What Is Gender Bias in the Workplace?

Bias is prevalent in every aspect of our lives. Our brains are hardwired to categorize things we encounter in order to make sense of the complicated world around us. However, biases can cause us to form prejudices against others, which allows for egregious inequalities to form between different demographics.

While bias comes in many forms, this article focuses on gender bias and its role within the workplace — along with 14 ways you can reduce gender bias and ultimately build a more diverse and inclusive workplace.

 

What Is Gender Bias? 

Gender bias is the tendency to prefer one gender over another. It is a form of unconscious bias, or implicit bias, which occurs when one individual unconsciously attributes certain attitudes and stereotypes to another person or group of people.

Typically, gender bias refers to the preferential treatment given to men — specifically white, heterosexual men. It’s often labeled as sexism and describes the prejudice against women solely on the basis of their sex. Gender bias is most prominently visible within professional settings.

Another term often used interchangeably with gender bias is gender discrimination, which is the unequal treatment of a person or group of people because of gender-based prejudice.

 

Types of Gender Bias

In addition to gender bias, there are a number of other types of unconscious bias that disproportionately affect women’s success in the workplace, which include:

Performance Support Bias

Performance support bias occurs when employers, managers and colleagues provide more resources and opportunities to one gender over another.

Performance Review Bias

Performance review bias occurs when employers, managers and colleagues review an employee of one gender differently from another gender — even when the evaluations are purely merit-based.

Harvard Business Review found that performance evaluations are inherently biased, even when companies make an effort to remove bias by making them open-ended.

Performance Reward Bias 

Performance reward bias occurs when employers, managers and colleagues reward an employee of one gender differently from another gender. Rewards may be in the form of promotions, raises or other merit-based rewards.

Glass Ceiling

These biases have contributed to the creation of the glass ceiling, a metaphor for the evident but intangible hierarchical impediment that prevents minorities and women from achieving elevated professional success.

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Gender Bias Statistics

To further illustrate the role gender bias plays in the office, we’ve gathered a number of statistics related to diversity and gender bias in the workplace.

Harassment in the Workplace Based on Gender Statistics

• In 2024, four in 10 women said they had experienced microaggressions, harassment or both at work in the past year.
• Of the women who experience sexual harassment at work, 14 percent cite they didn’t report it because of concern the behavior would get worse, and 10 percent don’t report due to worrying that it would negatively affect their career.

Hiring and Workplace Performance Based on Gender Statistics

• Women are more likely than men to be hired for jobs below their qualification level.
• Women are less likely to be promoted and and more likely to be judged as having lower leadership potential than men, even if their performance is rated higher on average.
• Women ask for pay raises at the same rate (or more) than men, but women receive them 7 percent less often.
• Companies with executive teams in the top quartile for gender diversity are 25 percent more likely to see above-average profitability.

Job Level Based on Gender Statistics

• 40 percent of managerial roles and 36 percent of senior manager and director roles are held by women.
• 5.4 percent of CEOs globally are women. 
• 28 percent of boardroom seats are held by women.
• 28 percent of C-suite roles are held by women.
• Six percent of C-suite roles are held by women of color.
• 10.4 percent of CEOs at Fortune 500 companies are women.
• Less than 10 women of color are CEOs at Fortune 500 companies, with them making up one percent of Fortune 500 CEOs as of 2023.

Further ReadingA Simple Way to Improve Diversity Efforts in Hiring

 

Examples of Gender Bias in the Workplace

Gender bias can happen at all stages of recruiting, hiring and retaining employees. In this section, we’re going to break down some key areas where gender bias affects candidates and their careers.

Recruiting Strategies Can Be Biased 

Throughout the recruiting process, there can be traces of gender bias, starting with where and how you recruit candidates. 

Looking for a job after graduating college, Erin McKelvey didn’t receive a single response from employers. When she changed her name from Erin (historically a feminine name) to Mack (considered a more masculine name) on her resume, she received a 70 percent response rate.

Additionally, employers may unconsciously (or consciously) place open roles on platforms with predominantly male candidates or actively target men through ads. Aside from being unethical, this is also illegal.

Job Descriptions Can Contain Biased Language

Even something as mundane as a job description contains traces of unconscious bias. Language inherently has gendered associations. Including words like confident, decisive, strong and outspoken have been found to attract male candidates and deter female candidates.

Research shows that when the qualifications for a role in a job posting are clear, qualified women are more likely to apply. In the same study, only six percent of qualified women applied to a job listed as an “expert” role, in comparison to 22 percent of qualified men. Meaning, if your job description has too many strict requirements, or job qualifications that are too vague, you are unintentionally weeding out women from applying to your open roles.

