New research finds that hustle culture disadvantages full-time working women in two distinct ways.
Americans are notorious overworkers. Americans log more work hours per year than workers in nearly all developed countries, according to OECD data. In part, this hustle culture exists because working long hours in the U.S. leads to higher raises, bigger bonuses, and more and faster promotions. Yet this is not meritocracy at its finest. New research finds that the American obsession with long work hours disadvantages women in two distinct ways: one way if women don’t overwork, and another way if women do.
Researchers discovered this lose-lose for women workers in a new study published last month in Social Psychology Quarterly. In a survey of 230 U.S. employees, participants evaluated two worker profiles with identical performance reviews: one logging 40 hours per week, and one logging 60 hours per week. Participants selected one worker to receive management training and promotion opportunities, and they rated each worker on commitment and competence. Researchers discovered two ways that gender bias impacted the results.
Women Lose If They Don’t Overwork
Among full-time workers in the U.S., women tend to work fewer hours than men, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This gender difference exists partly because women with full-time jobs shoulder 22% more unpaid household and childcare labor than their full-time male counterparts, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. In other words, women with full-time jobs still come home to the double shift.
In the U.S., working longer hours—particularly for managers and professionals—correlates with higher pay and more promotions. So men’s tendency to work longer hours than women is sometimes cited as a purportedly “legitimate” basis for the gender gaps in both pay and leadership positions. But this claim assumes that longer hours are a proxy for higher performance. This new study undermines that assumption.
As expected, the study found robust evidence of an “overwork premium.” Participants selected the overworker to receive workplace rewards nearly 89% of the time, whether the overworker was male or female.
So what’s the problem?
It’s that the overwork premium existed even with identical performance evaluations. The study was designed to indicate that the overworking employees were less efficient than the full-time workers. Yet the overworking employees still reaped the rewards. According to the researchers, “respondents overwhelmingly preferred to allocate rewards to overworkers over equally performing—and, by definition, more efficient—full-time workers.”
This finding suggests that even when a woman completes the same amount and quality of work in 40 hours as a man does in 60 hours, the man will receive greater rewards. So women are disadvantaged not just because they tend to work less hours than men. Women are disadvantaged because face time gets valued more than efficiency. The hustle culture is not really about hustle after all.
Working moms—who tend to be highly efficient employees—likely suffer among the most from this evaluation bias. So what’s the answer for women who want to move up the corporate ladder? In a classic lose-lose, the study found that overworking just as much as men won’t eliminate the inequality for women.
Women Lose When They Do Overwork
It turns out that the “overwork premium” is not just irrational, it’s also gender biased. “Although both men and women are rewarded for overwork,” the researchers discovered, “men reap a significantly larger premium than women.”
In the study, men who clocked 60 hours per week were 8% more likely to receive overwork rewards than women who also clocked 60 hours per week. Although the evaluators tended to rate all overworkers as more committed and more competent than the full-time workers, this ratings boost was significantly larger for overworking men than overworking women.
The evaluators appeared to strongly attribute men’s overwork to greater career commitment. But the boost in perceived commitment was smaller for overworking women due to gender biases about competence. Evaluators appeared to attribute women’s overwork in part to lower competence that required more hours to get the job done.
Because women get fewer rewards for overworking just as much as men, women cannot overwork their way out of workplace inequality. This finding indicates the importance of organizational changes for advancing gender equity. “We are never going to close the gender gap if we differentially evaluate people of different genders for the same behavior,” said Christin L. Munsch, a sociology professor at the University of Connecticut and the study’s lead author, who spoke with me by phone.
What Can Organizations Do About This?
Evidence that the overwork premium is both irrational and gender biased highlights the need to stop glorifying overwork. “Organizations claim that efficiency is a core value,” Munsch said, “but they often create workplace cultures that value overwork that is merely performative, rather than actually productive.”
The study’s findings indicate the need for organizations to identify more objective—and more accurate—performance measures than face time. Work hours are often used as a proxy for performance because measuring performance for managers and professionals is challenging. Yet a shift toward results-oriented evaluations is worth the investment.
Valuing efficiency and output more than face time will require business leaders to more precisely define their expectations for each team member. By focusing more on results, organizations can offer employees greater control over when and where they work. Greater worker control, in turn, increases performance.
To reduce the gender bias in the overwork premium, the researchers also suggested limiting work hours, requiring the use of vacation time, and discouraging emails and phone calls outside of business hours. More generally, Munsch described the need for employers “to set ceilings on their reward structures.” When unlimited hours can produce unlimited rewards, Munsch explained, “it creates a treadmill that employees can’t get off.” The lack of reward ceilings also increases the gender gap from the overwork premium.
Hustle culture also harms employees’ physical and mental health, increases burnout and turnover, and causes more workplace injuries, all of which are costly for employers. So designing workplace practices that remove the overwork badge of honor offers organizations a win-win.
