How perceived gender differences cost women opportunities and influence
Study: Believed Gender Differences in Social Preferences (DOI: /10.1093/qje/qjae030)
A new study from the University of Michigan reveals that people strongly believe women are more generous, cooperative and equality-driven than men.
These widespread beliefs shape workplace dynamics, hiring decisions and leadership opportunities, often holding women back from key positions of power. They also reinforce traditional gender roles in households and politics, limiting women's choices and influencing how they are evaluated in professional and social settings.
The study, which analyzed 15 separate experiments involving nearly 9,000 participants, found that both men and women overwhelmingly expect women to make socially oriented choices-favoring fairness over self-interest, advocating for equality and behaving altruistically. Yet, when researchers examined actual decision-making behaviors, they found that men and women acted similarly across many scenarios.
"These beliefs matter regardless of their accuracy," said Christine Exley, U-M associate professor of economics and one of the study's authors. "They shape the expectations and constraints that women face in professional and personal settings, influencing how they are perceived, evaluated and treated."
The perception that women are more socially oriented can have significant real-world consequences, particularly in the workplace, Exley says. Women who are expected to be cooperative and fair-minded may be overlooked for leadership positions that require making tough, sometimes unpopular, decisions. Employers and colleagues may assume that women will prioritize fairness over performance-based rewards, which could make them less likely to be promoted to roles that involve negotiating salaries, distributing resources, or managing competitive environments.
These perceptions also influence hiring dynamics, she says. Because women are believed to favor fairness over merit-based outcomes, workers who stand to benefit from equal pay policies were more likely to prefer female employers. As a result, female-led workplaces may inadvertently attract lower-performing candidates, reinforcing professional disparities.
Beyond the workplace, these beliefs also shape household dynamics and policy preferences. Participants in the study expected women, more so than men, to desire equal caregiving responsibilities. These diverging expectations show one way in which negotiating against traditional gender roles in the household can be fraught. In political and policy discussions, women were believed to be stronger supporters of redistribution and social welfare policies, such as equal pay, access to education, and affordable healthcare. These expectations could influence voter behavior and broader political outcomes, leading to assumptions about which candidates and policies women are more likely to support, Exley says.
The study suggests these ingrained beliefs do not emerge from nowhere. Instead, they are shaped by how people recall and interpret past experiences, a concept known as associative memory. For example, if someone remembers a particularly generous woman, they may subconsciously generalize that behavior to all women, even if they've encountered generous men as well.
While Exley and colleagues do not suggest that gender differences never exist, their findings emphasize the importance of recognizing how strongly held beliefs can shape professional, political and social interactions-often in ways that reinforce existing disparities.
If women are consistently expected to behave in certain ways, they may face greater scrutiny when they deviate from those expectations. For example, a woman who prioritizes financial self-interest in a negotiation may be perceived more negatively than a man who does the same, simply because of differing baseline expectations.
The research is published in the February issue of The Quarterly Journal of Economics.
