Workplace men get to top thanks to greater self-esteem, study finds

2022-11-19

News that won’t surprise a single woman: Men in the workplace get to the top thanks to greater self-esteem, landmark study finds

The landmark study found men have greater self-esteem in the workplace
It means that more of them are put into the top jobs than women at work
Pressures of parenting with career breaks to have children long blamed for gap
But research found men’s over-confidence at work is a big factor in the gap too

Many women in the workplace have long suspected it’s swaggering arrogance that enables their male counterparts to get ahead.

Now a landmark study concludes that men’s greater self-esteem puts more of them into the top jobs than women.

The pressures of parenting with career breaks to have children and the lack of childcare have long been blamed for the gender gap.

But research into thousands of Britons born in a single week in 1970 reveals that men’s ‘over-confidence’ is a big factor too.

Now a landmark study concludes that men’s greater self-esteem puts more of them into the top jobs than women (stock image)

The analysis compared results from educational tests taken at the ages of five, ten and 16 with the participants’ subjective estimates of how intelligent they were when questioned aged ten and 16.

The results show that boys were twice as likely to judge themselves as clever as girls. The researchers then looked at participants in full-time employment at the age of 42.

Accounting for socio-economic background, education and ethnicity, there was a gender gap of six percentage points among those in senior roles, with 24 per cent of men against 18 per cent of women.

The findings come from analysis of data from the 1970 British Cohort Study – the gold standard of social research – which has followed the lives of 17,000 individuals born in the UK in a specific week in 1970.

Dr Nikki Shure and Dr Anna Adamecz-Volgyi, authors of the study, said their aim was to understand why men enjoy a higher probability of climbing to the top rung of the career ladder – given the implications for pay inequalities.

Previously, the debate around the gap between men and women succeeding at work centred on issues such as lack of childcare and poor parental leave, the research states.

But books such as ex-Facebook boss Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In, focusing on how women hold themselves back due to under-confidence, changed people’s views.

Dr Shure and Dr Adamecz-Volgyi, of University College London, say that not only are women more likely to be under-confident, but men are more likely to be over-confident about their abilities.

‘We found that over-confidence does actually help you get a top job, so the fact men are more over-confident means that it’s helping them more,’ Dr Shure said.

Professor Ian Robertson, author of How Confidence Works, said: ‘Boys tend to exaggerate their own abilities because it helps them compete and be dominate.

‘From the age of five or six, boys are rewarded for competitive, dominant behaviour. But a girl who is ruthlessly competitive suffers a real social penalty.’

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