Inside The Black Box: Measuring The Performance-Recognition Gap Among Women In Israeli High-Tech

Women enter the Israeli high-tech pipeline in substantial numbers yet remain sharply underrepresented in senior technical and leadership roles, holding fewer than 12% of chief technology officer positions in the sector's high-growth domains (Israel Innovation Authority, 2025). This paper examines the Performance-Recognition Gap, defined as the systematic tendency for women's professional contributions to receive less credibility, visibility, and reward than equivalent work by male colleagues. Drawing on Heilman's (2001) lack-of-fit model, Castilla and Benard's (2010) meritocracy paradox, and the double bind framework (Eagly and Karau, 2002; Rudman and Glick, 2001), the study draws on qualitative findings from exploratory interviews that informed an adapted survey-based operationalization tested among 220 women in Israeli high-tech. The Performance-Recognition Gap construct, adapted from the Gender Bias Scale for Women Leaders (Diehl et al., 2020), showed high internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.866) and is interpreted through three related facets: the Credibility Tax, Transparent Effort, and the Broken Scale. Rather than treating recognition asymmetry as a single undifferentiated experience, the paper approaches it as an evaluative mechanism and examines its internal structure. Quantitative findings provide triangulating support: the construct is associated with lower relative career advancement, lower advancement expectancy, and higher exit intention. This article presents an initial adapted operationalization rather than a full psychometric validation.