Blind to sex and race
Voice pitch and the labor market success of male chief executive officers
William Mayew, Christopher Parsons & Mohan Venkatachalam
Evolution and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
A deep voice is evolutionarily advantageous for males, but does it confer benefit in competition for leadership positions? We study ecologically valid speech from 792 male public-company Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) and find that CEOs with deeper voices manage larger companies, and as a result, make more money. After including proxies for other CEO attributes including experience, education and formant position, we document economically significant voice pitch effects. For the median CEO of the median sample firm, an interquartile increase in voice pitch (22.1 Hz) is associated with a $440 million increase in the size of the firm managed, and in turn, $187 thousand more in annual compensation. Deep voiced CEOs also enjoy longer tenures. Although this is a study of association, the results are consistent with recent experimental predictions suggesting a role for voice pitch in leadership selection and also suggest economically meaningful effects of voice pitch reach the upper echelons of corporate management.
----------------------
Jessica Kennedy & Laura Kray
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Women select into business school at a lower rate than men and are underrepresented in high-ranking positions in business organizations. We examined gender differences in reactions to ethical compromises as one possible explanation for these disparities. In Study 1, when reading decisions that compromised ethical values for social status and monetary gains, women reported feeling more moral outrage and perceived less business sense in the decisions than men. In Study 2, we established a causal relationship between aversion to ethical compromises and disinterest in business careers by manipulating the presence of ethical compromises in job descriptions. As hypothesized, an interaction between gender and presence of ethical compromises emerged. Only when jobs involved making ethical compromises did women report less interest in the jobs than men. Women's moral reservations mediated these effects. In Study 3, we found that women implicitly associated business with immorality more than men did.
----------------------
Estimating Benefits from University-Level Diversity
Barbara Wolfe & Jason Fletcher
NBER Working Paper, February 2013
Abstract:
One of the continuing areas of controversy surrounding higher education is affirmative action. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear Fisher v. Texas, and their ruling may well influence universities' diversity initiatives, especially if they overturn Grutter v. Bollinger and rule that diversity is no longer a "compelling state interest." But what lies behind a compelling state's interest? One issue that continues to require more information is estimating and understanding the gains for those attending colleges and universities with greater diversity. Most existing studies are either based on evidence from one institution, which has issues of both selectivity and limited "treatments," or focus on selective institutions, which also face issues of selection bias from college choice behaviors. In this research we use Wave 3 of Add Health, collected in 2001-02 of those then attending college. Add Health collected the IPEDS number of each college and matched these to the racial/ethnic composition of the student body. We convert these data into an index of diversity and then ask whether attending a college/university with a more diverse student body influences a variety of outcomes at Wave 4 (2007-08), including years of schooling completed, earnings, family income, composition of friends, and probability of voting. Our results provide evidence of a positive link between attending a college with greater diversity and higher earnings and family income, but not with more schooling or the probability of voting.
----------------------
Do Racial Preferences Affect Minority Learning in Law Schools?
Doug Williams
Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, June 2013, Pages 171-195
Abstract:
An analysis of the The Bar Passage Study (BPS) reveals that minorities are both less likely to graduate from law school and less likely to pass the bar compared to whites even after adjustments are made for group differences in academic credentials. To account for these adjusted racial gaps in performance, some researchers put forward the "mismatch hypothesis," which proposes that students learn less when placed in learning environments where their academic skills are much lower than the typical student. This article presents new results from the BPS that account for both measurement-error bias and selection-on-unobservables bias that makes it more difficult to find a mismatch effect if in fact one exists. I find much more evidence for mismatch effects than previous research and report magnitudes from mismatch effects more than sufficient to explain racial gaps in performance.
