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Growing up, being female never felt like a disadvantage. Both
of my parents worked and maintained the household, I didn’t have any brothers
to create comparisons, and I was in classes with smart motivated students of
both genders. The year I entered college was the first year that there were
more females in college than males. Gender comparisons just weren’t part of my
everyday experience. To be honest, I had little awareness that there could be
any type of glass ceiling for me because of my gender. What does any of this
have to do with applying for jobs? Well, in an attempt to prepare myself for
job applications, I scoured the internet for helpful resources. One of the
articles that I came across described research showing that letters of
recommendation tend to highlight different traits for men and women, differences
that is seems may actually put women at a disadvantage for getting the job.
What the authors found was that letter writers tend to use different adjectives when describing men and women, and the adjectives that are used more often for women may make them less hireable. Women, they found, are more often described in communal terms, terms such as helpful, kind, sympathetic, agreeable, interpersonal, warm. In contrast, men are more often described in agentic terms, terms such as assertive, ambitious, daring, outspoken, independent, intellectual. Professors who rated the hireability of hundreds of applicants based solely on their letters of recommendation tended to rate applicants as less hireable when they were described more often in communal terms (helpful, kind). Since women tend to be described this way, it puts them at a disadvantage. And for jobs in which communal traits are desirable (caregiving professions, for example), I could see men findings themselves at a disadvantage.
I know that women are seen as more communal, so I had to
think for a bit on why these findings were so surprising to me. I think it is
because I imagine that everyone has the same goal when writing a letter of
recommendation for a candidate – to show them in the best possible light. And I
never considered that the “best light” would be different for men and women. So
I wonder what is behind this difference. I doubt it is a conscious, strategic
difference. Are women overwhelmingly more communal than men, and men more
agentic, so these are the personality traits that spring to mind when writing
letters? Are letter writers fulfilling some gender stereotype, believing that employers
will want to hire women who are more communal and men who are more agentic, so
these are the traits they choose to emphasize? I just keep coming back to the
same point - it is the same job application with the same specification, so why
would there be any difference? And if there are differences here, what other
gender biases have I been missing throughout the years?
A final note: It turns out that the research was done on
letters of recommendation written for applicants to psychology positions at a top research university (double gulp). I am not sure that there is a clear cut set of ideal traits for a psychology
professor. I wonder if we would find these same gender
differences in letters written for jobs in which the desired traits are very
unambiguous (for example, corporate shark, social worker).
Even after writing this post, I still not quite sure what to
make of these findings. I would love to hear what you readers think might be
driving these effects!
Madera JM, Hebl MR, & Martin RC (2009). Gender and letters of recommendation for academia: agentic and communal differences. The Journal of applied psychology, 94 (6), 1591-9 PMID: 19916666
I have an exercise which I use with people.
ReplyDeleteGive me three adjectives that describe a good man.
Now three adjectives that describe a good woman.
If they aren't the same, you are part of the problem.
Interesting! How often do people give the same versus difference answers?
DeleteUnfortunately, the answers are almost always different. The one that crops up most in common is "honest."
DeleteI'm a woman and, after reading this, i'm happy to know that one of my professors described me as "studious and ambitious" in a recommendation letter.
ReplyDelete