I'm not a psychologist, I have nothing but that BA in the field, but if I had to make a guess, my guess is that "wonderful" is not the same as "competent".
Even at the time, there were studies that showed traits associated with women were rated more positively by men and women than traits associated with men.
The way you study this is you'd give a list of words:
And then you'd have a group of subjects rate them as more associated with men or women on a scale.
Ideally you'd get a big sample and replicate this study.
Then either in the same study at a different time, or another study, you'd take those same words and you'd ask your subjects to rate them as positive or negative.
That's where you see effects like the one mentioned in the wikipedia article.
That kind of thing's been done a bunch of times.
But studies on gender and competency have been done too, and at the time they showed the same pattern as we found.
I say "At the time" because this is >20 years ago.
>my guess is that "wonderful" is not the same as "competent".
Right. There are two different sets of benefits that help or hurt someone in different ways. Being competent when standing trial can work against you while being wonderful will reduce the risk of a conviction and reduce the sentence if you are convicted.
We have identified the "competent" bias and are taking steps to correct it, but we need to do the same with the "wonderful" bias in other systems. For starters we need to recognize how strong that bias is in certain fields. For one example, there are specific crimes that people would bet are extremely gendered in nature, and the crime statistics show they would be right, but interviewing the population at large and querying victims, including those who never went to the police or who were turned away by the police (or even worse, who couldn't legally be victims because of how biased even the laws are), we see the gender component goes away. The rate of men victimized by women and women victimized by men are at near a 50/50 ration (I think 49.8 to 50.2).
Even the extent of studies measuring the impact of the wonderful effect is lacking compared to studies measuring the competent effect (which itself is likely a bias of the wonderful effect).
Even at the time, there were studies that showed traits associated with women were rated more positively by men and women than traits associated with men.
The way you study this is you'd give a list of words:
gentle caring assertive stubborn aggressive loving
(ideally you'd randomize the word order too)
And then you'd have a group of subjects rate them as more associated with men or women on a scale.
Ideally you'd get a big sample and replicate this study.
Then either in the same study at a different time, or another study, you'd take those same words and you'd ask your subjects to rate them as positive or negative.
That's where you see effects like the one mentioned in the wikipedia article.
That kind of thing's been done a bunch of times.
But studies on gender and competency have been done too, and at the time they showed the same pattern as we found.
I say "At the time" because this is >20 years ago.