The Science Of Feminism: 9 Studies Of Gender (In)Equality

Because women are traditionally demure, passive and ultimately subordinate, the perception of high-achieving women compared to high-achieving men is much harsher.

A woman is much more likely to receive negative feedback for the same behaviour as a man in a business situation, usually with remarks that their behaviour is "abrasive" and are quite often, for want of a better term, told to pipe down.

In a study of 248 performance reviews of 180 people, it was found that women received a much higher ratio of critical feedback than men. The critical feedback received in professional performance reviews by women and men tended to vary greatly with men often receiving something constructive such as:

“There were a few cases where it would have been extremely helpful if you had gone deeper into the details to help move an area forward.”

Whereas women would receive something along the lines of:

“You can come across as abrasive sometimes. I know you don’t mean to, but you need to pay attention to your tone.”

And:

“Your peers sometimes feel that you don’t leave them enough room. Sometimes you need to step back to let others shine.”

In other words, if you're a bloke, you need to talk more, in more detail and if you're a woman, you need to let other people do the talking. This isn't just cherry picking either, with this kind of criticism showing up in 71% of the 94 women's reviews, compared to just twice in the 84 reviews given to men.

These perceptions of female assertiveness when they are taking positive action, also translates over to when they object to something, with words such as "emotional" and "irrational" being used to characterise a female's objections. This diminishing of female opinion allows male dominance to continue in the workplace, even as more women begin to make headway in the world of business. The upshot of which being that a company can hit all the female quotas it likes, but still be a male-dominated environment. 

This, as with most other studies into gender, prove that numbers are only half the story, it's the attitudes that matter.