Few years ago, Harvard Business School conducted a very interesting research called Heidi Roizen Case Study. In a Harvard classroom, students were randomly split into two groups and given an identical text. The text was a case study about a real-life entrepreneur who became a very successful venture capitalist. However, there was one difference between the two groups' texts: the name of the entrepreneur. Group A received a text that talks about a guy named Howard and group B read a text about a lady named Heidi. This was the only difference between two texts. After reading the given text, students were asked about how they felt about this entrepreneur and his/her personality.
The result was astonishing: although the one and only difference between the two texts was a name--Heidi, which is evidently a woman's name, and Howard, a typical man's name--only Heidi received numerous emotional attacks such as 'She must be selfish', 'She looks like a type of person who I cannot work with", and "I do not want to work for her when she is my supervisor". By contrast, Howard was considered a more positive and likeable person who everyone is willing to work with. One of the respondents said "They look equally competent, they both look like a very successful businessman/woman, but I do not want to work with Heidi."
Isn't this shocking? Two completely identical texts receiving an opposite remark just because of the different gender?
I spent a long time thinking about the way how I can explain this shocking outcome. And today, I would like to share my stream of thoughts with you. It may be slightly chaotic, sorry in advance, but I am pretty sure this brainstorming of mine can inspire at least one more person to re-think about the depth of the expression "successful women".
I think this result clearly reflects the reality of different correlation between success and likability depending on the subject's gender. When we think about a so-called "successful man", we tend to picture a man who has a successful career and a college degree, happily married, and probably has one or two children who he always talks about. Let's call this guy David. Most of the time, David will successfully accomplish the tasks on stake at work and at the same time spend quality time with his family. His colleagues and friends will describe him as a "brilliant guy who is living a successful life". David's nicknames would be 'Mr. Smiley-face', 'Superdad', 'Captain David', and so on. Naturally, they will give positive remarks about his excelling abilities, incredible human warmth, and astonishing personality.
However, let's think about Karen, a coworker of David and who is the so-called "successful woman" of our time. Her nicknames, unlike those of David, will be 'Woman of steel', 'Horse buckle", "Duchess", and "Queen bee". People will constantly be curious about her personal life, probably expect her to be single, divorced, or having an unhappy marriage life, and describe her personality with adjectives such as 'authoritative', 'crafty', 'bossy', 'cold-blooded', and 'assertive'. It would be difficult to find someone who thinks of Karen as a mother of two kids who wears stretched out t-shirts when spending time with her beautiful children. People will rather picture a sassy-looking red-lipped woman with sharp glasses and a full suit who barely talks about her personal life in public.
See? This is, at least for me, the reality we are living in: we differentiate men and women's success without even realizing it. And this discreet mental discrimination is the reason why the two different groups in the Heidi Roizen case study had a completely different response. What do you think about my conclusion? Would you like to agree, disagree, or abstain?