Gender Effects on Employee Ratings

RUNNING HEAD: Gender Discrimination
Gender Effects on Employee Ratings
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Abstract
Employee ratings play a pivotal role in the domain of industrial and organizational psychology. Employee ratings serve the core purposes of feedback, personnel review and promotion. However, these ratings are immensely affected by gender role stereo types. This paper analyses how the gender gap does affect performance evaluations and ultimately employee outcome within an organization. It explains how women are discriminated at time in a workplace and the implications of gender based implications on employee ratings which eventually affects promotion and increase of wages of the employees.
Gender Effects on Employee Ratings
Gender discrimination still tends to be one of the biggest dilemmas of our society. Gender stereotypes immensely influence decisions, evaluations and ratings in organizations and workplaces. Men and women at all level in organizations are treated differently (Agars, 2004). This article reflects that how gender discrimination affects the ratings of men and women in particular situations, and how these ratings cast drastic consequences upon their personality, morale, promotion and wages.
Employee ratings and performance evaluations are employed by almost every organization and serve a multitude of purposes. These ratings and performance evaluations lend a hand in providing feedback for the employees and thus are used as the basis for pay increases or promotions (Karen & Madeline, 2006). Considering the perspective of employer, performance evaluations and employee ratings are used to ensure that employees are performing at satisfactory levels, for making personnel decisions, and for increasing communication between organizational levels. Evaluators at different levels need to examine the employees thoroughly in terms of their quality of work, attitude, behaviour and outcomes in order to allot ratings to them. Appropriate and unbiased employee rating cast favourable consequences on both the employees and the company outcome. However, in today`s era, much of the employee ratings and evaluations are immensely affected by their gender. On the whole, women are found to be discriminated to a great extent in several aspects of organizational evaluations. The literature suggests that majority evaluators have got well-developed stereotypes of men and women which link men and women to certain behaviors and characteristics. Gender-role stereotypes are defined as descriptive components, which describe actual differences between men and women, or prescriptive components, which describe how men and women "should" or "should not" be (Janet et. al., 1989). These stereotypes comprise of role behaviours, physical features, or occupations. Thus a man`s most valued characteristics comprise of competence, rationality, and assertion. On the other hand, the females are well known for their warmth and expressiveness. Typically a woman is seen as nice but incompetent, but a man is considered as competent but maybe not so nice and warm welcoming. However, in today`s work environment, given equivalent qualifications, because of bias and stereotyping, women are less likely to be hired and promoted, especially for roles that are traditionally stereotypically masculine, such as engineering (Debra & Ronald, 2002). Thus, here we focus on how gender differences affect employee ratings among men and women. This paper describes that qualified men and women with observable characteristics and same chances of receiving a promotion or, more generally, of advancing in their careers are adversely affected by gender based stereotypes. It explains that gender discrimination form wrong employee ratings and evaluations, which ultimately affects their chances of advancement, promotion and success.
Gender issues in rating employees leads to wage discriminations
Employee ratings are directly proportional to increase in wages and salaries. Employees with poor ratings are hardly given any benefits and wage promotions. In many organizations, women`s work and contributions are undervalued, despite the fact that they possess talents and achievements equivalent to men. So, women are given less employee ratings as compared to men. Majority of the evaluators` rate women on the basis of stereotypes, such as women are not the sole bread winner of the family and are required to dedicate their time for raising children and looking after the family, thus many organization pay women less (Pema & Mehay, 2010). Thus, evaluating women on the basis of gender stereotypes lower their performance ratings, which ultimately create a drastic imbalance between the wages of men and women working at the same level within an organization. This leads to the fact that, despite possessing comparable skills and capabilities, women are given low evaluations which eventually prevent them from attaining high salaries and in getting to higher positions in the company.
Gender stereotyping affects promotional practices at workplaces
Employee ratings are highly dependent on the productivity level of the employees. Gender differences in productivity affect employee ratings which ultimately has an impact on the promotion of the employee (Karen & Madeline, 2006). According to Debra & Ronald (2002), women spend less energy on each hour of market work than men working the same number of hours as women spend their time in housework as well. Women are more likely to be stereotyped as family focused and unwilling to travel and therefore tend to be passed up for promotions. Women who have young children at home may experience push-back when interviewing due to family responsibilities. This may provoke the hiring manager to pass over a qualified female candidate if he feels she will be torn between her home and job responsibilities (Agars, 2002). Moreover, managers also assign less responsibility or menial tasks to women that do not fit in their job description. Due to such stereotypes, managers underestimate the capabilities of women and are considered less productive and are thus assigned lower employee ratings in comparison to men. This yields lower market wages for women and also induces women to economize on energy expended on market work by seeking less demanding jobs.
Not only this, women are stereotyped as not good in problem solving and not having much assertiveness in themselves. They are considered as the ones who "take care" while men are stereotyped as the ones who "take charge," the latter being a notion more connected to prerequisite behaviors for top-level job positions (Gregory et. al., 1988). This ultimately makes women misfit for powerful professional positions and thus impedes their advancement as they are rated low in their evaluations. Overall men are accepted for each position significantly more often than equally qualified women. Men are also evaluated more favorably on suitability, potential for remaining with the company, and potential for fitting in well. Not only this, men are given high ratings when considering the quality of work in comparison to women. Interestingly, women's acceptance rates decrease tremendously even further when being evaluated for demanding positions which eventually affects their chances of promotion (Bartol, 1999). Furthermore, overall women had to meet stricter standards than men to receive promotions, suggesting that women have to work harder to get to the same place, doing more and doing it better than men in similar positions. This leads to the fact that women are evaluated against much stricter criteria as compared to men, despite having similar qualifications. This presents as a major gender effect which lower women ratings and impede their advancement.
Gender issues affecting leadership decisions
Another gender issue that comes up with performance evaluations stems from societal biases. Many organizations that are strongly male-based see that natural aggressiveness from males as a sign of leadership. Men are often viewed as possessing more of the characteristics of successful leaders - assertive, independent, aggressive, and competitive - than women in general. Women are more often viewed as nurturing, selfless, warm, and aware of others' feelings. A strong man is frequently respected, whereas strength in a female with power often seems to stir up derogatory reactions. These women may be referred to as hard, frosty, cold and having a bad attitude or being bossy. Any evaluator who holds these societal biases is most likely going to judge workers by them as well (Kriston, 2008). Now due to this, women are assigned low employee ratings which impede them in gaining high level leadership positions in an organization.
Although upper managerial positions require men and women to possess some authoritative qualities, women with more masculine characteristics are discriminated against (Karen & Madeline, 2006). Women were evaluated more negatively when they took on more autocratic leadership styles in comparison to any other style. On the contrary, when men utilized more feminine leadership roles it did not hinder their success. Women received the harshest evaluations when working in male-dominated roles and when evaluated by men (Agars, 2004). Moreover, women in predominantly male positions such as line-job managers received significantly lower evaluation ratings than men in similar positions or women and men in more gender-neutral or feminine positions. In some cases, women do get promoted to high leadership positions. This happens in situations where success is unlikely or the project is poorly funded or a team already in disarray, which puts them at enhanced risk for failure (Michelle et. al., 2011).
Men and women attain equal ratings in cases when there was specific information of women's successful contributions to the team, contributions to the success of the team were irrefutable, or there was clear information regarding excellent past performance. However, when women did prove t...