High-performing women reportedly face more judgment compared to their male counterparts.
Management software company Textio released a report surveying 450 participants that reveals a drastic difference among workplace feedback depending on a person’s gender or race. In fact, 67% of men said they were described as “intelligent,” while only 32% of women said they received the same description. When considering race, the numbers dwindle with 18% of Black workers saying they were labeled as intelligent in comparison to nearly 50% for white and Asian workers.
With traits that include “likable,” “brilliant, “genius,” “gifted,” and “talented,” women still reportedly heard that feedback less than men. Even when surveyed on receiving negative feedback, women stated they experienced this at a higher rate with 56% being labeled as “unlikable” in comparison to 16% of men, and 78% of women said they were called “emotional” in comparison to 11% of men. On top of this, women are seven times more likely than “people of other genders” to internalize negative feedback.
“Men are mostly receiving feedback about their work. They’re developmental observations, they’re constructive. And then when you look at women, the positive observations are not generally about the work. They’re about the woman’s demeanor, personality, or disposition,” Kieran Snyder, co-founder and data analyst for Textio, told Fortune. “We tend to relate to women in the workplace based on how they make the people around them feel, rather than the work that they’re doing. That means we comment on how friendly, collaborative, difficult, and likable they are. Those qualities don’t necessarily relate to the quality of the work that she’s doing.”
Even when considering work performance, there is still a double whammy for women. Nearly half of women in the workplace said they were called “overachievers” and the term was not viewed as endearing. Complicating matters, although high performers will receive feedback at a higher frequency, it is usually “low in quality” and “unactionable,” the report mentions.
“Low” feedback can result in workers exiting from the company, and this is seen with the 63% who said they are more likely to leave their job within a year if this is the type of feedback they’re receiving, per the 2023 Textio report.
“High-performers are pretty ambitious people. So if you’re providing feedback that is not specific, not actionable, and you’re not promoting them, they will leave. These are people who are being recruited all the time—they have lots of choices for where to work,” Snyder told Fortune.
There are actions that can be put in place to foster a healthier and fairer work environment. Snyder suggests employers coach their managers, invest more in the human resource (HR) department, and implement better practices around performance reviews.
“Your average HR VP is supporting hundreds of managers. So when you get to feedback time, they focus on the most sensitive situations,” she explained. “There are too many managers who need support, too few HR people, and employees tend to be on the receiving end of this bad system.”
