This is Scientific American’s 60-Second Science. I’m Karen Hopkin.Think of a top executive at a powerhouse company.You’re no doubt imagining someone who’s confident and clever, decisive and determined.And, though it pains me to say it, you’re probably picturing a man.The sad thing is, you wouldn’t be too far off the mark.Around only 7 percent of S&P 500 CEOs are women, despite women making up 50 percent of the population.That’s Asher Lawson, a graduate student at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.He says that one way to even the playing field might be to change the way we think about and talk about leadership.And he and his colleagues have found that organizations are more likely to describe women using words that are typically associated with achievement if they have female CEOs.Their findings appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.Gender inequality has been deemed the “greatest human rights challenge of our time” by the United Nations.In our research we’re interested in specifically some of the factors that perpetuate these gender inequities, as well as the downstream consequences of those gender stereotypes.To get at the roots of these stereotypes, Lawson and his team took a closer look at corporate speak ― and the words businesses use when referring to women.
