison, “Sex Differences in the Perception of Assertiveness Among Female Managers,” Journal of Social Psychology 126, no. 5 (1986): 599–606; and Graham L. Staines, Carol Tavris, and Toby E. Jayaratne, “The Queen Bee Syndrome,” Psychology Today 7 (1974): 55–60.
12. Naomi Ellemers et al., “The Underrepresentation of Women in Science: Differential Commitment or the Queen Bee Syndrome?” British Journal of Social Psychology 43, no. 3 (2004): 315–38. Female professors from older ge
nerations, who rose to the top when there were more barriers to women’s advancement, held the most gender bias toward their female students. This finding suggests that queen bee behaviors are a consequence of gender discrimination.
13. Katherine Stroebe et al., “For Better or for Worse: The Congruence of Personal and Group Outcomes on Targets’ Responses to Discrimination,” European Journal of Social Psychology 39, no. 4 (2009): 576–91.
14. Madeleine K. Albright, Women in the World Summit, March 8, 2012, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/09/women-in-the-world-highlights-angelina-jolie-madeline-albright-more-video.html.
15. Derks et al., “Do Sexist Organizational Cultures Create the Queen Bee?,” 519–35; Robert S. Baron, Mary L. Burgess, and Chuan Feng Kao, “Detecting and Labeling Prejudice: Do Female Perpetrators Go Undetected?,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 17, no. 2 (1991): 115–23.
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