How we judge the mistakes of male vs. female leaders

[4th law of robotics]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-leadership/how-we-judge-the-mistakes-of-male-vs-female-leaders/2012/09/24/71e3ada0-066d-11e2-afff-d6c7f20a83bf_story.html

We’ve all heard the gender stereotypes: Women leaders in the workforce are judged unfairly when they do something emotional like lose their temper, while men are more often given a free pass for yelling at the people who work for them.

But one recent study suggests maybe we’re not so judgmental about the gender of our leaders after all. That is, if you can trust the responses of the nearly 300 undergraduate students who participated in a study led by researchers at Pennsylvania State University and Villanova University.
. . . .
They found, broadly, that male leaders who commit “task” errors were seen as no less competent than women who committed the same errors, while female leaders who violated “relationship” issues were not seen as worse leaders than male leaders who did the same. The one gender difference that did show up was in the construction context: The supposed “foremen” who made both types of mistakes were rated worse than their female counterparts.

What’s interesting is that their results — in which men and women fared roughly the same — might actually reconfirm the presence of biases about how gender plays into leaders’ performance, not negate it.

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Yeah . . . wait what? Treating women and men as equals (actually judging men a bit more harshly) is proof women are being discriminated against?

We can't win for losing.

I think these researchers had the conclusion laid out long before the study was ever formed, and had to scramble to make the data fit that conclusion when reality didn't cooperate with their theories.