We all use stereotypes in our daily lives. They allow us to immediately “know” a whole host of things about particular sorts of people because of some other of their attributes. For example, we might classify someone as strong/weak, friend/foe, competent/incompetent, or skilled/not skilled simply because she or he is a woman or a man, black or white, old or young, rich or poor, and so forth.

When we use stereotypes in this way, we can behave toward particular sorts of people based on these stereotypes we hold instead of based on their real characteristics. For example, we typically ascribe to women and men different physical, mental and emotional characteristics. Thus, women are (or should be) communal, which means they are (or should be) warm, pleasant, caregiving, gentle, modest, sensitive and affectionate. And men are (or should be) agentic, which means they are (or should be) strong, forceful, aggressive, competent, competitive and independent.

5 biases caused by gender stereotypes in the workplace

The problem is that these traditional gender stereotypes operate in virtually all organizations — including law firms — to slow, obstruct and block women’s progress up the career ladder. They do this by fostering five distinct sorts of biases against women in the workplace:

1. Negative biases
2. Benevolent biases
3. Agentic biases
4. Self-limiting biases
5. Motherhood biases

In other articles on this site, we discuss these five types of gender bias in the workplace and how they operate to discriminate against women. Let’s take a quick look at negative biases and how they adversely affect women’s career advancement.

The impact of negative gender bias

A person holds negative stereotypes about women if he or she thinks a woman — simply because she is a woman — is (or should be) warm, pleasant and likable, but not particularly forceful, competent, or suited for high-pressure, competitive leadership tasks. A person holding such negative stereotypes will (at least initially) consistently judge the women he or she works with as less talented, less suited for challenging assignments, and less worthwhile to advise, supervise or sponsor than the men.

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Such a person is not necessarily intentionally hostile to women or even conscious that he or she is acting in discriminatory ways toward women. But recent psychological and sociological studies leave no doubt that almost all of us, to one degree or another, operate with implicit gender biases. For example, a recent study revealed that approximately 75% of people think “men” when they hear career-related words such as business, profession and work, but think “women” when they hear domestic-related words such as family, household and caregiving. Indeed, an overwhelming majority of people associate men with leader-related roles such as boss, CEO and director; while they associate women with aide-related roles such as assistant, attendant and secretary.

When the gatekeepers to women’s career advancement — their supervisors, senior managers, and the people in the C-suites of their organizations — hold negative gender stereotypes, they (at least initially) will have lower expectations about women’s performance capability and potential than about those of comparably situated men. Their thinking will go something like, “These jobs require strong agentic characteristics, and women — simply because they are women — don’t have those characteristics.”

Never mind what a particular woman’s actual characteristics might be. These negative stereotypes — “women are not as good as men at power, competition and leadership” — operate to limit and otherwise obstruct women’s career advancement. They obscure their actual talents, ambition and potential. It is as though the stereotypes are (unconsciously) whispering to us, “Damn reality, this is what you should believe about that woman’s abilities.”

There are many actions that can be done at the corporate level to minimize the hurtful effects of negative gender stereotypes in the workplace. For example, the gatekeepers to women’s career advancement can be sensitized to these stereotypes; women can learn to communicate in ways that avoid or overcome them; and organizations can adopt policies that combat their operation.

This article was previously published by Thomson Reuters and is reprinted with permission.