The Latest Corporate Gender Gap Claim: Women Aren’t Deceptive Enough

And now, the latest theory on why men hold more business leadership positions than women: men are more likely to harbor delusions of grandeur. Whoa my goodness.

This is according to a new study that showed men are more likely to over-inflate their success rate on tests. By accident. Really.

The Washington Post dissected the study this afternoon to great effect. The report, released in the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, had two groups of students — male and female — take a math test. Then a year later, the students were asked how they performed. (Can you see this coming?) The guys inflated their scores far more than women did, the study found, self-reporting marks 50 percent higher than reality (women, on average, boosted theirs by around 15 percent). Weirdly, as the Post explains, the respondents don’t even do this on purpose. It was part of “natural overconfidence.” The men who participated in this experiment were hardwired to think they were awesome. And why does this lead to men getting more leadership positions in business? Apparently people are gullible!

Okay, can we agree to file this one with the ‘women aren’t ambitious enough’ and ‘women aren’t assertive enough’ claims? We’ve got way too many way-too-simplistic studies that try to explain (but don’t) the gender gap as it is.

(Fingers Crossed image via Shutterstock)

TAGS: corporate gender gap | gender gap | study on women in business

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