The Power of Language: Gender, Status, and Agency in Performance Evaluations

We examined peer evaluations of 4344 U.S. Naval Academy students who are assigned attributes from a predefined list. Although men and women received similar numbers of descriptive (positive) attributes, women received more proscriptive (negative) attribut es than did men and these individual attributes were predominantly feminine. These findings offer evidence that women leaders’ status incongruity may be associated with perceived competence (agentic deficiency). A contribution of our analysis is theory testing using data from a real-life performan ce evaluation system. Additionally, our research contributes to our knowledge of gendered language and status characteristics in performance evaluations and can assist researchers and practitioners with developing interventions. Understanding the association of gender status beliefs with evaluation processes may facilitate changing workplace culture to be more gender-inclusive through less biased and stereotypical performance evaluations.
Source: Sex Roles - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research