Women Often Interview Better Than Men—Then What Happens?

When I worked in underwriting, I heard a supervisor lament that women generally outperformed men of the same age in interviews, whether in expertise, depth of thinking, or expression. But securities work sometimes required accompanying clients into risky or unpleasant situations. They therefore lowered the bar to hire some men, rather than leave female colleagues to accompany client bosses into such places. You could see something similar in school: top students were generally girls, who were also more mature than boys of the same age. Yet broader environmental factors meant that, 30 years later, senior executives were again mostly men. Board gender ratios, for example, were so unequal that reserving seats for women was actively encouraged, earning substantial credit in corporate-governance evaluations and ESG.