- Recent numbers suggest employers are making progress in helping women climb up the career ladder. In fact, the number of women in leadership roles have increased from 17% in 2015 to 21% in 2019, according to McKinsey research.
- Yet, women continue to be underrepresented, and the treatment they experience ultimately impacts their jobs.
- Among the list of ways where women are treated differently at work, experts shared with Business Insider that female employees are more likely to get lower pay than male colleagues, and they're less likely to receive credit for group projects.
- Click here for more BI Prime stories.
How can you fight an enemy you can't see? That's the challenge professional women face in today's workplace.
We often talk about the glass ceiling for female workers to breakthrough, and recent numbers show employers are making progress. More women are rising to the top levels of companies and taking on C-suite jobs, McKinsey research found. The number of women in leadership roles have increased from 17% in 2015 to 21% in 2019, the study showed.
However, women continue to be underrepresented, and the treatment they experience ultimately impacts their jobs. A Pew Research Center survey from 2017 found that women are three times more likely than men to say their gender had made it harder for them to succeed at their job, and 25% of women workers in majority-male offices feel they have to prove themselves to be respected.
"Discrimination today is not as in your face as it was before," said Caryl Rivers, coauthor of "The New Soft War on Women" and journalism professor at Boston University. "It's often harder to see. Legally, you can't say 'I'm not going to hire you or give you this assignment because you're a woman and you can't do it,' but the old attitudes still run deep and are expressed subtly."
Though both men and women hold these biases and often don't even realize it. Having an awareness is key to fighting it in the workplace, she said.
Here are nine subtle ways women are still treated differently at work.
SEE ALSO: The 25 best companies for women to work at, ranked
SEE ALSO: Lower pay, more harassment: How work in America failed women of color in the 2010s
Women take on invisible tasks that lead to burnout
In an interview with Business Insider, Olivia O'Neill, a management professor at George Mason University's School of Business, said women are more likely to experience job burnout than men due to their tendencies to take on "invisible tasks," or things they're expected to do based on their gender.
These tasks can range from taking notes at meetings to showing emotional support for a colleague. Women are saying "yes" to day-to-day hassles that eventually pile up.
O'Neill spent decades studying why female employees fall short in corporate leadership roles. She advises women to look at their own actions when they realize they're taking on more than they can handle, and be comfortable enough to say no.
If women are assertive, it can be seen as aggressive.
An assertive, successful woman being seen as "bossy" and less likable than a man with a similar demeanor is just one of many subtle ways women are treated differently in the workplace.
"It's a Catch-22," said Sonya Rhodes, a psychotherapist and author of "The Alpha Woman Meets Her Match." "Whatever women do at work, they have to do it nicely. But the more you back off, the more they don't take you seriously." Women have to walk a thin line between being too nice and too forceful.
When women are successful, they're often seen as less likable.
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg's book "Lean In" drew arguments from a well-known 2003 study conducted with business students.
The researchers in the study presented the participants with two identical résumés — one using the name Heidi and the other Howard. Though having the same work experience, Heidi and Howard left drastically different impressions. While Howard was judged as terrifically competent, Heidi was judged as unlikeable, Rivers explained.
Even when the experiment was repeated 10 years later, the female name was still perceived to be less trustworthy.
Women are more likely to get lower initial salary offers.
In 2012, researcher Corinne Moss-Racusin led another study using identical résumés under male and female names. She wanted to see how hiring scientists perceive applicants based on their sex. While half the scientists were given the application with a male name, the other half were given the exact same application with a female name.
In the results, female scientists were offered a starting salary of $26,500, and men were offered $30,200.
"Hiring managers will offer a slightly lower salary because they think they can get away with it," Rhodes said. Women are often so grateful to get the position that they are less likely to negotiate an offer, which compounds and perpetuates the cycle of lower pay, she added.
Women are less likely to get credit in group projects.
Based on her research, Rivers said that men are more likely to get the credit in group work — even if the women did the bulk of the work.
It may be a combination of men being assumed more competent and women not actively taking credit for their work.
Women are assumed to be incompetent until they prove themselves.
Linda Hudson, former CEO of security and defense company BAE Systems, recently told the authors of "The Confidence Code" that people often automatically assume that women are incompetent.
"I think the environment is such that even in the position I am now," she said. "Everyone's first impression is that I'm not qualified to do the job. When a man walks into a room, they're assumed to be competent until they prove otherwise."
Talkative men are seen as competent, and talkative women as incompetent.
Victoria Brescoll, the associate professor at Yale's School of Management, told NBC's TODAY that women who talk a lot are seen negatively by other people. She conducted a study that compared the volubility of male and female leaders.
The results showed that male leaders tend to talk more. Additionally, female talkers were seen as significantly less competent and less suited for leadership — even when they talk the same amount as their male colleagues.
Interestingly, some studies have found that women tend to clam up as they're given more authority in the workplace.
In "The Confidence Code" by Katty Kay and Claire Shipman, the authors wrote: "The more senior a woman is, the more she makes a conscious effort to play down her volubility."
Men, on the other hand, typically respond to increasing levels of authority by becoming more verbose, they added.
Once women have children they are perceived as putting less effort into work.
While employers believe men will put more effort into succeeding at work once they become fathers, they believe women will direct more effort toward their kids.
"The minute women become mothers, the attitude towards them changes," Rivers said. "When women become mothers, they suffer financially. Women make significantly less over a lifetime."
Moreover, women also spend seven more years on average performing household work and devoting to unpaid home labor than men, according to Melinda Gates. Gates recently sat down with Business Insider US Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell to discuss how to better empower women.
Gates stressed that the key to bridging the gender inequality gap is to divide up unpaid labor, like cleaning, cooking, and childcare.
Women are often interrupted or ignored in meetings.
Women's voices can easily go unheard, especially when there isn't much representation to begin with.
Rhodes said that it's very common for others to interrupt women, finish their sentences, or not give them the focus and subtle encouragement to continue.
Women presenters at male-dominated events also have a harder time getting the attention of the room, she said. For example, one of her female clients in her late 20s has trouble retaining her male colleagues' attention.
"Women don't command that kind of attention," Rhodes said. "They have to take control."
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