Data suggests that career advancement, rather than recruitment, is where many companies need to target their efforts to further gender equity in their organization. While efforts to diversify the “pipeline” remain important, especially in industries like tech and finance, if companies are not able to develop and promote the women they hire, it will be very difficult for them to reach gender parity, or anything close to it, at senior levels.
Research suggests double standards where, for example, the time taken to make a decision is interpreted as a sign of indecisiveness for a female associate but as thoughtfulness in the case of her male counterpart. Given that we hold pre-existing beliefs about the behaviors of people with certain characteristics, we tend to look for evidence that confirms these stereotypes.