Gender bias is the belief that women are not equal to men. That belief can be overt or unconscious, and it’s ingrained and rooted in assumptions and historical inequalities in every culture.
It affects women within the workplace and across society, and still exists around the globe.
Read more: Gender Discrimination at Work: How to Find It & Deal with It
What is the impact of gender bias?
Hold onto your hat.
In addition to stubborn pay gaps, gender bias in the workplace causes women to experience:
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Non-inclusive behaviors like harassment and microaggressions.
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Exclusion from good assignments (and commission-based sales accounts) and hybrid roles.
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Poor performance reviews and fewer rewards like promotions and raises.
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Burnout and physical health issues, including struggles with menstrual- and menopause-related symptoms.
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Poor mental health.
And that’s just at work.
Women have long experienced gender bias in another space—healthcare. They’re frequently not listened to or believed, entire studies have been dedicated only to men (as in heart attacks), and pain is commonly dismissed as unimportant or exaggerated. “Even the time taken to diagnose cancer varies across genders, in part due to symptoms in women being overlooked, misattributed, or minimized by health care professionals,” writes Breast Cancer Now evaluation manager Lucy Hocking, in The RAND Blog.
Read more: Breaking Down Bias: 6 Company-Led Initiatives That Are Green Flags for Women
Hollywood hasn’t changed much in terms of gender bias, either. In her latest Celluloid Ceiling report, Dr. Martha M. Lauzen, executive director of the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University, says women comprised 24 percent of behind-the-camera workers on the top 250 grossing films in 2022, nearly the same as the year before.
However, “in 2022, 93 percent of the top 250 films had no women cinematographers, 91 percent had no women composers, 80 percent had no women directors, 75 percent had no women editors, and 70 percent had no women writers.”
Video games, too, exhibit gender bias, with women characters given half the amount of dialogue that the amount given to men. Research published in The Royal Society attributes this to a lack of women characters in general, but also due to “biases in who female characters speak to, and what they say.” According to Statista, video gamers under 18 make up 24 percent of gamers in the U.S., with 36 percent aged 18–34. The gender bias is not only absorbed by the players, but with a preponderance of boys playing the games, women players are often harassed online.
Then there’s the “shrink it and pink it” concept in product design for women, a phrase used in the product creation world for designing products for women. Products for women are often the same ones designed for men, except scaled down or painted a more feminine color. The practice is insulting, makes products more expensive, and can even be deadly, writes Karen Korellis Reuther at Harvard’s Social Impact Review.
“The female body is often invisible,” Reuther explains. “Not accommodating it in the design of products has led to a world that is less hospitable and more dangerous for women.” She cites outdated crash test standards that lead to women being 73 percent more likely to be injured in a car crash than men. Similarly, “female firefighters experience a four times greater rate of injury than men, in part because of ill-fitting personal protective equipment.”
Read more: The Origins of Sexism & Why It’s Just as Toxic as Ever
Gender bias affects the gender pay gap. But surely, pay must be closer to equal by now?
You’d think, but nope.
Research associate at Pew Research Center Carolina Aragão writes that the gender pay gap in the U.S. hasn’t changed much in 20 years. In 2002, women earned 80 percent as much as men, while in 2022, they earned about 82 percent of what men earned.
Gender discrimination plays a big part in why this pay gap continues to exist. “Women are much more likely than men (61 percent versus 37 percent) to say a major reason for the gap is that employers treat women differently,” Aragão writes. Any narrowing of the pay gap over the decades is attributable to the gains women have made in “educational attainment, occupational segregation, and work experience.”
When they have children, women pay a “motherhood penalty” whereas men enjoy a “fatherhood wage premium,” notes economy reporter at The 19th News, Chabeli Carrazana. “Men tend to increase their work hours and receive a bonus when they have children, a phenomenon known as the ‘fatherhood wage premium,’” she explains. “Women, meanwhile, experience the ‘motherhood penalty,’ which studies have found is closely tied to conscious or subconscious bias against mothers, who may be viewed by employers as less competent or committed to the job.”
Read more: Gender Parity in the Workplace: What Is It & What Can We Do About It?
The pay gap used to be “dismissed with pat observations that women outnumber men in lower-paying jobs like teaching and social work,” Claire Cain Miller at The New York Times wrote way back in 2016. Studies at that time were already showing that “when women enter fields in greater numbers, pay declines—for the very same jobs that more men were doing before.”
Why?
Because “work done by women simply isn’t valued as highly,” says Miller. In other words, when a traditionally male occupation is taken over by women, that role is devalued, both economically and socially.
Even within a female-dominated profession, it’s a man’s world, writes emergency room nurse Nathan Friedland. In his early years of practicing, Friedland says that with his stethoscope around his neck, most patients assumed he was a doctor. “Doctors would treat me better when I said something in a meeting or called one of them on the phone,” he adds. “I saw how women in nursing were often disrespected by male doctors and even their patients, but I was treated with more deference for doing the exact same job at the exact same level.”
