The hidden biases of how we view men and women in leadership
While managers of all genders have the ability to fall anywhere on the “good manager” spectrum, there’s this intangible spark of fellowship I’ve felt with all the female managers and leaders in my career: a spark that anecdotally seems to be shared with other women in tech.
After eight years working as a woman in engineering, I was used to being a minority. I’ve been in meetings with more “Mikes” than women, and for a time I considered any meeting with more than 10% women to be decent representation.
Studies show gender biases from leaders in performance reviews and hiring, but do we show gender bias from the bottom up? Are we more likely to speak highly of leaders that share our gender?
As a data-obsessed word nerd, I put together a survey asking people to describe their favorite and least favorite managers. I wanted to see if the way people chose to talk about their leaders changed depending on gender.
With 269 self-selected respondents, I couldn’t have a full-fledged, intersectional research masterpiece that accounts for all factors that contribute to manager-employee power dynamics (a girl can dream). But by asking these respondents to describe specific people in their lives that have been their literal best and worst managers, using a pre-selected list of adjectives, I’d be able to pick up on unspoken, gendered patterns across the population¹.
These patterns show the language we use to describe good and bad managers, the impact of sharing a gender with our manager, and how women in management positions shine.
First up: does anyone still use the word bossy?
I’m sensitive to phrases like bossy. To this day, I review every email I send for the appropriate level of exclamation marks, so as not to be mistaken as terse, rude, or aggressive. Working while female can be tedious.
These days, people are becoming more aware of gendered language. Sheryl Sandberg even started a Ban Bossy campaign that calls out words like bossy that are disproportionally used for girls and showcase the leadership double standard. Surely most respondents would shy away from using such hot button words?
Turns out, one out of five respondents used bossy to describe their least favorite manager overall. The group most likely to use it? Men.
One out of four male respondents used bossy to describe their least favorite manager, and men were 60% more likely to use bossy for a female manager.
Of course I needed to see what other patterns emerged along gender lines.
According to men, women are both bossy and indecisive, at the same time
Looking how men and women described their bosses, there were a lot more phrases that bubbled up as distinctly gendered. Women were more likely to call other women adept or persistent if they were favorites, and patronizing or picky if they were least favorite managers.
Men being more likely to use the antonyms bossy and indecisive to describe women was not a coincidence. Of the male respondents that described their least favorite, female managers as bossy, 75% also deemed these same leaders indecisive. For comparison, when men described least favorite male managers as bossy, only 11% were also described as indecisive. Conflicting advice for women in the workplace at its finest.
Bosses that don’t share your gender are more likely to be considered thoughtless
A funny pattern appeared when searching for distinctive phrases: Sometimes the usage had less to do about the specific genders involved, and more about whether the respondent shared the same gender as the manager.
We’re showing these in-group gender biases in the way we talk, to the point of calling those outside our gender group thoughtless and impulsive.
When talking about least favorite managers, men were more likely to call women thoughtless or impulsive, but women were also more likely to call men the same thing.
Being a good manager when you can’t relate
Favorite managers of a different gender were more often described as reliable, considerate, or compassionate.
Sharing a gender in some ways presupposes a certain set of lived experiences. Without this shared understanding, it’s easy to come off as unintentionally thoughtless. The best leaders understand this, and put in extra effort to see situations from other perspectives. They verify assumptions and follow through on promises (reliable), they seek out opinions from others (considerate), and they go out of their way to make their employees feel welcome (compassionate).
Women and nonbinary individuals had more to say about bad managers
There’s another side to sharing a gender with your boss: you’re more likely to feel safe in the workplace.
Along with choosing adjectives from a fixed list to describe past bosses, respondents were also allowed to enter any number of custom phrases in a free text field.
Men were the least likely to enter custom phrases, while women and nonbinary respondents were much more likely to enter custom negative phrases.
Some of these custom phrases were downright creative (my favorite being squirrel chaser), but many of the responses from women and nonbinary individuals indicated deeper issues that were not surfaced in the custom responses by men, phrases like sexist, sadistic, misogynistic, manipulative, and sexually harassing.
All genders showed a preference for women in leadership
Outside of specific phrases, there was an overall trend of gendered leadership preference as well.
Since there’s a known gap of women in leadership, a lot of respondents had never even had a female boss before (a fact that some respondents even mentioned in comments!). Thankfully there are other ways to look for leadership preference without knowing the gender demographics of all the respondents’ workplaces.
Without any gender bias, the number of respondents with a favorite boss that happens to be a woman should be about the same as the number of respondents with a LEAST favorite boss that happens to be a woman, representing the rough percentage of women in leadership where they work.
Looking at the women who responded, 40% had a least favorite boss who is a woman, but 48% had a favorite boss who is a woman: indicating a slight preference.
This preference was actually stronger for men than women: 19% of the male respondents reported that their worst management experience was with a woman, compared to 29% whose favorite leader was a woman: a 10 point increase, compared to the 8 point increase for female respondents.
Overall, all genders seemed to show a preference for women in leadership. That is, for every group that self-identified their gender, respondents were more likely to have a favorite boss that is a woman compared to a least favorite boss that is a woman.
This survey seems to indicate that women do well when finally given positions of power, but what troubles me is the fact that these percentages are so low in general. If men are more likely to be in positions of power (which they are), and men and women value different characteristics (shown by the phrase findings), how do we move forward and truly fix that leadership gap?
Mind the gap
All signs point to some persistent bias going on along gender lines in the words we use to describe leaders, both good and bad, but some trends in these data could help the bigger picture of workplace equality.
We know performance reviews for women leaders are frustratingly biased, but the results of this survey seem to indicate a preference for women leaders, from all genders. It’s possible that incorporating upward feedback into review cycles would be one step in the right direction for gender equality. Indeed, studies have shown that more frequent feedback from a wider variety of reviewers can help reduce bias and recognize different styles of leadership.
While this survey was focused on gender due to a small sample size, it’s likely other underrepresented groups like Black or LatinX communities could also benefit from a change in how we talk about leadership, especially since it’s well known that the gender leadership gap is much worse for women of color.
[1] Gender demographics for managers were captured at the end, on a separate survey page, to ensure people weren’t moderating their language based on gender roles.
[2] While women had many positive things to say about their favorite, male managers, those positive words were used about as often as other genders and thus were not distinct.
