Goldberg (1968) found that men’s work was rated higher than women’s work even when the work was identical. However, several meta-analyses of similar experiments have been conducted and have found little evidence of bias in the evaluation of women’s work. Explain and analyze the complexities in this data that tell us there is more to the story and give an example of each. What is an important limitation in these meta-analyses?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

There are two main complexities that tell us that there is much more to this story and data based on the context. For example, the gender bias was greater in jobs that were male-dominated than in jobs that were female-dominated. Gender bias depended on whether the job appeared congruent with the gender role of the applicant or employee. In addition, men tended to have more gender-biased rating than women did. Another layer of complexity in the data was that gender bias depended on how much information the rater had about the applicant or employee. For example, when raters were given only a small amount of information, there was more gender bias (favoring men) than when raters were given more information. A major limitation in these meta-analyses was that nearly all the studies reviewed were laboratory experiments with college students serving as the raters. So, the studies are not necessarily generalizable because they are not necessarily measuring gender discrimination in the actual evaluations of real work done by real people making hiring decisions or by other powerful persons.