----------------------
Law School Admissions under the UC Affirmative Action Ban
Danny Yagan
University of California Working Paper, December 2012
Abstract:
The consequences of banning affirmative action depend on schools' ability and willingness to avoid it. This paper uses a seventeen-year sample of law school applications to estimate how completely UC law schools avoided the 1996 UC affirmative action ban. Controlling for selective attrition from applicant pools, I find that the ban reduced the black admission rate to 31% -- well below the 61% pre-ban rate but still four times higher than the 8% rate that would prevail under observed white admission standards. Observed black admission advantages at intermediate credential levels were as large as 99 percentage points before the ban and 63 percentage points after the ban. The results have implications for modeling affirmative action bans, sustaining racial diversity under a ban, affirmative action constitutionality, the effectiveness of mandating nondiscrimination, and identifying discrimination in cross-sectional data.
----------------------
University Differences in the Graduation of Minorities in STEM Fields: Evidence from California
Peter Arcidiacono, Esteban Aucejo & Joseph Hotz
NBER Working Paper, February 2013
Abstract:
The low number of college graduates with science degrees -- particularly among under-represented minorities -- is of growing concern. We examine differences across universities in graduating students in different fields. Using student-level data on the University of California system during a period in which racial preferences were in place, we show significant sorting into majors based on academic preparation, with science majors at each campus having on average stronger credentials than their non-science counterparts. Students with relatively weaker academic preparation are significantly more likely to leave the sciences and take longer to graduate at each campus. We show the vast majority of minority students would be more likely to graduate with a science degree and graduate in less time had they attended a lower ranked university. Similar results do not apply for non-minority students.
----------------------
Where are the female athletes in Sports Illustrated? A content analysis of covers (2000-2011)
Jonetta Weber & Robert Carini
International Review for the Sociology of Sport, April 2013, Pages 196-203
Abstract:
We content analyzed more than 11 years of Sports Illustrated (SI) covers (2000-2011) to assess how often females were portrayed, the sports represented, and the manner of their portrayal. Despite females' increased participation in sport since the enactment of Title IX and calls for greater media coverage of female athletes, women appeared on just 4.9 percent of covers. The percentage of covers did not change significantly over the span and were comparable to levels reported for the 1980s by other researchers. Indeed, women were depicted on a higher percentage of covers from 1954-1965 than from 2000-2011. Beyond the limited number of covers, women's participation in sport was often minimized by sharing covers with male counterparts, featuring anonymous women not related directly to sports participation, sexually objectifying female athletes, and promoting women in more socially acceptable gender-neutral or feminine sports.
----------------------
Sara Goodkind et al.
Children and Youth Services Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
There has been a widespread increase in single-sex public schooling in the U.S. following 2006 changes to the Department of Education regulations motivated by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. Single-sex public schooling is viewed as a means to improve the educational experiences and performance of low-income youth of color. Yet little is known about its effects and efficacy, particularly for these populations. This article is based on a community-based participatory research project, on which high school students and university researchers collaborated, conducted in a low-income, African American high school implementing single-sex courses. Our findings challenge proponents' key assumptions that single-sex education will improve the academic achievement of low-income youth of color by 1) eliminating distraction from the other sex; 2) addressing the different learning styles of girls and boys; and 3) remedying inequities by offering these youth opportunities traditionally afforded to more privileged youth. While some distractions were decreased, others were increased or ignored; racialized stereotypes of hypersexuality and essentialized notions of gender were reinforced; and students felt punished rather than privileged by being separated by sex. We conclude that single-sex education as a public school option is a neoliberal approach to addressing low achievement that deflects attention from the structural inequities that created the problem and implicitly blames those experiencing oppression.
----------------------
Lei Lai & Linda Babcock
Journal of Organizational Behavior, April 2013, Pages 310-326
Abstract:
In two role-playing scenarios, we investigate how White male and female evaluators perceive an Asian American versus White job candidate on the dimensions of competence and social skills and how these perceptions affect evaluators' decisions in hiring and promotion. Specifically, Study 1 examines how the perceptions of competence and social skills affect Asian (versus White) college graduates' chance of obtaining a non-technical (versus technical) position, and Study 2 tests how these perceptions affect Asians' probability of promotion relative to Whites'. Our findings suggest that female evaluators were less likely to select Asian than White candidates into positions involving social skills and were less likely to promote Asian than White candidates into these types of positions. Furthermore, female evaluators' perception that Asians were less socially skilled than Whites mediated both of these decisions. This paper contributes to the understanding of workplace discrimination of Asian Americans.
