This morning I dropped my daughter off for her university orientation. She’s attending school in Philadelphia – she’s a declared Mechanical Engineering major on scholarship. We are very proud of her accomplishments. So… when a study like this comes out it worries me.
For the study, researchers from Yale University asked more than 100 science faculty members at academic institutions across the country to evaluate one of two student résumés. The résumés were identical except for one small part: The candidate’s name was either John or Jennifer. Despite both candidates having the exact same qualifications and experience, science faculty members were more likely to perceive John as competent and select him for a hypothetical lab manager position.
And it didn’t stop there. Female and male science faculty members alike offered John a higher salary than they did Jennifer and were more willing to offer him mentoring opportunities.
The discrepancy in John and Jennifer’s treatment is important because women are woefully underrepresented in STEM fields, especially in engineering and computing. Gender bias contributes to scenarios in which women like “Jennifer” are evaluated as less competent, less hirable, and less valuable than identically qualified male counterparts.
Another study by researchers at Columbia University, Northwestern University, and the University of Chicago found that participants acting as employers systematically underestimated the mathematical performance of women compared with men. The result? The experiment’s employers hired lower-performing men over higher-performing women for mathematical work.
Reread that last sentence: “The experiment’s employers hired lower-performing men over higher-performing women for mathematical work.” You don’t say?
What about… “The résumés were identical except for one small part: The candidate’s name was either John or Jennifer. Despite both candidates having the exact same qualifications and experience, science faculty members were more likely to perceive John as competent and select him for a hypothetical lab manager position.”
This tells me that no matter how good my daughter is, her gender will be a strike against her – unless she works harder, and does way better than a man. If Jennifer has the same résumé as John… too bad, Jennifer. You’ll have to be better than John, but, even then, you still might not get hired since employers seem just fine with hiring lower-performing men over higher-performing women in math.
We are a STEM family (Mr. Pandora is an engineer. Our son is one year away from his Mech Engineering degree. My brother is the head of Immunology for a major pharmaceutical company. My sister-in-law works for MIT.), so this research causes me concern. It tells my daughter that not only does she have to excel at her career path she has to work even harder/do better than her male counterparts – that the bar set for her is higher than for men who sit next to her in the exact same classrooms, and do the same – or worse! – on tests/coursework.
That’s not fair, and it needs to change. Now.