Qualifications and Commitment: A Higher Bar for Women
When assessing candidates, employers consider not only a candidate’s qualifications for a position but also their potential commitment to it. This assessment varies with the gender of the candidate, researchers have found. Female candidates must be overqualified to be considered committed to their careers. In contrast, male candidates need only be qualified. In fact, overqualified male candidates are viewed as less committed to the potential employer, for they are expected to move on to a better opportunity after a short tenure.
This higher bar for employment for women is owing to stereotypes about gender that employers fall back on owing to the absence of applicant-specific data. These include the biased assumption that all women prioritize their family over their careers. Researchers also found that employers (like our society) expect women to act communally, prioritizing the best interest of the team over their personal ambitions. Prospective employers might also assume the overqualified female candidate is leaving her current firm for a “legitimate” reason like escaping gender bias rather than a desire to advance her career. Overqualified female employees are therefore are not considered a flight risk like their male counterparts.
When women need more qualifications than men to attain the same position, their careers progress more slowly. A computer simulation shows that when equally skilled male and female employees start at the same level, if the woman faces a 3 percent gender bias it will take her 8.5 years to reach the highest level that her male colleague reaches in just 4 years. This is true across professions.
The gender imbalance in required qualifications and perceived level of commitment in hiring can be felt in promotions as well. Women in architecture hold proportionally fewer leadership positions than their male counterparts. While 36 percent of licensed architects identify as female, just 23 percent of firm partners and principals do, according to the AIA’s 2022 Firm Survey Report.
Men and women at work in an unidentified office, 1909 (Missouri History Museum).
Employers should not be complacent about slowing the career advancement of female candidates and employees with the implicit requirement that they be overqualified. Women, especially women of color, are far less satisfied with their architectural careers at their current employers than white men are, a 2021 AIA/The Center for WorkLife Law investigation into bias in the architecture profession found. Among twelve impacts of biases identified in the study, two are “Clear path for advancement” and “Fairness of promotions.”
The demographics of the architecture profession are changing, and firm cultures need to change to attract the best talent. In 2021, nearly 49 percent of newly licensed architects identified as women, the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB) reports. Read more about eliminating bias in recruiting, performance evaluations, and promotion to get started.
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