While men were more often assigned attributes such as analytical, competent, athletic and dependable, women were more often assigned compassionate, enthusiastic, energetic and organized. Our research on leadership attributes found significant differences in the assignment of 28 leadership attributes when applied to men and women. We found statistically significant gender differences in how often these terms (and others) were used (relative to the other positive or negative terms available for selection) when describing men and women - even though men’s and women’s performances were the same by more objective measures. At the other extreme, the most commonly used negative term to describe men was arrogant. The most commonly used positive term to describe men was analytical, while for women it was compassionate. This gives us a better idea of how gendered language is employed in leader evaluations. We also looked at which specific attributes were more often assigned to men and to women. However, the subjective evaluations provided a wealth of interesting findings.įor starters, in terms of sheer numbers of attributes, we found no gender difference in the number of positive attributes assigned, but women were assigned significantly more negative attributes. In our analysis we found no gender differences in objective measures (e.g., grades, fitness scores, class standing), which is consistent with prior research. The top-down enforcement of equal employment opportunity policies, hierarchical organization by military rank and not social status characteristics, and recent total gender integration in all occupations are hallmarks of meritocratic organizations where we might expect less gender bias in performance evaluations. For performance evaluations specifically, the military has long been predicated on meritocratic ideals of fairness and justice providing equal opportunity regardless of demographics. The military provides an interesting and significant setting to evaluate gender bias as it is a long-standing and traditionally male profession that has, over several decades, worked to eliminate formal gender segregation and discrimination. We analyzed a large-scale military dataset (over 4,000 participants and 81,000 evaluations) to examine objective and subjective performance measures that included a list of 89 positive and negative leadership attributes that were used to assess leader performance in a military leadership setting. Club also refers to a group of people, but this word has a more positive connotation because a club is a collection of people that voluntarily come together for a shared passion or purpose.We like to think of ourselves as unbiased and objective in our employment decisions, but with two equal candidates, who are you going to promote? Someone who is described in their performance evaluations as analytical or someone who is described as compassionate? On the other end of the employment spectrum, if you’re downsizing and have to fire someone and the two people in jeopardy are very similar, who are you going to fire? Someone perceived as arrogant or someone perceived as inept? Leadership attributions in performance evaluations are powerful.Ī unique and fascinating data set allowed us to explore the language used to describe individuals in subjective performance evaluations and provides evidence that, as we suspected, language in performance evaluations is applied differently to describe men and women.The use of this term suggests criminal activity and/or violent behavior. Gang is defined as an organized group, but it has very negative connotations.This word should be used carefully: If you want to be thought of as a welcoming group, the negative connotation of this word will turn people off! This is because "clique" is typically used in circumstances where the group is known for excluding others. Clique also means a group of people, but it carries a negative connotation.It does not inspire either positive or negative feelings. The word simply describes a number of people. Each of these words has a different connotative meaning, however. All four have basically the same denotative meaning: a set of more than one person. As another example, consider the words group, clique, club, and gang.
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