----------------------
Nurit Shnabel et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, May 2013, Pages 663-676
Abstract:
Two experiments examined for the first time whether the specific content of participant-generated affirmation essays - in particular, writing about social belonging - facilitated an affirmation intervention's ability to reduce identity threat among negatively stereotyped students. Study 1, a field experiment, revealed that seventh graders assigned to a values-affirmation condition wrote about social belonging more than those assigned to a control condition. Writing about belonging, in turn, improved the grade point average (GPA) of Black, but not White students. In Study 2, using a modified "belonging-affirmation" intervention, we directly manipulated writing about social belonging before a math test described as diagnostic of math ability. The more female participants wrote about belonging, the better they performed, while there was no effect of writing about belonging for males. Writing about social belonging improved performance only for members of negatively stereotyped groups. Implications for self-affirmation theory and practice are discussed.
----------------------
DeLeon Gray & Aaron Wichman
Social Psychology of Education, December 2012, Pages 465-481
Abstract:
We conducted an investigation into a determinant of academic motivation that has implications for how we respond to school violence and tragedy. We conducted two studies to examine whether exposure to messages related to the salience of one's own mortality cause people to align their own academic beliefs more closely with stereotypical beliefs about their social groups. When exposed to graffiti images that contained messages such as R.I.P. (i.e., rest in peace), males and females in Study 1 expressed math attitudes that resembled the American stereotype of male superiority and female inferiority in this domain. In Study 2, writing about death caused participants to express ethnic stereotype-consistent math attitudes. As one example, our studies highlight a potential psychological barrier associated with student advancement in STEM careers (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). These findings indicate that death reminders, even when they do not follow from direct exposure to school trauma, may impact the academic motivation of stereotypically disadvantaged groups. With the larger goal of reducing psychological barriers associated with inequality in the pursuit of STEM career pathways, these studies are intended to spur further examination of how cases of extreme violence in schools potentially can affect patterns of academic motivation. Even in its early stages, this research should provide new considerations for educational policy-makers aiming to design damage control protocols in response to extreme school violence.
----------------------
Do Racial and Ethnic Group Differences in Performance on the MCAT Exam Reflect Test Bias?
Dwight Davis et al.
Academic Medicine, May 2013, Pages 593-602
Abstract:
The Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) is a standardized examination that assesses fundamental knowledge of scientific concepts, critical reasoning ability, and written communication skills. Medical school admission officers use MCAT scores, along with other measures of academic preparation and personal attributes, to select the applicants they consider the most likely to succeed in medical school. In 2008-2011, the committee charged with conducting a comprehensive review of the MCAT exam examined four issues: (1) whether racial and ethnic groups differ in mean MCAT scores, (2) whether any score differences are due to test bias, (3) how group differences may be explained, and (4) whether the MCAT exam is a barrier to medical school admission for black or Latino applicants. This analysis showed that black and Latino examinees' mean MCAT scores are lower than white examinees', mirroring differences on other standardized admission tests and in the average undergraduate grades of medical school applicants. However, there was no evidence that the MCAT exam is biased against black and Latino applicants as determined by their subsequent performance on selected medical school performance indicators. Among other factors which could contribute to mean differences in MCAT performance, whites, blacks, and Latinos interested in medicine differ with respect to parents' education and income. Admission data indicate that admission committees accept majority and minority applicants at similar rates, which suggests that medical students are selected on the basis of a combination of attributes and competencies rather than on MCAT scores alone.
