Being ‘Compassionate’ Could Actually Make You Worse Off

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Language in Evaluations Creates an Uneven Playing Field

When you hear the word “leader,” do you think of a male or female?

This is one of the questions asked by David G. Smith, Judith E. Rosenstein, and Margaret C. Nikolov in their article, “The Different Words We Use to Describe Male and Female Leaders.” The authors analyzed a military dataset that compared leadership attributions in performance evaluations between genders. Since objective evaluations were equal, they chose to focus on differences between subjective performance evaluations.

Some of their findings include:

• Women were assigned more negative attributes

• The most commonly used positive word to describe men was analytical; for females, compassionate

• The most commonly used negative word to describe men was arrogant; for females, inept

• Even when the objective performances between genders were equal, there was still statistically significant differences in how often these common words were used relative to others

The authors comment on how the “military provides an interesting and significant setting to evaluate gender bias as it is a long-standing and traditionally male profession that has, over several decades, worked to eliminate formal gender segregation and discrimination.”

What would their results have been if they had done the same analysis in a work setting that is traditionally female, or a setting that has an even gender distribution in the profession? It may be interesting to compare each of these.

Why does this matter?

Smith, Rosenstein, and Nikolov believe the language differences in these evaluations can have lasting impacts on one’s fate in a company setting, especially for females. Think about it: would you promote the person who is analytical, or compassionate? Fire the person who is arrogant, or inept?

They reference another study which explains how women can also be at a disadvantage when competing for jobs because they receive vague feedback that is not related to their workplace performance.

These findings show how women face obstacles in the workplace, but what’s interesting is that the leadership traits employers want in someone are the traits given to females in their evaluations. I ask the same question they do, why do we not see more women in leadership roles if that’s what people want?

Thinking about my future career, there’s now a much bigger emphasis on the need for me to understand company culture and employee or gender perceptions. It will be important for me to determine if I can realistically see myself advance in my position with an organization.

For everyone in the workplace, if our language continues to describe males and females the way it has, there’s a possibility we could spiral back into discriminating objective performance. We would overlook people’s true value to the organization and inhibit them from growing as a person and worker. If we can look past gender stereotypes and rely solely on a person’s attitudes and behavior, we can give more accurate evaluations and provide the information needed to help attain both individual and company goals.