Success! Men Now Face More Hiring Discrimination Than Women
Currents
Variations of the familiar quip, “Women have to be twice as good to go half as far,” date back to the early 20th century. This sentiment was true enough in its day, but a lot has changed in the generations since. While women have not reached parity with men in all ways, men have fallen behind women — in some cases far behind — in many domains, including in grade school, all levels of higher education and academia, and “adulting” (e.g., living with parents). As college degrees translate into higher-paying jobs, women now outearn men in several US cities — a trend that will likely continue as the credential gap widens.
Meanwhile, evidence of anti-male discrimination is accumulating. Research shows that people prefer scientific findings that portray females in a positive light over science that portrays men in a positive light. People also have more sympathy for females than males, punish men more severely than women for the same infractions, and evaluate women more favorably than they do men. And when it comes to the widely feared and supposedly pernicious “implicit bias”, that too favors women.
Some may contend that women always have — and still do — face systemic barriers that men don’t, especially considering that the highest-status sectors of society are still disproportionately male. Others may contend that women never had it harder than men, given that social and cultural norms have long expected men to risk their own lives to protect the lives of women in contexts such as wars, natural disasters, and survival situations. But at minimum, most people likely agree that female disadvantage is now less clear than it was decades ago when women were explicitly denied various rights, educational access, and consideration for high-status professions. Yet compared to older generations of women, Millennial women — those who grew up in the era of “Girl Power” and who have surpassed men in numerous ways — are likelier to believe that men have it easier. In other words, the women who have likely suffered the least gender-based disadvantage in history seem to perceive the most of it.
It would be difficult, if not impossible, to quantify and compare which gender “has it easier” on the whole in modern society, or even in a narrower context such as the workplace. But a new study just published in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, to which I contributed, provides the highest quality investigation to date on gender bias in hiring practices, and the results are surprising. This paper reports a meta-analysis covering 85 studies, including 361,645 employment applications submitted for real jobs in 26 countries over the past 44 years. First, we found that bias against females for stereotypically male and gender-neutral jobs has disappeared or even reversed over time, whereas bias against males for stereotypically female jobs has persisted. Second, and perhaps just as striking, we found that both everyday people and scientists alike fail to fully recognize or appreciate this progress and drastically overestimate anti-female bias across time.
This meta-analysis summarized the studies in which researchers experimentally manipulated the gender of equally qualified job applicants and measured genuine callback rates (interview invitations, job offers, etc.). It also examined the time trends for gender discrimination for jobs that were stereotypically female (e.g., nurse, HR professional, primary school teacher), stereotypically male (e.g., auto mechanic, engineer, computer specialist), and gender neutral (e.g., accountant, sales representative, baker).
Collapsed across all studies and time points, male applicants were somewhat less likely to receive callbacks compared to equally qualified female applicants. However, gender biases varied over time and job type. Prior to 1991, hiring bias favored men for stereotypically male and gender-neutral jobs, but by around 2009, the direction of this bias reversed and over time, increasingly favored women. By contrast, for stereotypically female jobs, hiring bias has favored women as far back as the data goes, and to this day continues to favor women with almost no change.
In other words, biases that used to favor men have been eliminated or reversed, whereas biases that favored women persist virtually unchanged.
The study also conducted two forecasting surveys among scientists (mostly in the social and behavioral sciences) along with the US public. Participants were provided with the details of the study and asked to predict the results. Although both scientists and everyday people correctly predicted that pro-male bias for stereotypically male and gender-neutral jobs has decreased over time, they also massively overestimated pro-male bias across all years, and in later years, they had the direction backward. Prior to 2009, men were roughly 1.3x more likely than women to receive callbacks for male/neutral jobs, whereas academics estimated this number to be 5x, and laypeople over 13x. Post-2009, academics estimated that men were 2x as likely to receive callbacks for these jobs and laypeople estimated 3x when in reality, the data showed that women were favored over men. Both groups similarly (and almost as drastically) overestimated pro-female bias in hiring for stereotypically female jobs and incorrectly predicted that pro-female bias has declined. Unlike pro-male bias, which has now reversed, pro-female bias has remained stable across decades.
