Interview: "Potential" and Gender Promotion Gap with Kelly Shue

Dec. 19, 2022

Why are women perceived to have less potential for management than men? How can firms reduce bias and reduce the gender gap in promotion and pay? Watch our interview with Yale's professor Kelly Shue.

Kelly Shue, Professor at Yale, presented a study showing that women are consistently judged as having lower leadership potential than men, even though their
performance is rated equally or higher than their male counterparts. The study showed that lower potential ratings explain up to 50% of the gap in promotions. The study revealed that managers hold female employees to a higher standard than men, and underestimate women’s abilities to perform in the future. Shue explained that ‘potential’ — measured in general in terms of assertiveness, execution skills, charisma, leadership, and ambition, for example — is a more abstract concept than performance, and hence subject to greater biases. 

“It's not necessarily about us having negative stereotypes of women, we might view women as being conscientious or hardworking. But because these are not the same stereotypes that we associate with successful management, then we are less likely to forecast that women have high management potential.”

Watch the full interview.