How some men in business are rated as “ideal workers” while women aren’t rated similarly. BU Professor’s study shows that we don’t police men’s time the way that we police women’s time.
5/7/15 — Boston, Massachusetts
Questrom professor Erin Reid for BU Research story on businessmen who fake working 80 hour weeks to appear to be the ideal worker.
Photo by Cydney Scott for Boston University Photography
By Julie Underwood – Assistant City Manager, City of Daly City CA
Recently I heard this fascinating Harvard Business Review podcast that featured a professor from Boston University, Erin Reid, who did a study about the differences between men and men and women and men in the workplace. In particular, this study focused on men’s experiences.
Professor Reid started the podcast off by noting that in her research there were many studies on women, and not many on men. Often the conclusion was that women couldn’t get ahead because they didn’t have stay at home wives, and that all the men who were getting ahead did so because they had stay at home wives. She questioned this given that 70% of couples had both partners working full-time. In this study Reid conducted interviews of men and women at a strategy consulting firm. The expectation was that they had to travel and work all the time (80 hour weeks were common). In fact, meeting these expectations translated into the “ideal worker”—someone who puts work responsibilities before family or other obligations or interests.
The story was that women couldn’t get ahead because they had trouble with the long work hours. What Reid really learned, however, is that men reported difficulty with the work hours at the same rate as women. And while some men worked all the time, more than half of her sample had trouble with this at the same rate as women did. Some men who had trouble with it were transparent about it, like most of the women. They asked for local assignments and pushed back on crazy assignments, but these men were penalized in the same way women were.
The study also revealed that there were a group of men who also had trouble with these expectations; however, they kept this to themselves and they found “under the radar” ways of working less. And yet they were still considered high performers – people really didn’t seem to know they weren’t working all the time (they were still putting in a 40-55 hour work week). Professor Reid called this group “passers” – passing themselves off as ideal workers. She found 31% of men were passers and only 11% of women. Interestingly, these passers’ evaluations were rated as high as men working 70-80 hours a week. To the organization their work product was just as good.
Why were women more transparent? Research shows that supervisors check up on women more and they typically anticipate that women will not work long hours. People policed women’s time more. Research supports the notion that when women became mothers, people expected that they were not going to work as hard. At this firm, women weren’t expected to work all the time, and so they were offered accommodations, and naturally they took them. Reid also learned that these opportunities were not offered to men, and the men who tried to get formal accommodations were harshly penalized and stigmatized.
In general, it appears we don’t police men’s time the way that we police women’s time. Men could come and go and no one checked on them. For example, when women left the office at 5:00pm people assumed it was that she was going home. However, men were given a benefit of doubt, and people assumed that if a man left at 5:00pm, he was going to a business meeting. Basically, people made different assumptions for men and women. On the other hand, the study showed that men and women were not that different – working long hours were challenging for both genders. And unfortunately the implication for the women who were transparent, and given an accommodation with an 80% schedule, they sacrificed earnings (they still worked a 40-50 hour work week).
I had two takeaways from this podcast. Men and women who want to have life-work balance should not be penalized. Accommodations should be offered to everyone – women and men. And we need to re-think how organizations work. The easiest thing for a manager to measure is “face time,” but is this real productive “work?” Making organizational changes that support working parents is not only good for business; it’s good for our communities.
Listen to the HBR Podcast HERE.
