We might think that promotions are viewed pretty equally between men and women, but research from Yale University suggests that isn’t the case and that men gain greater emotional benefits from promotions than women do.

The study, which involved around 15,000 workers in the United States, aims to plug the gap in our understanding of how emotions are experienced differently between men and women at work. This gap is important because obviously, our emotions play a key role in our performance and effectiveness at work.

Emotional support

The authors believe their findings demonstrate that organizations should be providing women with greater emotional support as they rise through the ranks, perhaps through things like networking groups or mentoring programs.

“It would be hard for anyone to break through a glass ceiling when they feel overwhelmed, stressed, less respected and less confident,” the researchers explain. “This emotional burden may not only hamper promotion opportunities for women, but also prevent them from contributing to an organization to the best of their ability. More needs to be done to level the playing field when it comes to emotional burdens at work.”

In addition to feeling more stressed as they gain promotions, women also reported feeling more stressed, frustrated, overwhelmed, and discouraged than men, while also tending to feel less respected and confident. Indeed, women reported more negative feelings than their male peers across every measure and across all ranks in the hierarchy.

While moving up the ranks did tend to alleviate any frustrations people experienced, it tended to do so more for men than for women. This distinction appears to place women at a clear disadvantage as they move into leadership roles.

The authors are at pains to point out that simply smothering the workplace with emotion isn’t the solution to this problem, as there is much evidence to highlight the problems when we try and inhibit negative emotions.

The team believes the study provokes a number of further questions that they hope to explore in additional studies, such as how gender interacts with various other forms of identity, such as social class or race.