Gender Differences in Early Career Performance Reviews: a Text Mining Study

It is well known that fewer women than men earn STEM degrees and persist in STEM careers. Since early career experiences affect career attrition, we investigate gender differences in early career performance reviews. Our analysis is enabled by a unique dataset, with nearly 6,000 performance reviews of undergraduate engineering students participating in co-operative internships. Text mining of workplace supervisor comments included in the reviews reveals several gender differences. Male students are more likely to be described as eager, efficient, and independent, whereas female students are perceived as thorough and collaborative. Moreover, male students are more likely to be asked to improve their interpersonal skills, whereas female students are more likely to receive suggestions to improve their business knowledge. Our results thus suggest that men and women are perceived differently in the STEM workplace from the beginning of their careers.