Stop Undervaluing Exceptional Women

Harvard Business Review | Originally published July 22, 2022
by Elizabeth L. Campbell and Oliver Hahl

Summary   

Despite progress toward gender equality at work, it still takes women longer to get promoted than men, and few make it to the top of the corporate ladder. The authors’ research suggests that the reason why comes down to gender-biased assumptions about how challenging it will be to retain them. Their findings illuminate how standout women employees can be taken for granted by companies because of gendered beliefs about who is and who isn’t a flight risk. Moreover, such gendered dynamics likely contribute to the glass ceiling and gender gaps in earnings. If companies assume women will place loyalty to the firm over advancing in their careers through outside opportunities, they won’t engage in preemptive retention efforts like bonuses, raises, promotions, or increased responsibility like they will for men. To stop taking talented women for granted and to avoid losing them to other firms, companies need to do more to recognize and address these biases.

Progress toward gender equality has stalled

Progress toward gender equality has stalled. Women are doing what conventional wisdom says is necessary for success: They’re earning advanced degrees, entering high-paying industries, and acquiring impressive qualifications at rates equal to or higher than men. But it still takes women longer to get promoted, and few make it to the top of the corporate ladder. Many women feel like they must be twice as good to get half as far.

They have good reason to feel this way — the findings of our peer-reviewed research suggest that exceptionally qualified women are undervalued and taken for granted by organizations.

To understand what happens when people are exceptionally qualified at work, we ran several experiments asking people with hiring experience to evaluate overqualified job candidates: those with more qualifications than what is necessary for a job. Organizations often don’t systematically document why they decide not to promote an employee or hire a job candidate, and even fewer would willingly share that information with researchers. As such, our experimental methodology provides the opportunity to study this phenomenon, which cannot easily be examined using field data from organizations.

We find that gender matters a lot — our results suggest that people are more comfortable hiring women for jobs they’re overqualified for than men. The reason why comes down to gender-biased assumptions about how challenging it will be to retain them.

What People Assume About Who Will Stay at a Company

People assume that men prioritize career advancement above loyalty to a single firm. Men with exceptional qualifications were seen as 19% more likely to jump ship at the next, better opportunity compared to those with fewer but sufficient qualifications for the job, on average. Exceptionally qualified men are perceived to be flight risks and aren’t expected to be loyal to one firm when they could decamp to advance elsewhere. Because hiring and training employees takes time and resources, people don’t see the point of hiring someone who they think will only be using the firm as a springboard for their next job. These assumptions are consequential for hiring decisions: Overqualified male job candidates are, on average, 25% less likely to be hired than men with fewer but sufficient qualifications.

But the opposite is true for women: People aren’t worried about them leaving a firm for better opportunities. It’s not that they think exceptional women aren’t committed to advancing in their careers. In fact, we found that exceptional qualifications are taken as a strong signal of women’s career commitment. Rather, it’s that people make a different set of assumptions about what matters to exceptional women… (CONTINUED)

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To read the full article by Elizabeth L. Campbell and Oliver Hahl, visit HBR: Stop Undervaluing Exceptional Women