How stereotypes impair women’s careers in science

Significance Does discrimination contribute to the low percentage of women in mathematics and science careers? We designed an experiment to isolate discrimination’s potential effect. Without provision of information about candidates other than their appearance, men are twice more likely to be hired for a mathematical task than women. If ability is self-reported, women still are discriminated against, because employers do not fully account for men’s tendency to boast about performance. Providing full information about candidates’ past performance reduces discrimination but does not eliminate it. We show that implicit stereotypes (as measured by the Implicit Association Test) predict not only the initial bias in beliefs but also the suboptimal updating of gender-related expectations when performance-related information comes from the subjects themselves.