Study finds high-achieving women in tech criticised more for personality in performance reviews - 76 - Polidicks

[QUOTE]Does gender play a role in the type of feedback an employee receives at review time? We had a linguist crunch the numbers. I asked men and women in tech if they would be willing to share their reviews for a study and didn't stipulate anything else. I figured only strong performers would be willing to share and was most interested in looking at the critical feedback that these strong performers had received. The reviews I collected were almost all positive. The question I wanted to answer was: Did review tone or content differed based on the employee’s gender? I also wanted to know whether the manager’s gender was a factor in how they reviewed their employees. I was especially interested in employees who shared reviews given by both male and female managers. In all, I collected 248 reviews from 180 people, 105 men and 75 women. The reviews come from 28 different companies and include large technology corporations, mid-size companies, and smaller environments. I didn't see any impact of company size in the results, nor did I discover patterns unique to any individual company. [B]Women’s reviews are more likely to include critical feedback. [/B] The first thing I wanted to understand is how many reviews included critical wording in the first place. These were almost exclusively strong reviews, so I wasn't sure. My own reviews have all contained critical feedback, both those I've received and those I've given. But I wasn't sure what to expect. 105 men submitted 141 reviews, and 75 women submitted 107 reviews. Of the full set of 248 reviews, 177—about 71%—contained critical feedback. However, critical feedback was not distributed evenly by gender. When breaking the reviews down by gender of the person evaluated, 58.9% of the reviews received by men contained critical feedback. 87.9% of the reviews received by women did. Men are given constructive suggestions. Women are given constructive suggestions – and told to pipe down. The kinds of observations my friend offers about his reports Jessica and Steve are pretty common. In the 177 reviews where people receive critical feedback, men and women receive different kinds. The critical feedback men receive is heavily geared towards suggestions for additional skills to develop. Women receive this kind of constructive feedback too. But the women’s reviews include another, sharper element that is absent from the men’s: “You can come across as abrasive sometimes. I know you don’t mean to, but you need to pay attention to your tone.” “Your peers sometimes feel that you don’t leave them enough room. Sometimes you need to step back to let others shine.” “The presentation ultimately went well. But along the way, we discovered many areas for improvement. You would have had an easier time if you had been less judgmental about R—‘s contributions from the beginning.” [B]This kind of negative personality criticism—watch your tone! step back! stop being so judgmental!—shows up twice in the 83 critical reviews received by men. It shows up in 71 of the 94 critical reviews received by women. [/B] So now what? [B]There’s a common perception that women in technology endure personality feedback that their male peers just don’t receive. Words like bossy, abrasive, strident, and aggressive are used to describe women’s behaviors when they lead; words like emotional and irrational describe their behaviors when they object. All of these words show up at least twice in the women’s review text I reviewed, some much more often. Abrasive alone is used 17 times to describe 13 different women. Among these words, only aggressive shows up in men’s reviews at all. It shows up three times, twice with an exhortation to be more of it.[/B][/QUOTE] Full article: [url]http://fortune.com/2014/08/26/performance-review-gender-bias/[/url]

They should probably have this get peer reviewed just to make sure there isn't observer bias.

A lot of this can be stipulated from the difference in male and female 'voice' in literary writing, it's not something necessarily specific to technological fields. [url]http://tracymarchini.com/2010/09/30/differences-in-male-and-female-speech/[/url] Whether or not the differences in male and female 'voice' in english writing is psychologically and culturally based is unclear, but there seems to be a precedent in female writing versus male writing where female writing uses more critical words and describes things using proverbial speech (a lot more 'I, you, us, our'), rather than male writing which is more blunt and "to the point". This of course varies from person to person.

Where is MaxofFaggot?

[QUOTE=Zyler;46130318]A lot of this can be stipulated from the difference in male and female 'voice' in literary writing, it's not something necessarily specific to technological fields. [url]http://tracymarchini.com/2010/09/30/differences-in-male-and-female-speech/[/url] Whether or not the differences in male and female 'voice' in english writing is psychologically and culturally based is unclear, but there seems to be a precedent in female writing versus male writing where female writing uses more critical words and describes things using proverbial speech (a lot more 'I, you, us, our'), rather than male writing which is more blunt. This of course varies from person to person.[/QUOTE] Except the article says it didn't matter whether the manager was male or female, only whether the person being reviewed was.

