Do Women Make Better Managers?

A bunch of people asked to discuss the issue by The New York Times answer in the affirmative only to have their logic assailed by Gabriel Arana at the American Prospect:

When discussing gender differences, this line of argumentation is common: Take what you think to be a social phenomenon and invent a biological or evolutionary backstory. It is by no means established that women are better communicators than men. And as a linguist, I can tell you that in no way are women’s brains more “networked” for language. Yet the author takes these precepts as a given. She goes on to cite a single study to substantiate her claim, even though the finding has been summarily discredited in the scientific community.

Arguments such as Pinker’s are not scientific confirmation of gender difference; more often, they are simply a reflection of our prejudices. The fact that one has many exceptions to these gender stereotypes — emotional men and strong women — should give pause. These counterexamples show that these traits are not an immutable feature of “man” or “woman”-hood, but are in a large part socially ingrained. I am not saying that no gender differences exist (some, like muscle mass, are easily observable), but it’s tough to tease apart which social behaviors are learned and those for which we have a biological predisposition.

Fair enough. That said, in my experience women are better managers than men. And I think there’s a sound theoretical basis for expecting that to be the case. Back in the 1950s, African-American baseball players were on average much better than white players. Not, it seems, because blacks are “better at baseball” than whites, but because the nature of the integration process was that African-Americans had to clear a higher bar to make it into big leagues at all.

All kinds of things, from outright bigotry to loaded social expectations and family arrangements to somewhat reduced social pressure to “succeed” militate against women making it to high-level managerial roles. But by the same token, those women who do succeed and defy the odds would tend to be unusually talented. You know a group has achieved equality when it starts producing people who are below-average but succeed anyway.