Studies in the US suggest women and ethnic minorities are penalised for promoting workplace diversity
Studies in the US suggest women and ethnic minorities are penalised for promoting workplace diversity
Tokens. Queen-bees. Cat-fights. All of these terms are sadly common, in Aussie and US offices alike, and reflect the unwillingness of many female and ethnic minority executives to help those of their own kind. Disturbingly, a new paper from the US-based Academy of Management argues this is a wise strategy; those who promote diversity are looked down upon by their bosses.
White males who valued diversity, the report found, received significantly higher performance ratings from their bosses than their female and ethnic-minority counterparts. They found that whether the boss was a white male or not made little difference to this situation.
Part of the problem resulted from workplace stereotypes, the report argued. Women are held to higher standards of personal warmth than men, so those striving to promote other women “will be viewed by their bosses as cold and scheming to subvert the existing social order”. Similarly, diversity-promoting ethnic-minority executives will be viewed as losing competence, despite much high levels of competence being demanded of them in the first place.
Professor David R. Hekman, one of the leaders of the study, concluded that: "more people believe in ghosts than believe in racism, and people in the upper ranks of management will not openly utter a bad word against diversity. Yet, executives who are women or ethnic minorities are penalized every day for doing what everyone says they ought to be doing -- helping other members of their groups fulfil their management potential. It is a revealing sign that the supposed death of longstanding biases has been greatly exaggerated."
The findings were based on the background data of 362 executives who registered for a leadership training course. This data included ratings by their peers. This was backed up by a role-play experiment involving 395 university students, who were asked to respond to various fictional HR managers advocating for fictional job candidates.
The full methodology and detailed report can be found on the Academy of Management’s website.
Tokens. Queen-bees. Cat-fights. All of these terms are sadly common, in Aussie and US offices alike, and reflect the unwillingness of many female and ethnic minority executives to help those of their own kind. Disturbingly, a new paper from the US-based Academy of Management argues this is a wise strategy; those who promote diversity are looked down upon by their bosses.
White males who valued diversity, the report found, received significantly higher performance ratings from their bosses than their female and ethnic-minority counterparts. They found that whether the boss was a white male or not made little difference to this situation.
Part of the problem resulted from workplace stereotypes, the report argued. Women are held to higher standards of personal warmth than men, so those striving to promote other women “will be viewed by their bosses as cold and scheming to subvert the existing social order”. Similarly, diversity-promoting ethnic-minority executives will be viewed as losing competence, despite much high levels of competence being demanded of them in the first place.
Professor David R. Hekman, one of the leaders of the study, concluded that: "more people believe in ghosts than believe in racism, and people in the upper ranks of management will not openly utter a bad word against diversity. Yet, executives who are women or ethnic minorities are penalized every day for doing what everyone says they ought to be doing -- helping other members of their groups fulfil their management potential. It is a revealing sign that the supposed death of longstanding biases has been greatly exaggerated."
The findings were based on the background data of 362 executives who registered for a leadership training course. This data included ratings by their peers. This was backed up by a role-play experiment involving 395 university students, who were asked to respond to various fictional HR managers advocating for fictional job candidates.
The full methodology and detailed report can be found on the Academy of Management’s website.
