This paper examines how gender stereotypes about competence and language in perfor- mance evaluations influences the assessment of man and women employees. Using a unique dataset of reviews annotated by expert linguists, we identify instances of communal and agentive language used by women and men managers and find that agentive language benefits women more than men employees, with stronger effects for women who outperform. We find that women evaluators need to use more agentive language to effectively assess women compared to male evaluators confirming the gender and competence stereotype. Additionally, we also find suggestive evidence that agentive language used by women evaluators for men employees negatively affects their ratings while men evaluators can use gender incongruent language. These findings highlight the spillover effects of gendered language and suggest that women leaders may face backlash when using traditionally male-typed language for men employees.

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1 April 2026

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European Economic Review 1842026

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DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2026.105271

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014292126000152

This Journal article is published under the centre's Education programme.