“She Is Not an Expert”: Gender Myths Reinforced among Civil Engineers

Expertise is important in construction projects and organizations as people tend to seek knowledge from those they perceive to be experts. Frequently, engineers perceive expertise as objective and assume that experts have superior knowledge to solve everyday project problems. Expertise is defined as the perceived quality of knowledge and is known to be important for project performance. It is expected that people who have higher expertise will positively contribute to project performance emphasizing the importance of this project. Nevertheless, this research shows that expertise is not objective and that there are gender biases in the process of expertise assessment. Using survey data delivered to 855 employees in one company, the research confirms the presence of gender biases in employees’ perceptions of expertise. First, men were likely to be assessed higher on their expertise compared to women. Second, men were likely to assess women lower on their expertise compared to women assessing women. This research underlines gender biases that exist in construction and engineering workforce and emphasizes the need for cultural changes among practitioners. Finally, the research contributes to a social theory of expertise by showing that people use demographic cues (e.g., gender) to assess expertise. The research also validates inter-group behavior as explained by the social dominance theory.