Whilst it’s nice to think that there are no gender differences in the workplace, a number of studies suggest that this is not really the case, and it’s a good thing to be aware of the possible differences that may exist.

For instance, a number of studies suggest that men are more likely to think highly of themselves than women are, but a recent study also suggests that men are much more likely to big up their own work too.

The study explored a few hundred years of data from the academic database JSTOR.  This involved trawling through around 1.5 million papers to examine the citation patterns from that data.  They were looking out for instances of self-citation to try and extrapolate trends in self-promotion amongst the scientific community.

Bigging yourself up

When the data was analyzed, it emerged that around 10% of all citations were self-citations.  What’s interesting however is that men were around 56% more likely to self-cite than their female peers.  This propensity to big up our own work appears to be only increasing, with the figure rising to 70% when data from the last two decades were analyzed.  The trend also remained stable across fields, suggesting it is pretty uniform.

Suffice to say, this has significant implications as the citation remains the primary currency in academia, but the phenomenon is also evident in other ways too.

For instance, I wrote last year about a study suggesting that men are perceived as being far more creative than women.

“Our research shows that beliefs about what it takes to ‘think creatively’ overlap substantially with the unique content of male stereotypes, creating systematic bias in the way that men and women’s creativity is evaluated,” the authors say.

Just as with self promotion, women are often criticized for being innovative.  Indeed, I wrote last year about a couple of studies highlighting the danger for women who even dare to speak up with radical ideas.

“When male employees contributed ideas that brought in new revenue, they got significantly higher performance evaluations. But female employees who spoke up with equally valuable ideas did not improve their managers’ perception of their performance,” the author says. “Also, the more the men spoke up, the more helpful their managers believed them to be. But when women spoke up more, there was no increase in their perceived helpfulness.”

Sadly, this phenomenon was not dampened as women rose the corporate hierarchy, with outspoken men regarded as excellent leaders, but outspoken women significantly less so.

Challenging stereotypes

Challenging these stereotypes matters, because a final study found that despite not being perceived as innovative, women are often much more so than their male counterparts.

The study saw a workforce scoured for instances of eight characteristics that underpin good innovation:

1. Challenge their subordinates by giving them difficult or impossible problems to solve, ambitious goals to attain, and the support needed to manage stress.

2. Encourage broadening, which means providing employees with training in subjects or topics well outside their comfort zones.

3. Encourage capturing, that is, urging people to preserve their breakthrough ideas and giving them the tools (whether sophisticated computer programs or pocket-sized recorders) to do so.

4. Manage teams appropriately by assembling diverse groups that use brainstorming and other techniques to maximize their creative output.

5. Model the core competencies of creative expression by walking the walk; for example, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd had his assistants accompany him from meeting to meeting so they could record each new idea on a large chart.

6. Provide adequate and appropriate resources to enable creative functioning.

7. Provide a diverse and changing physical and social work environment that keeps employees on their toes.

8. Provide positive feedback and recognition to people who contribute new and important ideas.

When the data was crunched, it emerged that women outperformed men in each of the eight areas.

I suspect that there are no easy answers to resolving this imbalance, but hopefully by at least being aware that it exists it will provide the first step towards addressing it.