----------------------
The Impact of City Contracting Set-Asides on Black Self-Employment and Employment
Aaron Chatterji, Kenneth Chay & Robert Fairlie
NBER Working Paper, March 2013
Abstract:
In the 1980s, many U.S. cities initiated programs reserving a proportion of government contracts for minority-owned businesses. The staggered introduction of these set-aside programs is used to estimate their impacts on the self-employment and employment rates of African-American men. Black business ownership rates increased significantly after program initiation, with the black-white gap falling three percentage points. The evidence that the racial gap in employment also fell is less clear as it is depends on assumptions about the continuation of pre-existing trends. The black gains were concentrated in industries heavily affected by set-asides and mostly benefited the better educated.
----------------------
Renata Bongiorno, Paul Bain & Barbara David
British Journal of Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Role congruity theory predicts prejudice towards women who meet the agentic requirements of the leader role. In line with recent findings indicating greater acceptance of agentic behaviour from women, we find evidence for a more subtle form of prejudice towards women who fail to display agency in leader roles. Using a classic methodology, the agency of male and female leaders was manipulated using assertive or tentative speech, presented through written (Study 1, N = 167) or verbal (Study 2, N = 66) communications. Consistent with predictions, assertive women were as likeable and influential as assertive men, while being tentative in leadership reduced the likeability and influence of women, but not of men. Although approval of agentic behaviour from women in leadership reflects progress, evidence that women are quickly singled out for disapproval if they fail to show agency is important for understanding how they continue to be at a distinct disadvantage to men in leader roles.
----------------------
Andrew Seltzer
Economic History Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
The late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British labour market experienced an influx of female clerical workers. Employers argued that female employment increased opportunities for men to advance; however, most male clerks regarded this expansion of the labour supply as a threat to their pay and status. This article examines the effects of female employment on male clerks using data from Williams Deacon's Bank covering a period 25 years prior to and 25 years subsequent to the initial employment of women. It is shown that, within position, women were substitutes for younger men, but not for senior men. In addition, the employment of women in routine positions allowed the bank to expand its branch network, creating new higher-level positions, which were almost always filled by men.
----------------------
Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick, Carroll Glynn & Michael Huge
Science Communication, forthcoming
Abstract:
An experiment with 243 young communication scholars tested hypotheses derived from role congruity theory regarding impacts of author gender and gender typing of research topics on perceived quality of scientific publications and collaboration interest. Participants rated conference abstracts ostensibly authored by females or males, with author associations rotated. The abstracts fell into research areas perceived as gender-typed or gender-neutral to ascertain impacts from gender typing of topics. Publications from male authors were associated with greater scientific quality, in particular if the topic was male-typed. Collaboration interest was highest for male authors working on male-typed topics. Respondent sex did not influence these patterns.
----------------------
David Purcell
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, June 2013, Pages 291-319
Abstract:
I use cultural capital as a conceptual framework for examining gender inequality at work. While much previous research has been situated in hypermasculine work settings, this study takes place in an industry (retail fashion) and an organization that are not hypermasculine - yet, the company's cultural capital is dominated by men, and a glass ceiling persists. Using ethnographic data collected at the headquarters of a major Midwestern multinational retail corporation, I examine this puzzle. I explain how the cultural capital valued by upper management is gendered and contributes to the maintenance of the glass ceiling, and how members of upper management succeed or fail at activating their cultural capital. I also illustrate how the company's industry and internal structure enable some women and gay men to successfully navigate a men-dominated work culture. In doing so, I attempt to synthesize previous studies on homophily and gendered organizations.