Read more: What Is Gendered Language & What Are the Alternatives?
What can we do to end gender bias?
Start early.
The American Association of University Women says gender tracking in early education is one reason “why so many professions are still highly gendered, with women disproportionately in lower-paying fields.” Kids receive subtle gender-related messaging and are treated differently from the time they enter the education system, which directly impacts their subject choices and career paths.
But long before children go to school, they’re influenced by their parents. As primary role models, parents should be sharing household duties equally and celebrating positive masculinity, writes the team at UN Women.
Read more: Ending Gender Inequality in the Workplace: 6 Things That Must Change
And at work, gender bias education and positive modeling should continue.
“One great way to start is simply to get to know your employees better,” says Dena Cordova-Jack, vice president of organizational development at Misura Group, an executive recruiting firm, who was once given a cookbook as a gift to mark her promotion to first-ever female director of a lumberyard.
“Don’t assume everyone likes what you like; the world is full of people who brushed up on last night’s sports scores because they’ve seen the pennants in the boss’ office,” Cordova-Jack writes. “Increasingly, gender is no predictor of preferences: There are women who’d rather be in a tough mudder competition than go to a spa, and men who’d choose a cooking class over a turkey shoot. You must ask.”
Read more: Gender-Neutral Terms for the Workplace & Beyond
To attract women candidates to your organization and then to retain them, Chief Growth Officer Christina Cravens lists some practical strategies, which include:
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Your workplace environment must be supportive of women, where they “are valued and treated with respect and dignity.”
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You must have mentoring and sponsorship available to guide and advance career opportunities.
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You must offer flexible work arrangements to promote full buy-in.
The European Institute for Gender Equality says “gender mainstreaming has been internationally adopted as a key strategy toward making gender equality a reality.” It has created a platform with step-by-step guidance on how to apply “a gender equality perspective in each phase of the policy-making cycle as well as all areas within policies and processes such as procurement or budgeting.”
This is a resource any institution or government could use and apply to further their own efforts.
Read more: 20 Leaders Weigh In: Powerful Thoughts on Gender Equality & Diversity
There’s some good news
There are more women than ever in STEM fields, according to Karla Smith Jackson, senior procurement executive, deputy chief acquisition officer, and assistant administrator of procurement at NASA.
“NASA, right now, has about 40 percent [women in its workforce],” Jackson says. “In the STEM communities, we have a number of women in the highest levels of senior executive service and science.” She adds that mentorship plays a large part in maintaining that leadership pace.
The same kind of reduced gender bias can be seen in the academic science world, according to a recent report published in the Psychological Science in the Public Interest.
As one of the study authors, Cornell University professor Wendy Williams, writes: “We’re getting really close to an equitable landscape. We’ve come 90 percent of the way, and so what stands between us and [a fully equitable landscape] is not an insurmountable task anymore. It’s really important for young women in college who are considering going to grad school and women in grad school who are considering becoming professors.”
That is good news. But it should be balanced against findings from a 2020 study, which found that biases persist even when women become well represented in a field, “perpetuated by those who think it is not happening.”
Read more: How Misogyny Became Part of Our Culture & Workplaces
There’s lots of bad news, too
Escaping gender bias is especially difficult for women in developing countries around the world. According to Save the Children, gender inequality is so ingrained in India that it “severely impacts women’s lives despite decades of legislation and a constitution that promises equal rights.”
Discriminatory social norms and laws there still lead to inaccessibility to jobs and education for women, underrepresentation in politics, and poor access to health and nutrition services. Other causes include illiteracy, patriarchal mindset, poverty, women’s ignorance of their rights, and child marriage.
These conditions aren’t only found in India, of course. A Concern article names Afghanistan, Syria, and South Sudan among some of the worst countries worldwide for women’s rights.
Read more: Your Resource Guide to Understanding the Intersectional Gender Pay Gap
Young people will help get rid of gender bias
What will it take to get rid of gender bias? Cordova-Jack tells InHerSight that the current labor shortage may actually help reduce gender bias, by shining a light on it.
“If we are to find a silver lining in this challenge, it would be that there is a more significant focus on gender bias because we have been forced to evaluate the labor pool, and it has expanded the pond that employers must fish in for talent. Our society is changing, and traditional role stereotypes are blurring.
“From what I have seen, the younger generations are certainly more gender blind than the Boomers or even some of the older Gen Xers. We are all products of the environments, cultures, and societies we are raised in, but regardless of our generational demographic, education, critical thinking, and self-awareness, challenging our thought processes will be the ultimate antidote to conscious and unconscious gender bias.”