Interview Questions Can Be Gender Biased

When interviews are not standardized, the questions interviewers ask can be biased based on the candidate’s personality, experiences and even gender.

One study found that women are more likely to be asked why they should be hired and where they see themselves in five years in comparison to men. Women are also more frequently asked about their strengths, weaknesses and failures than men. 

Gender Bias Can Influence Mentors and Mentoring Opportunities

In order to achieve upper-level positions, it is highly beneficial for individual contributors to have a mentor supporting them throughout their career. But 60 percent of male managers have said they are uncomfortable mentoring, socializing with or working one-on-one with female employees. 

Compensation and Rewards Can Reflect Gender Bias

Payscale’s Gender Pay Gap Report shows women make 83 cents for every dollar men make, which the salary platform company refers to as the “uncontrolled gender pay gap.” The “controlled gender pay gap” compares men and women with the same jobs and qualifications. That metric shows women making 99 cents for every dollar men earn. 

When considering the gender pay gap, you must account for the fact that while women are increasing representation across all job industries, they are more likely to be in lower-paying jobs than men. 

Perks and Benefits Can Affect Genders Differently

The perks and benefits companies offer can significantly contribute to gender bias and opportunity discrepancies between genders. This is especially true when it comes to benefits for working parents since women are typically assigned to act as the primary caregiver of children, which has led to a motherhood penalty. 

While on family or medical leave, fewer women than men receive full pay, and more women receive no pay than men. Also, the average length of women’s leaves are longer than men’s.

For working fathers, paid paternity leave is less likely to be offered by employers than maternity leave. And when the benefit is offered by companies, 63 percent of men planned to take less than half of their allotted leave time. There is still a strong stigma that suggests taking parental leave will harm one’s career, which is a serious concern to 58 percent of men.

Parental Status Can Affect Income and Career Development

As of 2024, mothers earned 71 cents for every dollar fathers earned, according to the National Women’s Law Center. That wage gap results in $20,000 in yearly losses for mothers who work full-time, and women of color who have children lose out on upwards of $39,000 each year. 

For pregnant parents, the number of pregnancy-related claims filed in 2020 was up by 67 percent compared to 2016, despite declines in U.S. pregnancies and births.

Sexual Harassment In the Workplace Affects Genders Differently

While both men and women experience sexual harassment, 78.2 percent of EEOC sexual harassment charges between fiscal years 2018 and 2021 were filed by women. And 38 percent of all women and 14 percent of all men have reported experiencing sexual harassment at work as of 2019.

A 2022 Deloitte survey found that 14 percent of 5,000 women from 10 countries who responded had been harassed at work. More than 40 percent of these instances of “unwanted physical advances or repeated disparaging comments” went unreported, with embarrassment identified as the top reason for not speaking up. Less than a quarter of the women surveyed said their employer had “a clear process for reporting discrimination and harassment.”

Whether women decide to start over somewhere else or risk retaliation from addressing the issue, they are at a constant risk of harming their careers after being sexually harassed.

Gender Bias Intersects With Racial Bias

Fifty one percent of women from marginalized racial or ethnic groups said they have experienced racism in their current workplace. Among Black U.S. workers, 36 percent of women say they have experienced discrimination or unfair treatment by an employer due to their race. 

As for pay, the pay gap is broadest for women who identify as American Indian and Alaska Native, according to Payscale. They earn 74 cents for every dollar earned by white men. That’s followed by Hispanic women who make 79 cents, Black or African American and Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander women who make 80 cents, white women who make 83 cents and Asian women who make 96 cents for every dollar white men make. 

More on bias at workUnderstanding Microaggressions at Work

 

14 Ways to Reduce Gender Bias in the Workplace

1. Collect and Analyze Employee Demographic Data

Start by collecting data about your employee demographics. Look at disparities between men and women by department, seniority and retention. You may also consider publishing this information on your careers page to remain transparent with your entire company and to hold your team accountable for moving the needle toward becoming an entirely gender diverse and equal opportunity employer. 

2. Collect and Analyze Employee Compensation Data

Conduct regular pay audits to identify how men and women are paid and promoted differently. Consider both the adjusted and unadjusted pay gaps that we talked about earlier in this article. 

Also, it may behoove you to publish your findings for the entire company to see or even on your careers page. One survey found women who said their employer had implemented pay transparency earned between $1 and $1.01 on average for every $1 a man earned.

3. Run Experiments Unique to Your Team

Employee engagement surveys are a great way to gather more data about your team and identify trends in how your employees engage in their work. Keep in mind that in order to obtain the best, most unfiltered responses, you’ll want to keep these surveys anonymous. If your teams are small and not highly gender diverse, you may not want to ask for personal information like job title or even gender because if there’s only one woman with a specific role on the team, she will be easily identifiable.

