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According to a report in the Harvard Business Review, womenfail to self-promote their work capabilities and accomplishments asmuch as men do, and that can weigh on their chances of being hired,being promoted and getting a raise or a bonus.

The study found that not only do men self-promote 33 percentmore than women do, the gender gap remains under a variety of conditions.

Participants in the study were divided into groups, and thosegroups were then asked to take tests consisting of analyticalquestions and then evaluate their own performance on thosetests.

Each group was told something different. One was told that theirself-evaluations would be provided to a prospective employer whowould decide, based solely on the self-evaluation, whether to hirethem and how much to pay them.

Another was told that both their tests and theirself-evaluations would be provided to those employers.

Another was told that only their tests would be provided to theemployers. And a "private" version did not involve hypotheticalemployers but instead involved providing their tests andself-evaluations to their fellow test-takers.

These changes sought to correct for possible propensities toinflate one's test performance to improve potential job and salaryoffers or to see whether self-promotion decreased in either sex ifthere was no benefit to be had by promoting oneself.

And while there was less self-promotion with no potential bossin the wings, the reduction was equal among sexes, thus preservingthe gender gap.

The report says, "In every setting we explored, we observed asubstantial gender gap in self-promotion: Women systematicallyprovided less favorable assessments of their own past performanceand potential future ability than equally performing men. And ourvarious study versions revealed that this gender gap was not drivenby confidence or by strategic incentives, and that it was robustboth in the face of ambiguity and under increasedtransparency."

More research is necessary, the report concludes, to determinewhy women do so much less self-promotion than men.

But in the meantime, it warns, "employers relying onself-promotion to make hiring, promotion, salary, or bonusdecisions should heed the lessons from this work: Women may nottalk about their work as favorably as men, but that doesn't meantheir performance is any worse."

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