The most striking change in the survey is not only that opinions shifted, but that they split. Over four decades, attitudes toward women executives improved markedly, yet since 2006 men’s answers about harsher judgment have stayed at 35%, while women’s answers have moved to 90%. The same question now produces two very different descriptions of the same workplace.
That divergence raises a question about truth. The survey does not explain the cause of the gap, settle every methodological question, or tell companies what to do next. The proverb does not make women automatically truthful or men automatically dishonest. But its concern reaches beyond obvious lies. It also challenges the quieter habit of treating our own experience as the full account. If truth matters to God, then honest listening is not a side issue to justice; it is one of the ways we refuse to make ourselves the measure of reality.
The practical test is personal. When someone describes a workplace reality we have not experienced, our first task may not be winning the argument. It may be asking what truth is being revealed before deciding whether we agree.