Harder Than It Looks: Why Gender Inequity Persists in Professional Settings

Abstract: Despite decades of efforts to achieve gender equity in professional settings, persistent barriers and biases continue to shape women's workplace experiences and career trajectories. This symposium presents research that examines gender inequity through three distinct but interconnected perspectives: observers who perpetuate bias, individuals who manage potential bias, and organizations that may inadvertently maintain inequities. At the observer level, two papers reveal how subtle biases manifest in everyday interactions: an analysis of 13.9 million Facebook comments demonstrates systematic differences in how observers refer to male versus female politicians, while experimental evidence shows how observers uniquely penalize women (but not men) who succeed through hard work rather than natural talent. At the individual level, two papers examine how women actively navigate potential bias: field studies reveal that women strategically employ their professional titles more frequently than men, while experimental work shows how women in entrepreneurial contexts internalize societal biases in their self-evaluations. Finally, at the organizational level, the FATIGUE framework theorizes how well-intentioned diversity initiatives focused on increasing representation can paradoxically activate new forms of identity threat for underrepresented employees. Together, these papers advance our understanding of gender inequity by revealing how professional recognition operates through multiple, sometimes contradictory mechanisms. Further, we highlight women's active role in managing professional recognition and demonstrate how organizational practices intended to address bias can create new challenges. The findings suggest that addressing gender inequity requires coordinated efforts across all three levels.

Keywords: gender, diversity, equity, biases, multi-methods