[QUOTE=Pantz Master;46130323]Where is MaxofFaggot?[/QUOTE] Banned.

[QUOTE=Helix Snake;46130324]Except the article says it didn't matter whether the manager was male or female, only whether the person being reviewed was.[/QUOTE] It could also affect how the pieces were reviewed because the critic was analyzing the way the pieces were written. I'm skeptical of research bias because of blanket statements like this: [quote] Men are given constructive suggestions. Women are given constructive suggestions – and told to pipe down. [/quote] Qualitative data like this might not work on such a large scale especially since the person who wrote the article picked out individual examples of quotes that they thought showed men acting in a condescending manner towards women instead of interviewing them individually (which has the problem of bias, both in the sense that the article picks out only whatever they're looking for, and also that they may misinterpret the intention of that writing). Another things to consider is whether the critics were told who wrote the reviews or if it was just a blind test, each option would have vastly different consequences.

[QUOTE=Helix Snake;46130324]Except the article says it didn't matter whether the manager was male or female, only whether the person being reviewed was.[/QUOTE] Says it doesn't matter? Do they have numbers to back that up?

[QUOTE=download;46130363]Says it doesn't matter? Do they have numbers to back that up?[/QUOTE] [QUOTE]The manager’s gender isn’t a factor. When I started, I was wondering whether the gender of the manager giving the review would affect the nature of the critical feedback in the review. It didn’t. 62 of the 248 reviews I collected were written by women, including 26 reviews of women and 36 reviews of men. I did find some gender effects in the writing – for instance, the reviews written by women average almost 50% longer than those written by men – but none relevant to this study. Female managers account for just over 23% of the negative critical feedback written in the reviews, which is close to what you’d expect given that they wrote 25% of the reviews to begin with.[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=download;46130363]Says it doesn't matter? Do they have numbers to back that up?[/QUOTE] Well yeah they have numbers, the question is whether the person analyzing the reviews was objective about what "personality criticism" is.

Here's an example: this is apparently not condescending: [quote]“Take time to slow down and listen. You would achieve even more.”[/quote] And this is considered condescending [quote]“Your peers sometimes feel that you don’t leave them enough room. Sometimes you need to step back to let others shine.”[/quote] Each criticism has very much the same meaning in terms of a peer review, it's highly interpretable whether one is more critical than the other. Edited: This is probably the most reliable bit of information: [quote]There’s a common perception that women in technology endure personality feedback that their male peers just don’t receive. Words like bossy, abrasive, strident, and aggressive are used to describe women’s behaviors when they lead; words like emotional and irrational describe their behaviors when they object. All of these words show up at least twice in the women’s review text I reviewed, some much more often. Abrasive alone is used 17 times to describe 13 different women. Among these words, only aggressive shows up in men’s reviews at all. It shows up three times, twice with an exhortation to be more of it.[/quote] More 'critical' adjectives where used in reference to women than to men They really needed to have a control group where one group was told the gender of the person who wrote the review and the other wasn't. That way you could account for other elements like the writing styles of the individual people or office groups/cliques.

This "study" seems to be self-reported and this person's only two articles on the site are about women in tech. Further, her twitter is FULL of feminist stuff. It's possible (and I'd argue likely) that if she was asking people for their work reviews she got a biased sample. I don't know if we can really take anything from this. I mean this might as well be a blog post at this point. EDIT: Confirming she sourced through feminist Twitter connections.

[QUOTE=Pantz Master;46130323]Where is MaxofFaggot?[/QUOTE] [URL="http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1425982&p=46039977&viewfull=1#post46039977"]Who are of laugh now MaxofSD?![/URL]

[QUOTE=FlakAttack;46130431]This "study" seems to be self-reported and this person's only two articles on the site are about women in tech. Further, her twitter is FULL of feminist stuff. It's possible (and I'd argue likely) that if she was asking people for their work reviews she got a biased sample. I don't know if we can really take anything from this. I mean this might as well be a blog post at this point. EDIT: Confirming she sourced through feminist Twitter connections.[/QUOTE] Yes let's focus on her writing of women's issues to disregard the study and ignore the fact she's a linguist, CEO of a text analysis company, and has her articles published on a reputable publication such as Fortune.

