Study finds gender bias in recommendation letters for academic jobs
Letters of recommendation in academia contain more “doubt raisers” for women than men, according to a recent study.
Doubt raisers include descriptors that are either vague, overtly negative or faint praise, such as indirect criticism, said Michelle Hebl, a psychology and management professor at Rice University who was the lead author of the study, in an email. Doubt raisers were used more frequently to describe women applicants than men, Hebl said, which can negatively impact women’s job prospects.
The study analyzed letters for academic positions that had names redacted, so researchers couldn’t know if the letters were written by women or men, Hebl said.
The study used 624 letters of recommendation for 174 applicants to eight positions in the psychology department at an unnamed research-intensive university in the South.
Beth Livingston, an assistant professor at the University of Iowa who helped conduct the study, said gendered traits are associated with men and women. An example of this is “the idea that women are more humble or more nurturing than men are, and men are more aggressive or assertive,” Livingston said.
These characteristics are valued differently in the workplace, with stereotypically male characteristics often being considered of greater value, said Livingston, who studies stereotyping and gender bias in hiring practices. She added that both men and women can be evaluated negatively and penalized for not meeting gendered expectations.
“What this research has shown is that, even among people who should know better, there are still subtle ways that those expectations and stereotypes filter into what you do and how you promote people,” Livingston said. “And we should be aware of that.”
Heather Dial, a communication sciences researcher at the University of Texas at Austin, worked with Hebl on the second part of the study. The researchers evaluated responses to recommendation letters with doubt raisers, when the only change was gender.
Dial said the results are not due to a conscious discrimination against women.
“It’s not something that’s overt,” Dial said. “Because we find that women were just as likely as men to put more doubt raisers into women’s letters.”
The study found that 54 percent of recommendation letters for women applicants had doubt raisers, while 51 percent of those for men applicants had them. While this gender difference was small, the second part of the study concluded that doubt raisers had a greater negative impact on women applicants, Dial said.
There are both structural and individual changes that can be implemented to try to prevent these stereotypes from continuing, Livingston said.
To change this pattern in the future, letter writers need to be aware of their own biases, Hebl said.
“They are not immune, even if they are aware,” Hebl said. “They should write letters and go back and reread and proof them through a gender lens to be maximally egalitarian.”
