Gender Matters: Being Valued at Work

Thirty percent of people polled feel invisible at work and 65 percent feel unappreciated, Zach Mercurio writes in Harvard Business Review. People need to feel like they matter. Employees who don’t believe their work is valued find their work less satisfying and are more likely to leave. They are also less likely to be promoted. For some populations, not mattering correlates with an increased risk of burnout and emotional exhaustion, researchers Rebecca Bonhag and Laura Upenieks write in Society and Mental Health. Mattering matters.

Women are more likely to feel that their work doesn’t matter because they experience behaviors like selective incivility and being interrupted more frequently than their male counterparts. In addition to communicating  disrespect, gender bias often results in women’s work being undervalued when compared to men’s work. There are three reasons for this, researchers Ella J. Lombard and Sapna Cheryan write: “Actual work contributions being valued less coming from women than men; assumptions that women's contributions will be less valuable than men's; and lack of recognition or credit for women's contributions.”  

Whatever the cause, the outcome is the same:  “When women's contributions matter less than men's, it contributes to gender gaps in representation, leadership positions, and career achievements,” researchers Lombard and Cheryan write. This has a negative impact on both the companies and the women.

It should not be up to the women whose contributions aren’t equally valued to correct the situation. For one, Lombard and Cheryan write, “Seeking positions of power, promoting or negotiating for oneself, or demanding to be heard may backfire for women in professional spaces. Those consequences could subsequently communicate a lower sense of mattering to women if they observe that their attempts to be recognized for their contributions only lead to being even more severely undervalued.”

Engineer, 1942 (Library of Congress)

To retain women, firm leaders must take actions to make their work matter equally. “Crucially, these interventions must address not only women's perceptions of mattering, but the actual mattering of their contributions,” Lombard and Cheryan write. The researchers suggest interventions that include measures such as “training group members to listen to, engage with, and recognize women's ideas,” curbing incivility and interruptions, and auditing firm data to identify and alter gender biases in promotion and recognitions.

While leaders must take action to create change, co-workers can also intervene constructively. “To feel that they matter, people must experience their unique significance through their relationships with others,” Mercurio writes. For example, one way to let colleagues know their work matters is to share how someone else benefitted from it.

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