As part of the IDG Contributor Network, I recently published an opinion on CSO online that debunks some of the common misperceptions we have about how men and women make decisions. In that opinion, I shared some surprising data about how those biases could impact the cybersecurity industry. Here’s an excerpt from that article:
Unfortunately, it’s very common to assume that when women are stressed they are more emotional or that they rely more heavily on intuition or hunches. (If you agree with this notion, spoiler alert - you are wrong…. LOL) Then you’re probably going to rely more heavily on men, not women, in high pressure, high risk situations. I guess I don’t have to point out that cyber security, and incident response, in particular, is full of high pressure, high risk decisions – and you may want to dig a little deeper to get the right person for the job.
The research shows that women are just as data-driven and analytical as men in decision making. In fact, in high pressure situations they are often even more analytical than men. In a sample of 32 studies that looked at how men and women thought about a problem or made a decision, 12 found that women adopted an analytical approach more often than men.
Read the full opinion on CSO online to learn why you may need to reconsider some of your assumptions about gender and decision making skills.
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Cheers! Tammy