“She has a family, she won’t leave”

One of my friends was working as a postdoc at the time. She had small kids and her husband was also an academic. While academia is prestigious, salaries are not great. Given that and the fact that she had kids, my friend’s university felt that they did not need to promote her (despite her being a rock star) because with small kids, living in an expensive city and having just bought a house, she wouldn’t really have an alternative. What they did not know was that my friend was actually quite wealthy and could afford to walk – and that is what she did. She has thrived professionally since and never looked back.

It might sound like a one off story but research has actually shown that it is not. It is actually quite common that exceptionally qualified women are undervalued and taken for granted by their organizations – and this is not constrained to women who are mothers.

The research showed that people are more comfortable hiring women for jobs they are overqualified for than men. And the reason for this is (as with my friend) gender-biased assumption about how challenging it will be to retain them.

While it’s assumed that exceptional men will job hop to get a promotion, it’s assumed that exceptional women will stay loyal to their firm because they value their relationships with their coworkers. The assumption that women value these relationships is so strong that people continue to believe exceptional women will choose to stay even in the face of better, outside career opportunities. The resarch results show exceptional women, on average, are seen as 20% less likely to leave the firm and 26% more likely to be hired as a result, compared to men with equivalent exceptional qualifications.

I guess these findings tie in nicely with the study I shared last week which showed that high performing who were passed over for a promotion are much more likey to stay than men (whether they were high or low performers). And the study also shows that biases hurt everyone, men (who might not get a job because they are seen as overqualified) AND women (who are hired but then are taken for granted).

As my friend’s example has shown, times are changing – especially if the women (realize that they) have options. So if you are undervaluing exceptional women, you are doing so at your own risk – and you might passed over quite a few suitable men in the process as well 😉

Source: https://buff.ly/3aVTdG6 (HBR: Stop Undervaluing Exceptional Women”