Gender Bias in the Workplace: How Internalized is It?

I think (and I hope) that we are all familiar with the staggering statistics that show how gender bias sets women behind professionally, and for women of colour, LGBTQ, or disabled women all the more. But I wonder what gender norms women have internalized that still make us unconsciously complicit in things such as our underrepresentation in leadership positions? By no means am I victim-blaming here, I’m looking at outdated cultural and gender norms that most of us still perform, and the resultant detrimental effects they cause. I ask this question due to a simple work-related thing that happened recently, revealing itself to be phenomenal in its implications.

A while back I had put out a job posting for my company that was initially advertised as a senior position. After some discussion, we revised the job title as a junior position. Literally, 90% of the applicants for the senior position were male, and 90% of the applicants for the junior position were female even though the job criteria (education and experience required, salary offered) had remained the same!

My mind was blown. Here was empirical evidence at just how much less confidence women have in feeling fit for leadership than men. It struck me that to the male applicants, a senior position was one they felt innately qualified for, while women with the same education and experience (or more!) did not. What outdated cultural norms told all these women unanimously that they are not leaders, and why do they believe it?

Did they not want to appear too confident - which, based on patriarchal gender norms, makes women “less attractive” or “less feminine”? Why did they so unanimously believe that a senior position was not “for them” while the men seemed to absolutely assume a senior position as their rightful place? Women still chronically ask for less than they are worth. 

It really boils down to confidence. Sure I know a lot of men who suffer from lack of confidence and many women who have flourishing confidence, but the results of changing one word in this job posting confirmed just how unbalanced things still are - women are trained from a young age to be pleasant and “being pleasant” often means dimming your own bright light and participating in harmful gendered power imbalances.   

A culturally inherited sense of lack of worth means women are less likely to negotiate their salaries, while men almost always do which results in more men taking on positions of power. Men are more liable to know their worth without a doubt (like it’s a God-given fact) while women very much undersell themselves, or take a lower salary than they deserve because they just want a job (negotiating feels too “argumentative” or “confrontational,” typical masculine traits). 

I’ve also noticed that a lack of confidence in female professionals equates to them giving up after one setback. I had a friend for example who’s Youtube video went viral, then someone reported it for music copyright infringement, it was taken down, and she was so defeated she never tried again even though her dream was to be a Youtuber. I’ve seen countless other examples of this, of women’s willingness to give up after one blow, where men are more likely to persist. But as business professionals, we need more lives than a cat. If you want to achieve anything, you’re going to get knocked down going after what you want but you literally just have to keep on getting back up and if you can’t get back up in one way, you can get up in another. 

What do you think needs to be done to undo these harmful gender norms from our beliefs and behaviours? Women! Apply for the senior positions! Negotiate for the same wage as your male colleague or more. Know your worth! I don’t know about you but I can’t wait to see the day where positions of power are at least 50% occupied by women and no gender “norms” serve as tools of oppression.