Imagine a world in which workplace discrimination doesn't exist. Then, take a hiring pool of 500 equally qualified female and male employees. They'd be hired at a fifty-fifty ratio. Next, imagine that both sexes do equally well and work equally hard. At the first promotion decision - and at every subsequent one - men and women would be equally represented.
Now, imagine a workplace in which gender discrimination has a very minor negative effect - 0.1 percent. What would this mean at the entry level? That 51.8 percent of men would be hired, compared to 48.2 percent of women.
This very small initial male advantage increases over time. "When later promotion decisions are made, the impact of gender stereotypes is compounded." In this scenario, the first group of women hired is less than 50 percent, and the group "will shrink again at each step of advancement as the 'small' impact of gender stereotypes has its effect."
By the fourth promotion decision, the percentage of women will shrink to 41.9 percent - while the percentage of men promoted will be 58.1 percent. So, an early gap of 3.6 percent favoring males balloons up to a stunning 16.2 percent advantage.
Tharenou makes her point very conservatively. As we've said, the real-world male advantage is closer to 5 percent than it is to 0.1 percent - an enormous difference.
