Apart from gender bias, what other factor can be best attributed to the women's lack of progress in the professional world?
Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.
Women's lack of progress in academe is well documented: in its 1999-2000 report, the AAUP's Committee on the Economic Status of the Profession found "sinking evidence of a distorted gender distribution by rank." Women are more likely than men to end up in low-paid, non-tenure-track positions that are often a dead end. Women who do manage to secure tenure-track jobs are less likely than men to be at four-year colleges; those at four-year institutions are less likely to be at highly ranked research universities. Why?
Part of the problem is gender bias, of two different types. The more familiar is the "glass ceiling" that prevents successful women from reaching the summit of their professions. What exactly is the glass ceiling? Usually, it is defined demographically by documenting the dearth of women at the top. That is why there is a dearth of women, when most academics-men as well as women-see themselves as committed to gender equality. Little information exists to help academic administrators who are determined to give women a fair shake.
In addition, many women never get near the glass ceiling because of the "maternal wall," a type of gender bias I described in a 2004 article in Employee Rights and Employment Policy Law Review. Like the glass ceiling, the maternal wall is documented demographically by showing the dearth of mothers in desirable faculty jobs. Women who have children soon after receiving their PhDs are much less likely to achieve tenure than men who have children at the same point in their careers. About 45 percent of tenured women are childless, according to University of California, Berkeley, Dean Mary Ann Mason, whose article with UC Berkeley researcher Marc Goulden appears elsewhere in this issue. The high percentage of women without children may well be linked to "bias avoidance": the attempt to avoid the maternal wall by deferring or avoiding having children, as documented in economist Robert Drago's important work.
Again, demographic documentation of the maternal wall gives well-meaning administrators little guidance on how it arises. Depressing demography does not give much guidance on how to avoid more depressing demography in the future. This article does. It describes, in lay terms, the patterns of stereotyping and gender bias that create the glass ceiling and the maternal wall. Drawing on a review of over one hundred studies, it presents the latest findings of empirical social psychology in readily usable form.
The "commonsense" view of stereotyping is of an employer who misuses demography by assuming, for example, that because mothers as a group cut back their hours after they have kids, a particular woman will do so. Economists call this thinking "statistical discrimination"; social psychologists call it "descriptive stereotyping." When an employer disadvantages women by assuming they will conform to a stereotype, "cognitive bias" is often involved. The term refers to the insight that much bias-based on gender, race, and other social categories-stems from the ways in which stereotypes shape perception, memory, and inferences.
Another kind of stereotyping, described by business school professor Diana Burgess and social psychologist Eugene Dorgida is "prescriptive stereotyping." Such stereotyping doesn't just assume stereotypical behavior; it tries to require it. In one case, Bailey v. Scott-Gallaher, Inc., an employer fired an employee who sought to return from maternity leave on the grounds that mothers should stay at home until their children are grown.
Stereotypes often produce relatively small differences, but they add up over time. According to social psychologist Virginia Valian, "Success is largely the accumulation of advantage, exploiting small gains to get bigger ones." One experiment by Valian set up a model that built in a tiny bin in favor of promoting men; after a while, 65 percent of top-level employees were male. Conversely, the "accumulation of disadvantage" for women creates very real job detriments.
The glass ceiling is composed of two different patterns. One makes it harder for women to be perceived as competent. Women's successful performance tends to be more closely scrutinized, and assessed by stricter standards than men's. Men also have to give more convincing demonstrations of incompetence to be judged incompetent overall, according to social psychologist Martha Foschi.
Women's struggle to establish competence is exacerbated both by the exercise of discretion and in the way that supposedly objective rules are applied. Studies by Marilyn Brewer have shown that when applying objective rules, men tend to create exceptions for men or to give them "the benefit of the doubt," a pattern called "leniency bias." To quote Brewer, "Coldly objective judgment seems to be reserved for members of out groups." For example, a search committee may require "all candidates" to have their dissertations completed, only to waive this requirement for a young man who comes with the "right recommendations" and "shows great promise." Indeed, social psychologists have documented that men tend to be judged on whether they show promise, whereas women in similar circumstances are often judged strictly on what they have actually accomplished.
Kay Deaux and Kim Emswiller have also shown that people tend to attribute their own behavior, or that of their in group, to stable causes, while they attribute the behavior of out groups to situational causes: he's brilliant, but she just got lucky. This tendency is called "attribution bias."
In addition, facts that fit a given stereotype are more accurately recalled than facts that do not, a pattern called "recall bias." Members of an in group are more likely to recall undesirable behavior committed by members of an out group than by in-group members. As a result, women professionals may have to try harder than men to be perceived as competent because their mistakes are remembered long after men's are forgotten.