While there is some evidence that women receive lower performance ratings than men, there is also substantial evidence that women actually receive higher ratings than men, on average, but men receive higher salary increases for similar performance.
In a study in Social Psychological and Personality Science, the authors examined the performance reviews of 234 associates at a Wall Street law firm. They found that men outscored women in numerical ratings, although women more often got glowing comments in the subjective write-ups.
Word such as “excellent,” “awesome,” and “stellar” were used more often in women’s reviews but there was not a correlation to the numerical score. The opposite was true for men. Men who received accolades had high numerical scores. In summary, male supervisors gave higher numerical ratings to male associates than female ones and more men (14 percent) than women (4.76 percent) received the top numerical score.
In another study, a review of over 300 recommendation letters for hiring of medical school faculty found that the letters for women applicants were shorter and did not use words or phrases that sounded like solid recommendations. The letters more often characterized women as students and teachers and men as researchers and professionals.
Another study (“Engendering Inequity? How Social Accounts Create versus Merely Explain Unfavorable Pay Outcomes for Women,” published in the Journal Organization Science) confirmed this finding. Researchers conducted simulations with 184 experienced male and female managers. The respondents assumed the role of managers and were informed that money for raises was limited due to the company’s financial problems. Performance ratings and job titles were held constant in the experiment. Gender was the only variable. The result was that managers, both men and women assigned 71% of the available money to the male employees. When managers could not explain their decision, they gave equal raises to men and women. But when managers could provide an explanation (i.e. financial difficulties), they gave women lower raises. The researcher explained that in effect this meant that men would not have to negotiate for a good raise but it put women in a position of needing to do so.
So we can conclude from all of this that women, in general, do not perform at lower levels than men, but are more likely to be paid less for similar performance ratings.
Diversity and inclusion practitioners should conduct correlational analysis to uncover discrepancies between salary and performance on the basis of gender.
