Institutionalized Gender Bias Is Proven In A Wall Street Law Firm

An important recently published study by Monica Biernat, M. J. Tocci and Joan C. Williams clearly shows the adverse impact of implicit gender bias on women lawyers.[1]  The study uncovered significant evidence of subtle but harmful gender bias in the evaluation process at a large Wall Street law firm with a low number of women partners. The research team analyzed evaluations of male and female associates, comparing numerical ratings and narrative comments. They found that women who received the same narrative comments as men about their technical competence and partnership material received lower numerical ratings than men.  Similarly, “rave reviews” in narrative comments for men boosted their numerical ratings, but the same raves for women produced no benefit.

The disparity between narrative comments and numerical ratings is important because the firm under study relies on numerical ratings for partnership consideration. On the basis of their data analysis, the researchers concluded that men in the firm are three times more likely to be promoted to partnership. But in an interview published on The Careerist blog, one of the researchers stated that when presented with the study results, the firm was “unwilling to do anything about it.”

This study proves that bias toward women is pervasive in this firm’s evaluation system, unjustly reducing the chances for women to become partners even when their performance, competence and partnership potential matches that of men. This exemplifies what women are up against in law firms. As I have written before (Issue 30), women cannot advance in law firms when firms refuse to remove the institutional barriers that hold women back but let men through.

[1] (The Language of Performance Evaluations: Gender-Based Shifts in Content and Consistency of Judgment, Social Psychological and Personality Science, published online 18 July 2011 http://spp.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/07/15/1948550611415693)