Not Me

"Sure, women are victims of gender discrimination, but not me," say subscribers to what psychologists call the denial of personal disadvantage.

Take the study, done in Boston in the 1980s, of 182 men and 163 women of comparable age, education, training, and occupational level. Comparable in every way--except that the women earned significantly less on average than the men, and most acknowledged sex discrimination as a serious problem. Yet, only 13 women felt they and all women had been shortchanged.

Why do so many women declare themselves personally exempt from discrimination? After reviewing decades of research on the phenomenon, psychologists at the University of Michigan and Smith College offer some answers.

Most women typically hear about gender discrimination in their workplace through word of mouth or on a case-by-case basis, observes Diana Cordova, Ph.D., of Michigan's Institute for Social Research. As a result, they often don't perceive a general problem. "But if women were presented with information about promotions and salary from 10 different departments, they couldn't help but see patterns emerging."

There are emotional as well as cognitive reasons. Some women remain blind to personal discrimination because they ant to believe they are special, exempt from the law averages, and that they live in a just world. Or, they don't want to think of their bosses and coworkers as villains.

But denial has its price. Failure to recognize a problem means steps won't be taken to ameliorate it. People need aggregated data so they can see discrimination if there is a problem.

ILLUSTRATION