The Language of Gender Bias in Performance Reviews

Alison Wynn, JoAnne Wehner, and Katherine Weisshaar worked on a study to show that there are bigger biases in the evaluations of people's personalities, future potential, and mentions of exceptionalism. 

Their study used a code that allows them to identify the employee behaviors that managers noticed and the ones they rated highly, hence its name "viewing and valuing social cognitive processing model".

A poorly defined evaluation process opens the door for gender biases to shape performance evaluations. It could have managers use a criteria with no clarity on how to measure them so they then draw from cultural ideas about the different kinds of people. 

Although supervisores notice women's behaviors in the workplace when conforming to gender conventions, it does not result in rewards, often it's noted in their review that they need to improve their technical skills -- making them suffer professionally.