By Dr. Wanda Wallace and Rob Kaiser
It’s easy to blame unconscious bias against women as leaders for keeping women out of the executive suite. Many people think the male establishment promotes this bias. Not only is this explanation overly simplistic, it’s actually wrong, according to our independent research.
We conducted a study that analyzed 360-degree assessments of 857 women and 857 men from upper-level management in six companies based in the United States, Western Europe and Australia. The women and men were matched in terms of age, experience, tenure, management level and functional area. We systematically studied the presence of bias using two well-accepted statistical procedures, and then we looked at real differences in behavior.