• Girls are taught to cooperate. Boys are taught to compete.
• Girls are taught to build rapport. Boys are taught to establish status differentials.
• Girls are taught to strive for perfection. Boys are taught to strive for improvement.
• Girls are praised for results. Boys are praised for effort.
• Girls are taught to be modest. Boys are taught to self-promote.
• Girls achievements are attributed to luck and the efforts of others. Girls failures are attributed to intrinsic flaws. Boys achievements are attributed to hard work and their own efforts. Boys failures are attributed to back luck and external circumstances.
• Girls are taught to be careful and play it safe. Boys are taught to take risks.

• Women are less likely to see themselves fitting into the typical stereotypes of success within their company
• Women experience less support for their career aspirations from their managers
• Women have fewer roles models in senior or top management at their company

Hewlett-Packard discovered this several years ago when it was trying to figure out how to get more women into top management positions. Women working at HP applied for a promotion only when they believed they met 100 percent of the qualifications listed for the job. In contrast, men were happy to apply when they thought they could meet 60 percent of the job requirements. At HP, and in subsequent similar studies, the data confirm what we instinctively know – women hold back from taking career risks more than men.

Research

As well as women being more reluctant to apply for promotions, women are less likely to bargain over salary increases. Studies show that men initiate salary negotiations four times as often as women and when they do negotiate they ask for 30% less money compared with men.

Research

Male managers report that their female colleagues are less likely to speak up in meetings or appear less confident when presenting or pitching to internal stakeholders or external clients. Entrenched leader stereotypes that link confidence with competence mean that negative perceptions of a women’s confidence act as a drag on a woman’s career. Even when women do put themselves forward for stretch assignments or promotions, they may be rated less positively than more confident male candidates, regardless of whether or not they are more competent because of a perceived lack of confidence. This is particularly relevant for roles which are perceived to require high degrees of confidence such as sales or leadership.

In one example, women rated themselves more negatively than the men did on scientific ability: on a scale of 1 to 10, the women gave themselves a 6.5 on average, and the men scored themselves a 7.6. When it came to assessing how well they answered the questions after they sat a test, the women thought they got 5.8 out of 10 questions right; men, 7.1. And how did they actually perform? Their average was almost the same—women got 7.5 out of 10 right and men 7.9.

The participants were then invited—having no knowledge of how they’d performed—to participate in a science competition for prizes. The women were much more likely to turn down the opportunity: only 49 percent of them signed up for the competition, compared with 71 percent of the men. Women are less confident in their abilities and performance and less likely to lean into opportunities.

Research

Studies show that women have a tendency to credit circumstance or other people for their successes. Men seem to do the opposite, crediting their success to their efforts and talents.

The reverse is true for attributions of failures.

Whereas women tend to attribute failure to their lack of intrinsic capability or effort, men tend to blame failure on external circumstances like the difficulty of the task.

David Dunning, a Cornell psychologist has noticed that during a Math’s Ph.D. programme, in a module that is particularly difficult, male students typically recognise the hurdle for what it is, and respond to their lower grades by saying “wow, this is a tough class”. That is an external attribution. External attributions are usually a healthy sign of resilience. However, he noticed that women tend to respond differently. When the course gets hard women are more likely to attribute their lower grades to a lack of innate ability. That’s an internal attribution and it can be debilitating.

Moreover, while men tend to contain a failure to that particular instance, women have a tendency to respond to failure in a more global way –doubting all of their abilities and questioning their entire self-worth.

This makes failure particularly aversive to women. If any particular instance of failure is perceived as a negative reflection on one’s entire capability or global self-worth, any situation that provides an opportunity for failure can be enormously threatening to a women’s self-concept. Compared with men, women are more likely to avoid situations where there is a possibility of failure in an attempt to protect their self-concept and self-esteem.