Do strengths and skills assessments perpetuate gender bias and stereotypes? It’s a complicated question. BY ELIZ ABETH LOUTFI
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n article published in the 2019 issue of Management Learning, titled “‘I Always Knew I was a Little Girly’: The gendering of skills in management training,” implores users of management texts and strength assessments to learn about how gender is understood in the workplace, suggesting that they perpetuate bias and stereotypes based on gender. In 2008, Sarah Blithe, the article’s author, was working at a consulting firm where she delivered strength-based training sessions to the firm’s clients. In these sessions, Blithe conducted assessment programs based on the Strengths theory developed by Donald O. Clifton and Gallup, which the group would reflect on in discussion afterward. During these discussions, Blithe realized the individuals in her sessions were looking at their results in a way that placed gender stereotypes on specific strengths or skills. “They were consuming that information through a gendered lens,” Blithe said in an interview about her research. “So they were attributing skill to a particular gender, saying, for example, that harmony or empathy is a classic feminine skill, and aggression and competition are classic masculine skills.” The “gendered lens” is a part of the invisible gender binary structure that’s already present and well-ingrained in society. The gender binary, which is the classification of gender into masculine or feminine, and gender conformity are deeply entangled in the workplace and occupational roles across industries such as technology, health care, hospitality, manufacturing and more.
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