Researchers Found A Bias Against Female Job Seekers You Wont Expect

Researchers Found A Bias Against Female Job Seekers You Wont Expect According to new research, the better the grades a female student gets, theless likely she is to land a job interview. One would assume its the opposite and it is... for men.An April study fromOhio State Universityfound that women may be penalized in the job market for their academic success, and thats especially so if they major in primarilymale-dominated field of mathematics. The researchers submitted 2,106 dummy job applications to over a thousand entry-level positions around the country, and they found that malecollege graduates with higher grades leuchtdiode to more callbacks those with the highest grades (A and A-) received the most callbacks. Thehighest achieving men received callbacks 16 percent of the time, and the men with the lowest grades still received callbacks at a rate of about 11.7 percent.The same couldnt be said for women, however, who actually received less callbacks if their grades were higher. While women who were moderately successful were rewarded with more callbacks, women with the highest grades were less likely to receive a second call. In fact, they not only received a lower rate of callbacks than their B-earning peers, but they also received even less than men with the lowest grades in the study. They only received callbacks nine percent of the time.When the researchers looked at matheamatics students, a field predominantly run by men, women fared even worse. Male math majors with the highest grades received calls 25 percent of the time. Meanwhile, women who majored in math and got the same grades only had a callback rate of eight percent.Employers value competence and commitment among men applicants, but instead privilege women applicants who are perceived aslikable, says the studys author, assistant Professor Natasha Quadlin.This standard helps moderate-achieving women, who are often described as sociable and outgoing, but hurts high-achieving women, whose person alities are viewed with more skepticism.The results suggest that female applicants are being judgedon their likabilityrather thantheir competence, which only reaffirms previous research thatindicates that agender biasindeedhurtshigh-achieving women.--AnnaMarie Houlis is a multimedia journalist and an adventure aficionado with a keen cultural curiosity and an affinity for solotravel. Shes an editor by day and a travel blogger at HerReport.org by night.