After two years on the job, women’s confidence plummets
When the study’s authors followed up with questions about how well participants felt they fit into the typical stereotype of success within their companies, they found that though women and men matched early in their careers, women dropped 15 percentage points as their careers progressed. Men, on the other hand, only lost nine points.
“The result of this trajectory is a well-documented dearth of women in top management roles in America,” write the study’s authors. They suggest that while all employees’ career aspirations are shaped by their first few years in the workforce, women are affected by a perceived clash with “ideal worker” stereotypes, lack of supervisory support, and too few role models.
Other research shows that women are judged more harshly than their male counterparts at work. For example, a 2014 study showed that 75.5 percent of women receive critical feedback about their personalities in performance reviews (using words like "abrasive" and “strident” to describe behavior), compared to just two percent of men.
So how can companies bridge the confidence gap? Basic encouragement would be a start, write Gadiesh and Coffman. Positive affirmation “has huge benefits,” they write — but it can’t work if it’s not given to women at all points of their careers.
Erin Blakemore