Communications of the ACM
A Study sed Sensors to Show That Men and Women Are Treated Differently at Work
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Researchers investigating whether gender differences in behavior drive gender differences in outcomes at a large multinational business strategy firm collected email communication and meeting schedule data for hundreds of employees in one office. They gave 100 individuals sociometric badges, which allowed them to track in-person behavior.
Their data showed almost no perceptible differences in the behavior of men and women. They had indistinguishable work patterns in the amount of time they spent online, in concentrated work, and in face-to-face conversation. And in performance evaluations men and women received statistically identical scores. Yet women weren't advancing and men were.
Their analysis suggests that the difference in promotion rates between men and women at the company was due not to their behavior but to how they were treated. Gender inequality is due to bias, not differences in behavior.
From Harvard Business Review
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