Additionally, you may want to implement perception surveys, which focus on the safety of your employees. Anonymous surveys like this provide an opportunity for employees to share experiences they’ve encountered, like sexual harassment or gender bias, that may not have been addressed in standard employee engagement surveys.

4. Identify Gender Bias in Your Recruiting Process

To reduce gender bias in your recruiting process, start by looking at the language you use. You can use a gender decoder tool to identify biased language in your job descriptions. You could also plug in recruitment content from emails, interview questions and employer branding materials for social media and your careers page. 

5. Utilize Automation and Artificial Intelligence

One simple way to reduce gender bias in your recruiting process is to invest in recruitment tools that utilize automation or artificial intelligence to make decisions. 

Not only will this save time during the initial screening process, but it will help filter through candidates based on merit rather than gender or other characteristics that may place them at a biased and unfair disadvantage.

However, it is also important to note that artificial intelligence can be trained on biased data, and if human biases are introduced then artificial intelligence can learn and perpetuate those biases, so take precautions when using such technology to reduce bias early on.

6. Implement Regular Gender Bias Training

The best way to reduce unconscious gender bias is to learn about it and take action to alter your perception of biases for the better. 

Start by informing your team of the different types of unconscious bias and then look for diversity and inclusion professionals or unconscious bias programs near you that will support your efforts with regular training.

7. Standardize Mentoring or Utilize E-Mentoring

To provide all of your employees with equal opportunities, create a standardized mentoring process. Mentors can make employees feel more confident and supported in their roles, and ultimately help them advance in their careers.

If a mentor program doesn’t quite work for your team, consider partnering with an e-mentoring program to connect your employees with professionals outside of your company. 

8. Provide Leadership Training Opportunities

Leadership training should be offered to everyone growing in their careers to ensure they know how to manage and lead teams, which is often a skill set that needs to be learned. 

Such training is essential to reducing gender bias, closing the gender wage gap and breaking the glass ceiling. It will also help both men and women become better mentors for females earlier in their careers.

To reach gender equality, fill the pay gap and break the glass ceiling, companies need to proactively provide women with leadership and professional development opportunities.

9. Make All Voices Heard For Important Projects

When you’re implementing a new project, make sure you’re bringing together a diverse team with a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences to tackle it. One study found that mixed-gender teams significantly outperformed same-gender teams in novelty and impact.

10. Offer Perks and Benefits for Equal Opportunities

When you review the perks and benefits you offer, bring your entire team in on the conversation. Provide them an opportunity to share honest feedback on the benefits they wish your team had and the benefits that would draw them to another company. If you have a young company, employees may value parental leave benefits, whereas if your employees are later in their careers, they may care more about retirement benefits. Having these conversations will help you invest in benefits that will actually support your employee’s work-life balance.

Additionally, parental leave brings a wealth of benefits, including boosting retention rates, productivity and employee morale.

And when it comes to parental leave, it’s important to include working fathers and encourage them to actually take the leave. 

11. Create an Office Space for Everyone

Believe it or not, your physical office space can play a role in how men and women interact in the workplace. Certain office designs have even been found to be more or less inclusive for different demographics. In industries that have been dominated by men, oftentimes, there aren’t even bathrooms for women. 

Many companies also do not offer a mother’s room, forcing working moms to breastfeed in the bathroom or other places that are less than welcoming and unhygienic.

12. Diversify Your Boardroom 

Beyond managerial or even C-level leadership positions, companies also need to take a hard look at their board of directors. 

A study performed at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business showed that, “Companies with more women on their board of directors are more likely to be companies that have programs, guidelines, and clear policies to avoid corrupt business dealings, have strong partnerships and have high levels of disclosure and transparency.” If you’re looking for ways to build a more diverse and transparent workplace and business, appointing more women to your board of directors is a perfect place to start.

13. Review Your Anti-Discrimination and Bias Policies

Review your nondiscrimination and anti-harassment policies, and make sure this information is included in job descriptions, employee handbooks and your careers page. In addition to your policies, provide employees with information and resources on who to reach out to in different situations. Include clear steps for what is going to happen so people know what to expect when they file a complaint.

14. Use Anonymous Evaluations and Standardized Hiring Processes

One way to help reduce gender bias is to standardize hiring processes, and in some cases, remove the individual’s name from the evaluation process entirely (such as when reviewing resumes of potential candidates.) When performing interviews, whether for a new hire or an internal promotion, all candidates should be asked the same questions, with responses assigned numerical ratings based on predetermined criteria. Defining clear thresholds for performance management helps standardize expectations across the organization as well.

Setting standards for all processes at any organization provides a benchmark for every employee to work up to and reduces cases of less-qualified employees being rewarded over high performers. 

 

Frequently Asked Questions