----------------------
Benjamin Nagengast, Herbert Marsh & Kit-Tai Hau
Sex Roles, forthcoming
Abstract:
Typically, the effects of single-sex schooling are small at best, and tend to be statistically non-significant once pre-existing differences are taken into account. However, researchers often have had to rely on observational studies based on small non-representative samples and have not used more advanced propensity score methods to control the potentially confounding effects of covariates. Here, we apply optimal full matching to the large historical longitudinal dataset best suited to evaluating this issue in US high schools: the nationally representative High School and Beyond study. We compare the effects of single-sex education in the final 2 years of high school on Grade 12 and post-secondary outcomes using the subsample of students attending Catholic schools (N = 2379 students, 29 girls' schools, 22 boys' schools, 33 coeducational schools) focusing on achievement-related, motivational and social outcomes. We contrast conventional Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) with optimal full matching based on the propensity score that provides a principled way of controlling for selection bias. Results from the two approaches converged: When background and Year 10 covariates were controlled, uncorrected apparent differences between the school types disappeared and the pattern of effects was very similar across the two methods. Overall, there was little evidence for positive effects of single-sex schooling for a broad set of outcomes in the final 2 years of high school and 2 years after graduation. We conclude with a discussion of the advantages of propensity score methods compared to ANCOVA.
----------------------
Breaking the Caste Barrier: Intergenerational Mobility in India
Viktoria Hnatkovska, Amartya Lahiri & Sourabh Paul
Journal of Human Resources, Spring 2013, Pages 435-473
Abstract:
We contrast the intergenerational mobility rates of the historically disadvantaged scheduled castes and tribes (SC/ST) in India with the rest of the workforce in terms of their education attainment, occupation choices and wages. Using survey data from successive rounds of the National Sample Survey between 1983 and 2005, we find that intergenerational education and income mobility rates of SC/STs have converged to non-SC/ST levels during this period. Moreover, SC/STs have matched non-SC/STs in occupation mobility rates. We conclude that the last 20 years of structural changes in India have coincided with a breaking down of caste-based barriers to socioeconomic mobility.
----------------------
Maya Beasley & Mary Fischer
Social Psychology of Education, December 2012, Pages 427-448
Abstract:
This paper examines the effects of group performance anxiety on the attrition of women and minorities from science, math, and engineering majors. While past research has relied primarily on the academic deficits and lower socioeconomic status of women and minorities to explain their absence from these fields, we focus on the impact of stereotype threat - the anxiety caused by the expectation of being judged based on a negative group stereotype. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Freshmen, our findings indicate that minorities experience stereotype threat more strongly than whites, although women do not suffer from stereotype threat more than men. Our findings also reveal that stereotype threat has a significant positive effect on the likelihood of women, minorities, and surprisingly, white men leaving science, technology, engineering and math majors.
----------------------
Men's Race-Based Mobility into Management: Analyses at the Blue Collar and White Collar Job Levels
George Wilson & David Maume
Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, forthcoming
Abstract:
There are few theoretical perspectives that address the dynamics of race-based mobility in the American workplace. The "particularistic mobility thesis" fills this gap: it maintains that even when groups work in similar jobs, discriminatorily-induced dynamics associated with the relative inability of minorities to demonstrate informal characteristics - such as loyalty and sound judgment - constitute a handicap in mobility into managerial positions. Findings based on the 2004-2010 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics support theory and indicate that from both white collar and blue collar job levels African American and Latino men, relative to White gender counterparts, are disadvantaged: they have lower rates of mobility, are restricted to a formal route to reach managerial positions that is less dependent on a traditional range of stratification-based causal factors including background status, human capital, and job/labor market characteristics, and take longer to reach management. Further, as predicted by theory, along all issues differences, relative to Whites, are greater among African Americans than Latinos and greater among those tracked from blue collar jobs than white collar jobs. Implications of the findings for understanding short-term and long-term minority disadvantage in the American labor market are discussed.
----------------------
A Female Style in Corporate Leadership? Evidence from Quotas
David Matsa & Amalia Miller
American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper studies the impact of gender quotas for corporate board seats on corporate policy decisions. We examine the introduction of Norway's 2006 quota, comparing affected firms to other Scandinavian companies, public and private, that were unaffected by the rule. Based on differences-in-differences and triple-difference models, we find that firms affected by the quota undertook fewer workforce reductions than comparison firms, increasing relative labor costs and employment levels and reducing short-term profits. The effects are strongest among firms that had no female board members before the quota was introduced and present even for boards with older and more experienced members. The boards appear to be affecting corporate strategy in part by selecting likeminded executives.
