Achieving Gender Balanced Leadership

Unconscious beliefs about ‘brilliance’
limit women’s careers.

The paucity of women in STEM (Science, Technology, Mathematics and Engineering) has been noted for many years. It has a significant impact on the diversity of talent available for senior leadership roles, and reduces career options for girls and women.

An intriguing article published in Science in January this year nuances our understanding of why fewer girls study science and women make it their careers. The article’s proposition is that women and girls are not just under-represented in STEM, but in any discipline that focuses on 'brilliance' or raw talent as a key predictor of success in the field.

Women are well represented in some STEM areas, but not others. In the US in molecular biology and neuroscience, women have recently earned about half of all PhDs while in the areas of physics and computer sciences, around 20%. Contrast that with arts disciplines, and the same mixed pattern emerges: women have recently earned over 70% of PhDs in arts history and psychology, but fewer than 35% in the areas of philosophy and economics.

The research found that the factor that differentiates women’s representation in both science and arts fields is the extent to which those fields emphasize raw talent as necessary for success. Women are under-represented in those fields. In fields well represented by women, other qualities like dedication and hard work were emphasized.

The key finding of the research was that in disciplines that emphasize raw talent, academics were more likely to endorse the idea that women were less suited to high-level scholarly work, they considered themselves less welcoming to women, and representation of women in the PhD cohort was lower.

Identical results were found when the focus was on African Americans, but not Asian Americans. (In the US at least, Asian women choose physical science majors at similar rates to white men, at nearly twice the rate of white women, and half as much as Asian men.)

What the research showed did not affect the rate at which women entered fields of study:

A difference in how men and women value effort – they give it the same weight,
Weaker applicant pools where there is higher female representation – there was no evidence of a lack of ‘raw talent’ for those fields dominated by women,
Number of hours worked – there was no difference in how many hours males and females worked.

While there is some controversy as to whether there are objectively measurable differences in men's and women's intelligence, unconscious beliefs play a role in downplaying women's intellectual capability. Research on implicit beliefs about intelligence consistently shows that when parents estimate their children's intelligence, they rate their sons significantly higher than their daughters, and men self-rate their intelligence significantly higher than women self-rate their intelligence.

What’s the impact? Characterizing brilliance as a prerequisite for success in a chosen discipline results in the discipline being less attractive to women, fewer invitations are extended to women to join the discipline, fewer women apply, fewer women make it their career, and fewer women become role models to others.

How can you minimize the impact of unconscious beliefs about brilliance when you are making talent decisions?

Slow down and focus your attention on the decision at hand. Be aware that bias is not just possible, it's likely.
Cultivate empathy and connection with each person as you review them.
Take a step back and question your motives, needs and interpretations. Ask yourself, What am I assuming? What is another way to see this?
Work with others, explore multiple perspectives to challenge your thinking, and ensure scrutiny of your decisions.
Commit to change. How can you increase your awareness of how unconscious beliefs work? How can you make better quality decision?

Leslie, S., Cimpian, A., Meyer, M. & Freeland, E. (2015). “Expectations of brilliance underlie gender distributions across academic disciplines”, Science, 347(6219), 262-265.