[QUOTE=MisterMooth;46130527]Yes let's focus on her writing of women's issues to disregard the study and ignore the fact she's a linguist, CEO of a text analysis company, and has her articles published on a reputable publication such as Fortune.[/QUOTE] I think we can all agree to that.

[QUOTE=MisterMooth;46130527]Yes let's focus on her writing of women's issues to disregard the study and ignore the fact she's a linguist, CEO of a text analysis company, and has her articles published on a reputable publication such as Fortune.[/QUOTE] That doesn't necessarily mean the study's perfect.

[QUOTE=Zyler;46130394]Here's an example: this is apparently not condescending: And this is considered condescending Each criticism has very much the same meaning in terms of a peer review, it's highly interpretable whether one is more critical than the other. Edited: This is probably the most reliable bit of information: More 'critical' adjectives where used in reference to women than to men They really needed to have a control group where one group was told the gender of the person who wrote the review and the other wasn't. That way you could account for other elements like the writing styles of the individual people or office groups/cliques.[/QUOTE] It's obviously not the most scientific of studies, but the findings show a great enough disparity to show that there's most likely a difference in the way women are perceived in the workplace by both genders, and it's probably worth looking into more. [editline]2nd October 2014[/editline] [QUOTE=Sgt-NiallR;46130568]That doesn't necessarily mean the study's perfect.[/QUOTE] Nobody said it's perfect, or that it automatically makes it correct - it's just that he's selectively posting reasons to discredit it while ignoring all her reputable aspects.

The sample size of both men and women seems kinda off as well as the statistics at the bottom of the article about how 73 male reviews has x complaints while 83 women reviews had complaints, seems like there at least the error would make those about even

[QUOTE=MisterMooth;46130527]Yes let's focus on her writing of women's issues to disregard the study and ignore the fact she's a linguist, CEO of a text analysis company, and has her articles published on a reputable publication such as Fortune.[/QUOTE] Yes, let's ignore a pair of massive flaws that together make this study practically useless: non-random selection and self-reporting. Her credentials don't matter when the study is junk.

[QUOTE=Pantz Master;46130323]Where is MaxofFaggot?[/QUOTE] Do you get paid to shitpost?

[QUOTE=FlakAttack;46130431]This "study" seems to be self-reported and this person's only two articles on the site are about women in tech. Further, her twitter is FULL of feminist stuff. It's possible (and I'd argue likely) that if she was asking people for their work reviews she got a biased sample. I don't know if we can really take anything from this. I mean this might as well be a blog post at this point. EDIT: Confirming she sourced through feminist Twitter connections.[/QUOTE] So what you are saying is Feminist women's studies about women in the workplace should be disregarded, no matter her credentials, because she is a feminist. Would you disallow a gay rights activist to produce a study on discrimination against gays? Would you disallow a black rights activist to produce a study on discrimination against blacks? [quote] It's possible (and I'd argue likely) that if she was asking people for their work reviews she got a biased sample. [/quote] That is your only valid point and it is based entirely on speculation. You could say that for any study with people involved. You say "I going to disregard this study because of the possibility of the sample being abused" when what you actually mean is "I'm caught on the the anti-SJW hype train and can't get off. Quick somebody join my circlejerk before it starts to run out of fuel" Theres so much anti-SJW shit recently. Sure some are pricks but alienating people trying to make the world a better place is a real maggot move.

[QUOTE=MisterMooth;46130597]It's obviously not the most scientific of studies, but the findings show a great enough disparity to show that there's most likely a difference in the way women are perceived in the workplace by both genders, and it's probably worth looking into more.[/QUOTE] Too bad this study, or any of these types of studies, don't comment on whether that perceived difference is based on real difference or not. It would be fallacious to assume either.

[QUOTE=sgman91;46132966]Too bad this study, or any of these types of studies, don't comment on whether that perceived difference is based on real difference or not. It would be fallacious to assume either.[/QUOTE] Again, if they had a control group set up who didn't know the gender of the people they were critiquing this study would be a lot more useful, as it stands there are many different factors that could account for the disparity to varying degrees.