Gender Bias Still Plagues the Workplace: Looking at Derailment Risk and Performance With Self–Other Ratings

Abstract

Whereas overt forms of discrimination against women at work have decreased over time with the passage of formal antidiscrimination laws, implicit biases against women still plague organizations. To understand how implicit biases may appear in the workplace today, we examined how dissimilar outcomes may emerge for men and women leaders when their self-ratings differ from others’ (e.g., subordinates, peers) ratings. Drawing upon role congruity theory of prejudice toward female leaders and the status incongruity hypothesis, we theorized and found that women who overrated their leadership behaviors received lower performance ratings and higher perceived risk of derailment scores from their supervisors than did women who underrated their leadership behaviors. Men, however, experienced fewer negative consequences (than women) when they overrated. Given these findings, especially in light of discovering that most self–other agreement (SOA) research does not explicitly address gender as a main variable of interest, we question some of the field’s previous findings. We discuss the implications of our results for both practice and research regarding how SOA plays a role in the development of one’s career, highlighting the potential importance of implicit gender biases.