Feedback bias blocking promotion of women and other underrepresented
Feedback on your performance is key to getting better paid and promoted. A new study shows that the most underrepresented in business, and especially in leadership like women, receive lower-quality feedback. Women, workers over 40, Black and Latinx people get significantly less actionable feedback than their co-workers, according to the study by Seattle-based machine learning and artificial intelligence company Textio promoting augmented writing platforms.
”Women get 22% more feedback about their personality than men do. Women also receive 30% more exaggerated feedback than men.”
”People from underrepresented groups do indeed receive lower-quality feedback, with inequities found by gender and race as well as age”, the study says. It is based on feedback for more than 25,000 people from 250 organizations
”It’s hardly surprising that the people experiencing the most performance review bias are also consistently the least represented in corporate C-suites and boards.”
”It also matters because it confirms how challenging it is to implement or institutionalize DEI. Organizations can commit to DEI in policy, as many now do, but getting all employees to be sufficiently conscious of it so that it informs their daily behaviour is another thing altogether.”
Findings:
- Compared to men, women are 7x more likely to report being described as “opinionated,” and 11x more likely to report being described as “abrasive.”
- Men are 3x more likely to report being described as “confident,” and 3.7x more likely to report being described as “ambitious.”
- Women receive 22% more feedback about their personality than men do.
- Women also receive 30% more exaggerated feedback than men.
- Compared to younger white men, women over 40 receive more than 4x the amount of feedback that’s not actionable.
- People under 40 report being described as “ambitious” 2.5x as often as people who are 40 and older.
- People over 40 are far more likely to be called “responsible” and “unselfish” than younger workers.
- Asian people get more feedback than people of any other race—25% more than white people
- Black men get the least feedback of all.
- Compared to their Asian and white counterparts, Black and Latinx people report being described as “passionate” (frequently a euphemism for “can’t get along with others”) 2.1x as often.
- Black and Latinx people receive 2.4x more feedback that’s not actionable compared to white and Asian people.
- Black men receive 1/3 less feedback than white women on average, as measured by word count.
- Black women receive nearly 9x as much feedback that’s not actionable compared to white men under 40.
- White men under 40 get the word “brilliant” in performance feedback 8.7x more than women over 40.
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