This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: We all make them, and we all make them at work: Mistakes on the job happen regardless of line of work, experience or gender. How employees feel about them and how they are perceived by others, however, differs.
Women are more likely than men to perceive mistakes negatively—but this depends on whom they share the office with, a new study in Frontiers in Organizational Psychology has shown. "On paper, a mistake carries the same consequences whoever makes it, and that is exactly what we found. But formal rules aren't culture," said lead author Dr.
Grace Lordan at the London School of Economics. "In teams that are three-quarters or more male, women told us they feel less comfortable admitting a mistake and less confident it will be treated as something to learn from. Where women are in the majority, that gap vanishes." For their study, the team surveyed employees about how comfortable they would be admitting mistakes, how likely they were to believe they'd be penalized for making them and whether they'd consider them learning opportunities.
More than 1,400 employees in the U.K. financial services sector participated. While this sector is male-dominated, the study population was made up of 81% women. The results showed two consistent patterns: Being a woman was associated with seeing mistakes more negatively, as was being in a male-dominated work setting, regardless of gender.
"Extremely male-heavy, high-pressure teams may foster a general climate of fear or perfectionism and a 'no mistakes' norm," said Lordan. Further, men reported more positive views of mistakes across all measures than women, who felt less comfortable admitting mistakes, were more likely to think they'd be punished for them and were less inclined to consider them learning opportunities. In more male-dominated workplaces, these trends sharpened further.
"In teams where more than three quarters were men, women report less comfort: 5.46 vs. 5.94 for men in the same settings on a seven-point scale. Women were also less likely to see mistakes as learning opportunities (4.20 vs. 4.54)," Lordan pointed out. "In low-male-share environments, women's views are as positive as men's or slightly better." Men's perceptions, on the other hand, varied very little depending on their workplace's gender composition.
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