Watch Out for These 3 Gender Biases in Performance Reviews

Three kinds of bias often creep into the performance-review process, in ways that disproportionately affect women, especially when they choose to take advantage of the flexibility offered by hybrid and remote work. These biases are experience bias, which leads reviewers to overvalue tasks that are easy to define; proximity bias, which leads them to think that people in their immediate orbit do the most important … [ Read more ]

Gender Pay Gap: Valuing Women’s Work

A new study published in Nature Human Behaviour sheds light on the role of within-job pay differences in the gender pay gap.

Research: How Ranking Performance Can Hurt Women

When it comes to gender equity in the workplace, many organizations focus largely on hiring more women. But to achieve more equitable representation, it’s also critical to examine disparities in how employees are evaluated and promoted once they’re on board. In this piece, the authors discuss their recent research on this topic, which found that competitive evaluation systems in which employees are ranked against one … [ Read more ]

How to Advance Gender Diversity in the Workplace

Gender diversity can be a profound business challenge —or a source of competitive advantage. But it’s not women who need to change. It’s the workplace.

Author Talks: Flex Your ‘No Muscle’

Nonpromotable work profoundly affects women’s careers and lives. In her new book, Lise Vesterlund explains why women so often agree to it—and how they can say no.

Glass Ceiling Debate: He Said, She Didn’t

Some biases are so subtle neither gender may be aware of them, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

One is the Loneliest Number

Put an end to the costly workplace isolation experienced by many women by clustering them on teams and improving the promotion process.

How Women Rise: Helping Women Change the Behaviors that Get in Their Way

It’s not surprising that many of the behaviors that hold men and women back would be different. After all, women often have very different experiences at work. And experience shapes habits and responses. Familiar habits and responses may feel intrinsic, like part of who you are. But they are not you; they are you on autopilot. Bringing them to conscious awareness is the first step … [ Read more ]

10 Ways to Mitigate Bias in Your Company’s Decision Making

If your company is like most, you’re likely struggling with workplace discrimination, even if you don’t know it. Equity gaps remain a pernicious problem in the U.S., particularly for women and people of color, who, on average, earn less and are under-promoted compared to their white or male counterparts. And though federal law has prohibited workplace discrimination for more than fifty years, those gaps don’t … [ Read more ]

Changing the Game for Women

Increasing the number of women at every level of an organization is possible if its leaders are ready to use practical solutions.

How Women Manage the Gendered Norms of Leadership

A wealth of research shows that female leaders, much more than their male counterparts, face the need to be warm and nice (what society traditionally expects from women), as well as competent or tough (what society traditionally expects from men and leaders). The problem is that these qualities are often seen as opposites. This creates a “catch-22” and “double bind” for women leaders.

To alleviate this … [ Read more ]

How Women Can Succeed by Rethinking Old Habits

Everyone has self-limiting behaviors; this is simply part of being human. But our combined six decades of professional experience coaching and working with women in virtually every sector have taught us that even women at the highest levels can undermine themselves with specific self-sabotaging behaviors that are different from those that most frequently undermine men.

Expertise, connections, and personal authority are all non-positional kinds of power … [ Read more ]

Women in the Workplace 2017

More companies are committing to gender equality. But progress will remain slow unless we confront blind spots on diversity—particularly regarding women of color, and employee perceptions of the status quo.

Women Matter: Ten Years of Insights on Gender Diversity

A decade into our research, we highlight key findings—and invite 16 global leaders to look at how to increase gender diversity in corporations and imagine the inclusive company of the future.

This Might Help Explain Why Corporate Boards Are Still an Old Boy’s Club

Companies with the highest percentage of female directors have been shown to outperform on return on equity, return on sales and return on invested capital. They pay less to gobble up other firms. They have lower stock price volatility. And those with more women at the top have even been shown to have fewer governance controversies, such as bribery and fraud. Yet according to a … [ Read more ]

Here’s How to Wield Empathy and Data to Build an Inclusive Team

When Ciara Trinidad left her post as Lever’s Head of Diversity and Inclusion, the numbers made her understandably proud: The startup’s team of 125 people was 59% women, 39% men, and 2% gender nonconforming. Even the sales team — historically a male-dominated group — had a 50/50 gender split. “The product team was at about 40% white; the majority was a mix of every other … [ Read more ]

Research: Objective Performance Metrics Are Not Enough to Overcome Gender Bias

In various contexts, such as entrepreneurship and hiring, people often exhibit a preference for men over women when information about an individual’s quality (for example, their expected performance) is unavailable or unclear. Even when performance information is available, lab-based research has shown that women still tend to be disadvantaged, compared with men of equal quality. This double standard means women must outperform men to be … [ Read more ]

A Study Used Sensors to Show That Men and Women Are Treated Differently at Work

Gender equality remains frustratingly elusive. Women are underrepresented in the C-suite, receive lower salaries, and are less likely to receive a critical first promotion to manager than men. Numerous causes have been suggested, but one argument that persists points to differences in men and women’s behavior.

Which raises the question: Do women and men act all that differently? We realized that there’s little to no concrete … [ Read more ]

How to Keep Perceived Bias from Holding Back High-Potential Employees

When talented people from diverse backgrounds fail to rise in a company, there are three powerful solutions: having more inclusive team leaders, more diversity among the top leadership, and better sponsorship practices.