Visualization of anti-female hiring bias as observed versus as perceived by both scholars and the US public. Source: Journal of Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes
It’s important to note that these meta-analytic findings do not indicate that no employers discriminate against women in hiring practices, but rather that on average, employers tend to favor women over men. These findings also do not mean that anti-female gender discrimination doesn’t pervade other workplace decisions or that women do not face unique social challenges. These findings pertain only to employment selection decisions. Nevertheless, the results point to a serious shift and an equally serious disconnect between perception and reality.
Public intellectuals have long warned about the dangers of gender stereotypes; however, these findings do not show that their efforts have resulted in a general decline in the reliance upon gender stereotypes in the workplace. Employers continue to use gender stereotypes — ones that continue to result in the preferential hiring of women for stereotypically female occupations and ones that now (slightly) favor women for hiring in stereotypically male and gender-neutral professions. Efforts over the past decades appear one-sided, aiming to increase female representation with little concern about missed opportunities for males. This pattern resembles recent research showing that people reported more support for policies and programs that correct for female underrepresentation than those that correct for male underrepresentation in desirable careers.
These one-sided efforts were perhaps warranted 30 or 40 years ago, particularly in workplaces where women had been historically excluded and undervalued. And they have largely been successful: employers, on average, no longer discriminate against women in hiring practices. Yet the perception among both scientists and the public lags behind reality.
Similar data has been accumulating for decades. For example, two papers on female recognition in academia found that decades ago, men were more likely to be elected to the National Academy of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Econometric Society compared to similarly productive women. In the past decade or so, however, women were vastly more likely to be elected than similarly-productive men. Other meta-analyses found no evidence of academic gender differences in grant funding, journal acceptances, or letters of recommendation, and only small and inconsistent differences in hiring, teaching ratings, and salaries. Similarly, a great number of policies and programs explicitly aim only to advance women, whereas equivalent policies and programs in domains of male underrepresentation are conspicuously absent. Many job postings in academic psychology, for example, specifically encourage applications from women, even while female psychology faculty have been drastically overrepresented for years.
Given the visibility of efforts to advance women and the growing number of studies demonstrating pro-female biases, it is curious that both everyday people and behavioral scientists remain unaware of the extent to which these efforts have succeeded. One possible explanation for this ignorance is that the (once necessary) existence of pro-female policies supports and upholds the narrative that the world has an anti-female bias by suggesting that women need or deserve a boost. At the same time, these policies have, over decades, produced and perpetuated pro-female biases out in the world. Indeed, our meta-analysis also found that people who believe society is unfair, getting worse, and in need of radical restructuring overestimated gender biases by the widest margin. If an employer believed hiring practices were plagued with anti-female bias, she might find it fair and justifiable to discriminate against men and thus contribute to a reality that contradicts the very beliefs that justified her actions.
Some might applaud pro-female biases as fair corrective measures. If men were advantaged pre-1990, then shouldn’t women enjoy advantages for several years or decades? However, the young men discriminated against today are a different cohort of individuals from those who enjoyed advantages 30+ years ago. Unlike past discrimination against racial or ethnic groups in which one generation’s disadvantage can reverberate through the lives of their children or grandchildren, that dynamic does not similarly carry over in the realm of gender. Men and women from every generation have both sons and daughters. It is thus unclear why the potential benefits received by Baby Boomer men should come at the expense of Millennial or Gen Z men.
Others might simply continue to deny the existence of these pro-female biases. These findings should, it stands to reason, be hailed as great news to those who have worried about systemic biases against women in the workplace. To those who care more about the advancement of women over men than they do about fairness or equality, however, the false belief that women suffer the most discrimination in hiring practices supports further corrective action to benefit women. And so those who aim to advance women in the workplace may assiduously deny this progress despite it being an achievement of their own efforts.
Whereas systemic biases can be addressed with laws and organization policies that hold employers accountable, no official institutions militate against false beliefs. Ultimately, it may be easier to eliminate anti-female bias than to eliminate false beliefs in its continued existence. A stubbornly pervasive and data-resistant cultural narrative that employers discriminate against women may lead employers, experts, and everyday people alike to support “correcting” a problem that’s already been solved by further tilting the scale against men. This discrimination, this attempt to balance past wrongs with current wrongs, recreates the problem it was supposed to solve. The best way to end discrimination is to stop discriminating.
Published Nov 16, 2023
