Authorship, Gender, and Perceived Competence.

Rose Williamson, Dr. Traci Craig

University of Idaho
Abstract
This study looks at authorship, gender, and perceived competence via a
sample of 12 people consisting of 6 men and 6 women whom I know
personally. I went into the study believing that men would be rated higher
across the board by both genders and found the opposite to be true for the
majority of questions. Out of 10 ratings, male and female subjects mean
score for each of the 5 questions by gender of the author, the female author
scored higher 6/10 times, equally 2/10 times, and lower 2/10 times. Male
subjects gave lower scores overall for both female and male participants.
Future studies should look into positive influences by gender as a moderator
for how we perceive the competence of men and women, respectively.

Introduction
For this study I sampled 12 individuals, 6 male and 6 female, to look at how
perceived competence of an author varies by gender. Given previous
research into gender and competence, I expected to find higher mean
rankings for the male author than the female author from both genders, with
a more significant discrepancy from male participants. However, as I
sampled people I know personally, the effect may have been reduced. Im
usually considered the smart one amongst my peers, so interacting with a
woman of high competence may have had some effect. Unfortunately I dont
have the data to see if my results were in any way significant compared to
my classmates results. In retrospect, it would have been interesting to take
half of my sample population from close friends of mine and half of my
sample population from random people on campus.
Methods
This study sampled 12 people, 6 male and 6 female, ten of which were
members of a small class of mine and its professor. Most of us have been in
class together for the last year and a half. The remaining two were my
partner and a good friend of mine. This was essentially convenience
sampling on my part. Due to sampling a professor and someone who is not
enrolled in college, I had to describe this study as an overall look at high
school authors competence (rather than college students attributions of
high school students competence).

For the group of ten I asked my classmates if they would stay after class to
participate in a brief study to help me out; they happily obliged. I instructed
them not to look at anyone elses segment to ensure they didnt notice the
differences among them. Their ages were mostly in the early 20s, with one
person in their late 30s and another in their early 60s. All of them appeared
to be taking it seriously, though in that class we are genuinely respectful to
one another so I wasnt terribly worried. They all seemed legitimately
interested to hear about the results and found the study exciting.
I sampled my partner in our home. We were the only people present and he
appeared to take it seriously. I sampled my close friend in her home, again
we were the only people present and she appeared to take it seriously.
Neither of them were as interested in the experiment as my classmates,
though they both agreed that it was definitely something worth looking into.
The means for each were computed using a calculator. For the sake of this
project, and due to such a small sample size, further statistical testing was
not practical.
Results
Much to my surprise, I did not find the male author with higher mean
rankings on most questions. The only questions where male author was
ranked higher were Q3, How knowledgeable do you think the author is?
(only by male subjects) and Q4, How creative do you think the article is?
(only by female subjects). For every other question, across both genders, the
results were either identical or the female author was rated more highly.
Women were ranked higher 6/10 times, equally 2/10 times, and lower 2/10
times. What I found most surprising were the results of the creativity
question. Women ranked the female authors piece .4 lower, on average,
regarding the creativity of the article. However, men ranked the female
authors piece 2.3 points higher on creativity as the male authors.
Table of Results
Female Participants

Q1
Q1
Q1
Q2
Q2
Q2
Q3
Q3

A. Pos/Neg
B. Responsibility
C. Help
A.
B.
C.
A.
B.

Female
Abuser
3.33
4.3

Male
Abuser
3
5

4.6

4.3

3
6
5.6
3.6

3.6
5
4.3
3.6

5.6

5.6

Q3 C.

4.6
Mean

5.3
Mean

Male Participants
Male

Q1
Q1
Q1
Q2
Q2
Q2
Q3
Q3
Q3

A. Pos/Neg
B. Responsibility
C. Help
A.
B.
C.
A.
B.
C.

Female Abuser

Abuser

5.6
4.6
2
6

5.6
4
4.3
6

4.6

2.6

2.6
5.6
4

4
4.3
4.6

Discussion
I imagined I would fill the discussion section with all of the possible things
that lead to perceiving women as less competent. This project produced
results that I did not expect, in several ways. The intersection between
gender and creativity was especially pertinent. Creativity is a feminine
descriptor, perhaps men were less likely to label something by other males
as creative. That wouldnt explain women giving men a higher rating in the
category, however. Maybe for women creativity is not as gendered a term, or
perhaps they dont fall prey to the stereotype as heavily.
I would like to think my own high level of competence combined with
sampling people I know quite well was part of what skewed these results
away from the direction I thought they would go. It would be interesting to do
a large scale version of this study and have participants watch something
featuring either a competent male or female beforehand to see if it affects
overall results. If you have known many strong, high achieving women in
your life, perhaps you arent as apt to fall prey to perceiving women as less
competent. It would also be interesting to perform this study followed up
with a survey about positive influences in peoples lives to see if/which
strong positive influences affect your average rating of competence by
gender.
If I were to do this study again, I would sample an additional 12 people with
whom I was not acquainted and see if their results followed the same
pattern. I suspect they would not.

One last thing I found interesting was that men gave consistently lower
scores to both genders for every question. Perhaps theres some part of male
socialization that makes them more critical or scrutinizing of others work, or
perhaps they felt it was important to be stringent for this task.
Conclusion
Unfortunately due to such a small sample size, there isnt much to be
gleaned from my study on a practical level. I hope that with a combination of
the class data we can find a significant trend. Im interested to see how my
own results compare to the class average. I found the results I obtained both
unexpected and intriguing.