Employee Rights and Employment Policy Journal

The Social Psychology of Sterotyping: Using Social Science to Litigate Gender Discrimination Cases and Defang the "Cluelessness" Defense

By
Joan C. Williams

Abstract

This article reviews over one hundred social psychology studies that document two distinct types of bias women experience on the job. The first is glass ceiling bias, which women experience simply because they are women. Glass ceiling bias has two component parts: first, women have a harder time proving that they are competent; second, sometimes women are penalized at work for being *too* competent. The second type of bias that affects women is maternal wall bias, which mothers experience after they have children. (Men, too, may experience maternal wall bias if they take an active role in family caregiving.) One key form of maternal wall bias
is the negative competence assumptions associated with motherhood.