Not only do women find the workplace difficult, but problems become particularly dicey, especially when a women seeking to advance her career becomes involved with her male boss. A typical situation is described in Breach of Trust:
“Meredith enjoyed working for Wendell. He was fair with people but tough on bad performance. If you were a hard worker and did your best, you were rewarded. Wendell also made quick decisions, something that could be a blessing or a curse, especially at a nuclear power plant. The Diablo Canyon Power Plant became their mutual workplace after she graduated from Georgia Tech as an electrical engineer and completed her apprenticeship at the Southern Company’s Plant Vogtle nuclear facility. Moving to San Luis Obispo County and coming to work for Wendell was a move, in part, to salvage her career from being derailed by a past stormy relationship with her previous boss. The affair had fizzled. Meredith threw herself into her work and decided to prove herself in the male-dominated workplace of nuclear power production. Wendell was a supporter of women in the workplace. He was instrumental in securing her the engineering directorship at Diablo Canyon.”
From Fiction, A Representation of Reality, to Today’s Facts
Not only do males dominate the field of engineering, they dominate the sciences too. A late 2016 study, published in Nature Geoscience, looked at letters of recommendation, a supposedly innocuous area. But Gender Differences in Recommendation Letters for Postdoctoral Fellowships in Geoscience reveals that women are about half as likely as men to receive “excellent letters” as opposed to “good letters” of recommendation, regardless of whether the person writing the recommendation is male or female.
For women looking to advance their careers in science, this latest result in the field of geoscience is not the first scientific discipline that’s found a discrepancy in letters of recommendation.
“Meredith enjoyed working for Wendell. He was fair with people but tough on bad performance. If you were a hard worker and did your best, you were rewarded. Wendell also made quick decisions, something that could be a blessing or a curse, especially at a nuclear power plant. The Diablo Canyon Power Plant became their mutual workplace after she graduated from Georgia Tech as an electrical engineer and completed her apprenticeship at the Southern Company’s Plant Vogtle nuclear facility. Moving to San Luis Obispo County and coming to work for Wendell was a move, in part, to salvage her career from being derailed by a past stormy relationship with her previous boss. The affair had fizzled. Meredith threw herself into her work and decided to prove herself in the male-dominated workplace of nuclear power production. Wendell was a supporter of women in the workplace. He was instrumental in securing her the engineering directorship at Diablo Canyon.”
From Fiction, A Representation of Reality, to Today’s Facts
Not only do males dominate the field of engineering, they dominate the sciences too. A late 2016 study, published in Nature Geoscience, looked at letters of recommendation, a supposedly innocuous area. But Gender Differences in Recommendation Letters for Postdoctoral Fellowships in Geoscience reveals that women are about half as likely as men to receive “excellent letters” as opposed to “good letters” of recommendation, regardless of whether the person writing the recommendation is male or female.
For women looking to advance their careers in science, this latest result in the field of geoscience is not the first scientific discipline that’s found a discrepancy in letters of recommendation.
Alicia Adamczyk, writing for MONEY, in her October 2016 article, “Male Scientists Are ‘Brilliant,’ Female Scientists Are ‘Productive,’” reports, “A similar study that analyzed the letters for chemistry and biochemistry job applicants found those written for men include significantly more ‘standout’ adjectives, as well as ‘more ability words and fewer grindstone words.’ Conclusions for studies in physics and medicine were similar. Other studies show that the name on a resume or job application—in particular whether it’s traditionally a male or female name—also impacts the hiring process.”
Echoing these concerns, the lead author of the peer-reviewed Nature Geoscience study [1], Kuheli Dutt, a social scientist at Columbia University, highlights that “these results suggest that women are significantly less likely to receive excellent recommendation letters than their male counterparts at a critical juncture in their career.”
The gender bias doesn’t stop at letters of recommendation. Meg Urry, in 2015, wrote in Nature that gender bias [2] is endemic at every professional level in the sciences. But that is a BLOG post for another day.
Suffice it to say that letters of recommendation reveal just another symptom of a more widespread gender bias found in the workplace.
[1] In the study, letters were classified as “excellent” if they included descriptors like “scientific leader,” “brilliant scientist,” and “trailblazer.” The rest, including phrases like “very productive,” “very good skill set,” and “very knowledgeable,” were put into the “good” bucket. About 21% of letters qualified for the “excellent” designation, but that included a significant gender difference: 24% of the 862 letters for men fell into that camp, while just 15% of female applicants’ 362 letters did.
[2] A number of other studies have pointed out that the career advancement problem for female employees is often related to the loss of female talent due to pregnancy and childbirth. The unconscious gender bias of those in positions of power, as exemplified by the Nature Geoscience study, provide another barrier to female advancement in the workplace.
The gender bias doesn’t stop at letters of recommendation. Meg Urry, in 2015, wrote in Nature that gender bias [2] is endemic at every professional level in the sciences. But that is a BLOG post for another day.
Suffice it to say that letters of recommendation reveal just another symptom of a more widespread gender bias found in the workplace.
[1] In the study, letters were classified as “excellent” if they included descriptors like “scientific leader,” “brilliant scientist,” and “trailblazer.” The rest, including phrases like “very productive,” “very good skill set,” and “very knowledgeable,” were put into the “good” bucket. About 21% of letters qualified for the “excellent” designation, but that included a significant gender difference: 24% of the 862 letters for men fell into that camp, while just 15% of female applicants’ 362 letters did.
[2] A number of other studies have pointed out that the career advancement problem for female employees is often related to the loss of female talent due to pregnancy and childbirth. The unconscious gender bias of those in positions of power, as exemplified by the Nature Geoscience study, provide another barrier to female advancement in the workplace.
[3] The author of the above on-line article, Stephanie Hoaglund, writes:
“I have personally experienced unconscious gender bias during my work career. These are just a few personal examples, but I am sure that if you ask any woman out there, they have ample examples to share:
“I have personally experienced unconscious gender bias during my work career. These are just a few personal examples, but I am sure that if you ask any woman out there, they have ample examples to share:
- Inappropriate comments about my personal appearance by members of leadership.
- Asked to order food for a group, when I was a senior member of the team but yet the rest of the group were men.
- Assigned note taking duties.
- Being asked to take care of buying gifts for weddings, showers, and other celebrations.
- Being left off of projects because they assumed I would not be able to put in extra hours due to family commitments.”