Becker's Hospital Review

35 WOMEN'S LEADERSHIP Women get more 'white lies' in performance reviews than men, study finds By Molly Gamble U nderperforming women receive less truthful but kinder performance feedback compared to equally un- derperforming men, according to research published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Lily Jampol, PhD, and Vivian Zayas, PhD, used two studies to inform their paper, "Gen- dered White Lies: Women Are Given Inflated Performance Feedback Compared to Men." In the first, participants read feedback from a hypothetical manager, ranging from the most truthful and harshest to the least truthful statement and nicest. Study participants were then asked to guess the employee's gender based on the feedback in question. "Participants overwhelmingly guessed that an underperforming employee who had been told a white lie — the least truthful, but the nicest feedback — was a woman," Dr. Jampol told e Cornell Chronicle. For the second study, participants graded two poorly written essays by writers identi- fied only by their initials. Aer submitting their grades, participants were asked to give feedback directly to each writer over chat. is is when the writers' names were re- vealed: Andrew or Sarah. Participants were more likely to tell white lies to Sarah, inflating her grades nearly a full let- ter grade higher than their initial private eval- uation. ey also gave her more positive com- ments than they gave Andrew, who received feedback that was statistically indistinguish- able from participants' initial grading. Dr. Jampol is a diversity, equity and inclusion strategist at ReadySet, a consulting firm in Oakland, Calif. Dr. Zayas is an associate pro- fessor with Cornell University's Department of Psychology. eir findings join a robust body of research on the complications women face in deliver- ing and receiving feedback. n My kids or my job? Reopening efforts can complicate life for working mothers By Molly Gamble T here's no guarantee that reopening strategies among schools, child care providers and employers will align. This will exacerbate the burden on par- ents who are expected to return to work without support for their children. Mothers' careers are especially on the line. When child care providers reopen, there will be far fewer of them. Just 11 percent of providers could sur- vive a closure of an indeterminate length of time without government support, and only 27 percent could survive a closure of a month, according to a survey of child care centers conducted by the National Association for the Ed- ucation of Young Children. Access to child care and its cost are family issues with an outsized effect on women. Mothers are more likely than fathers to leave their jobs when child care is hard to find or very expensive, according to a Center for American Progress analysis. Compounding this fact is the reality that pandemic-related layoffs are already hitting women hard- er than men. Remote-working parents confront tough decisions as their communities begin to reopen, but front-line employees at hospitals and health systems have been juggling deci- sions about their children and jobs for months. Many hospitals do not offer child care for employees. Overall, only 7 percent of employers offer child care at or near the work site, according to the Society for Human Resource Management. For those that do, the benefit has taken on renewed significance during the pandemic. University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston per- manently closed its 40-year-old Child Development Cen- ter in Houston in May, which served parents working on the front lines. In an op-ed for the Houston Chronicle, Kai Li Tan, PhD — a researcher at Texas Medical Center and parent who relied on the center for child care — blasted the decision. As Houston begins to reopen, Dr. Tan writes that "parents are faced with a paramount question: How are their chil- dren going to be taken care of? Quality and affordable child care options were already scarce pre-pandemic, and full-time babysitters are expensive and not a viable long- term option." n

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