Since women began entering the modern workforce in large numbers, support roles — or those who help someone else do their work, like administrative assistants and paralegals — have been predominantly occupied by women. The people in the higher ranking positions these roles support, such as executives, lawyers and surgeons, have been predominantly men.
Women still face barriers to reaching senior positions with decision-making authority in organizations. Only 21 per cent of Canada’s top publicly traded companies are led by female CEOs. By contrast, 92 per cent of executive assistants are women.
Even within the same job role, research consistently shows women are less likely to be assigned promotable tasks — high-visibility decisions that get noticed and rewarded — than men. They are more likely to be assigned administrative tasks or “office housework”: the kind of labour that keeps an organization running but rarely leads to a raise or a promotion.
A stereotype hiding in plain sight
My recent study, co-authored with Rachael D. Goodwin, Cheryl J. Wakslak, Kristina A. Diekmann and Jesse Graham, examined gendered expectations about how men and women think. We tested these expectations across six experiments.
When we examined the segregation of men into high-power roles and women into lower-power ones, we noticed an interesting pattern.
Support roles often involve developing efficient processes and paying close attention to detail. Leadership roles tend to involve tasks like identifying and creating values, strategies and visions. Women are more likely to occupy the first type, which calls for what we term a “concrete mindset.” Men are more likely to hold roles requiring big-picture, or “abstract,” thinking.
Both abstract and concrete thinking are valuable, but they tend to be associated with different kinds of work.
We found that people broadly hold three related beliefs regarding concreteness and abstraction: that women are more detail-oriented and specific than men; that women are less big picture-oriented than men; and that women are less visionary than men.
These beliefs arose spontaneously in our first experiment and were confirmed explicitly by respondents in two follow-up studies. We found women tend to hold these beliefs more deeply than men, and the stereotypes arose across 48 occupations and industries.
What LinkedIn reveals
These stereotypes have real-world consequences that might help explain why women are overrepresented in administrative roles.
In one experiment, we analyzed nearly 550,000 LinkedIn recommendations across a range of industries and occupations. Connections were more likely to use words such as “detailed and exact” to describe women and “visionary and farsighted” to describe men.
Research confirms LinkedIn recommendations can affect hiring outcomes, so the language used in them is influential.
Consider two project managers who received positive LinkedIn recommendations (names changed for privacy):
“John is an asset to any team he joins. He regularly looks for opportunities to turn ideas into action, inject creativity into every touch point, and develop strategies for innovation. He adds value by evaluating the big-picture and volunteers recommendations that increase efficiency and cost savings.”
“Jill is a very detail-oriented, motivated, analytical individual. She executes every task or project given to her in a timely manner. Multi-tasking and planning come easily to her. If you give Jill an end goal, you can depend on her to deliver results that exceed expectations.”
Both recommendations are positive, but John is cast as someone who generates ideas and shapes direction while Jill is cast as someone who reliably executes them.
If a hiring manager reads John as strategic and forward-thinking, he is more likely to be seen as a leader. And if a manager reads that Jill is detail-oriented, this could increase her chances of being selected for administrative roles, but might block her advancement to leadership.
The cycle and how to break it
In our final experiment, we found that gender stereotypes increased the likelihood of women being assigned detailed, low-promotability tasks, such as filing paperwork and proofreading, on top of their existing workload. This perpetuates gender roles and organizational inequity.
Occupational stereotypes and task segregation reinforce each other, and that cycle is difficult to break from inside an organization. Managers and organizations must consciously engage in equitable practices and policies to break the cycle in which women are disqualified from advancement.
Our study suggests two ways that managers can do this. The first is distributing low-value, detailed work equitably. Tasks such as taking notes in meetings, planning birthday parties and taking lunch orders can disproportionately fall to women. A rotating assignment system prevents any one person from getting pigeonholed into assignments that don’t contribute to their career progression.
The second is highlighting the value of detail orientation in leadership roles. Job postings and descriptions that emphasize detail orientation as a leadership trait could expand the pool of women who apply for and are seriously considered for senior roles.
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