How To Navigate Successfully Through Workplaces Shaped By Subtle Bias

Gender bias falls into four distinct patterns. 1) Prove-it-again!: women have to provide more evidence of competence to be seen as equally competent; 2) Tightrope: Women have to behave in traditionally masculine ways (direct, commanding, ambitious) to be seen as go-getters—but women are expected to be feminine. Often women find themselves walking a tightrope between being seen as too feminine to be competent or too masculine to be likable. 3) Maternal wall: Motherhood triggers strong negative competence and commitment assumptions. 4) Tug of War: Gender bias fuels conflict among women, for example when women receive the message that there’s room for only one woman at the top. My interviews with 127 women (over 60 of them in STEM) show how these biases play out in everyday workplace interactions—and the strategies successful women have used to navigate workplaces shaped by subtle bias.

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