The Invisible Enemy of Gender Equality

The power of cognitive biases and gender stereotypes

A 13 year-old boy and his father got into a car crash. The father dies instantly. An ambulance rushes the boy to the hospital. Arrived there, the best surgeon is called on to perform an emergency surgical operation. The surgeon sees the boy and says: “I can’t operate him, he’s my son!”

How is it possible?

You might have been quite puzzled upon reading this the first time. The first thing that came to your mind was probably: “how can the surgeon perform an operation if he’s dead?” Of course, the answer is: the surgeon is his mother. Although this enigma should be fairly easy to solve, something lured you into thinking that the surgeon is a man; you have just experienced a cognitive bias. This does not mean you’re a bad person; bias are an integral part of the individual’s thinking. (If you found the answer right away though, I bow to you, but please keep reading this article). Biases affect our judgement, shape our prejudices and, unfortunately, can have a negative impact on the society. Let us see what a bias is — gender bias in particular-, how it affects our thinking on a daily basis and, on a larger scale, our society.

The origin of biases

The human brain is extremely powerful and constantly processes tons of information from its environment. However, as there often is too much information to process, and as our brains are kind of lazy, it likes to take the shortest path which means that instead of using reason and logic, it makes assumptions, called biases. They are unconscious and subjective perceptions based on our habits and common beliefs, and they keep us from making an objective reasoning. The more primitive, intuitive part of the brain is in charge of this. As you identify a sharp metal object as “dangerous”, you will more easily label a woman as “kind”, “beautiful” and a man as “smart”.

In an experiment where scientists studied societal gender stereotypes, it has been found that most people associate women to family and men to careers. Similarly, people associate women more strongly with liberal arts, and men with science.

This is the reason why most people struggle to solve the previous enigma; even though they might agree that it exists smart women who are surgeons, they instinctively think of the doctor as a man.

This is a bias caused by a gender stereotype, and more precisely, an occupation stereotype; scientists have identified three other stereotypes: personality traits (women are emotional), domestic behavior (woman should take care of children), physical appearance (men should have short hair). It is quite surprising that such beliefs are equally common among both genders; for example, women tend to apply feminine stereotypes to other women and to themselves (a woman would have as much difficulty as a man to find the answer of the enigma).

The impact of gender stereotypes

How do gender stereotypes manifest themselves? How do they affect our lives?

i) In everyday life

I suggest you this little game: next time you take the tube, take a look at the advertisements and try to identify as much social stereotypes as you can (Did the advertiser assume that men need to show off their wealth with expensive cars in order to seduce attractive women ? That having an energy drink is a manifestation of manliness? That taking care of one’s skin with face masks is a girl’s stuff?). You will be surprised at how many you can find, even in seemingly gender neutral advertisements. The same observation can be made about movies, songs — actually pretty much anything you want. What we see every day stuffs up our brain with gender stereotypes, whether we want it or not. It consolidates existing stereotypes and affects our unconscious mind, creating situations we are familiar with, and sustaining our biases.

It is true that our society is evolving towards better gender equality, but the perpetuation of stereotypes through media or advertisement is an obstacle. Nevertheless, it is encouraging to see the public opinion becoming more and more concerned about subjects such as, for example, the representation of women in advertisements (see the uproar about the “Are you Beach Body Ready” ad).

ii) At workplaces

Data shows that there are less women in STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics) and in managerial positions. While some wouls argue that “fewer women are interested in science” or “women tend to choose a less demanding career in order to have a family life”, a research published in 2012 revealed a disturbing truth. In an experiment, researchers from Yale sent fictitious applications to graduate schools for a lab position. The content was perfectly identical, except for the fact that half were given a male name, and the other half a female name. As you already might have guessed, “Female” applicants were penalized: they were rated lower in competence and hireability, and the salaries offered to “female” applicants were 12% lower than “males”. This experiment has proven the existence of discrimination against women in science.

iii) In politics

The Yale experiment focused on women in science, but women face the same problem in other areas such as management or politics, where they struggle to get into a leadership / influential position. Indeed, it is a common belief that a leader has to be assertive and confident. The problem is, those are masculine traits. Those traits, when applied to women, become flaws: “assertive” becomes bossy, “confident” becomes pretentious. In contrast, showing too much femininity at work could lessen one’s credibility — acting cute or dressing in a too feminine way is seen as unprofessional. As an example, just look at female leaders such as Hillary Clinton or Angela Merkel; people feel uneasy about their lack of femininity and criticize them for “not acting like women”… but would they succeed if they had exhibited feminine traits ? It is highly improbable.

In order to succeed, women have to be able to switch on and off certain masculine traits in order to fit to a male-dominated world.

What if this conception of leadership was wrong? What if we challenged the current perception of what a leader should be? What if women could be strong leaders while being themselves, and lead successful teams thanks to their compassion, their ability to multitask and their communication skills?

What’s next?

Cognitive biases are unavoidable and omnipresent, we will never really get rid of them. So is gender equality a fight against windmills ? Well, the case is not hopeless. It is more than necessary to acknowledge them, whether it is at the scale of the individual (e.g. hiring managers) or at broader scales such as in politics, science, education, management… For instance, positive discrimination and quotas can arguably help to compensate the consequences of biased judgements. But although being effective in fighting inequalities, those solutions do not solve the problem at its root.

Stereotypes and discrimination can be countered in various ways: we should prevent biases by teaching tolerance to children; we should be aware about our own biases and be mindful of the way we treat people of different genders; and most importantly, we should keep questioning the status quo.