----------------------
Women and Top Leadership Positions: Towards an Institutional Analysis
Alison Cook & Christy Glass
Gender, Work & Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
Women remain under-represented in top leadership positions in work organizations, a reality that reflects a variety of barriers that create a glass ceiling effect. However, some women do attain top leadership positions, leading scholars to probe under what conditions women are promoted despite seemingly intractable and well-documented barriers. Previous scholarship tends to posit individual-level explanations, suggesting either that women who attain top leadership positions are exceptional or that potential women leaders lack key qualities, such as assertiveness. Much less scholarship has explored institutional-level mechanisms that may increase women's ascension to top positions. This analysis seeks to fill this gap by testing three institutional-level theories that may shape women's access to and tenure in top positions: the glass cliff, decision-maker diversity, and the saviour effect. To test these theories we rely on a dataset that includes all CEO transitions in Fortune 500 companies over a 20-year period. Contrary to the predictions of the glass cliff, we find that diversity among decision makers - not firm performance - significantly increases women's likelihood of being promoted to top leadership positions. We also find, contrary to the predictions of the saviour effect, that diversity among decision makers increases women leaders' tenure as CEOs regardless of firm performance. By identifying contextual factors that increase women's mobility, the paper makes an important contribution to the processes that shape and reproduce gender inequality in work organizations.
----------------------
Gender, Single-Sex Schooling and Maths Achievement
Aedín Doris, Donal O'Neill & Olive Sweetman
Economics of Education Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper uses a distinctive feature of the Irish education system to examine the impact of single-sex education on the gender difference in mathematical achievement at the top of the distribution. The Irish primary school system is interesting both for the fact that many children attend single-sex schools, and because these single-sex schools are part of the general educational system, rather than serving a particular socio-economic group. In keeping with research on other countries, we find a significant gender gap in favour of boys, but contrary to suggestions in the literature, our results provide no evidence that single-sex schooling reduces the gap. If anything, the gender differential is larger for children educated in single-sex schools than in coeducational schools.
----------------------
Effects of School Racial Composition on K-12 Mathematics Outcomes: A Metaregression Analysis
Roslyn Arlin Mickelson, Martha Cecilia Bottia & Richard Lambert
Review of Educational Research, March 2013, Pages 121-158
Abstract:
Recently published social science research suggests that students attending schools with concentrations of disadvantaged racial minority populations achieve less academic progress than their otherwise comparable counterparts in more racially balanced or integrated schools, but to date no meta-analysis has estimated the effect size of school racial composition on mathematics outcomes. This metaregression analysis reviewed the social science literature published in the past 20 years on the relationship between mathematics outcomes and the racial composition of the K-12 schools students attend. The authors employed a two-level hierarchical linear model to analyze the 25 primary studies with 98 regression effects. Results indicate that school racial isolation has a small statistically significant negative effect on overall building-level mathematics outcomes. This relationship is moderated by the size of the sample in the study and by the way the independent variable was operationalized. Although it is small, the effect size is substantively meaningful. The effects are stronger in secondary compared to elementary grades, and racial gaps widen as students age. The emergence and widening of the race gaps as students move through the grades suggest that the association of racial segregation with mathematics performance compounds over time. Implications for educational policy and future research are discussed.
----------------------
The Unfairness Trap: A Key Missing Factor in the Economic Theory of Discrimination
Jordan Siegel, Naomi Kodama & Hanna Halaburda
Harvard Working Paper, March 2013
Abstract:
Prior evidence linking increased female representation in management to corporate performance has been surprisingly mixed, due in part to data limitations and methodological difficulties, and possibly to omission of a fairness factor in the economic theory of discrimination. Using modified theory and panel data from a nationally representative sample of Japanese firms in the 2000s, we address several of these shortcomings. We find that increases in the ratio of female executives, the presence of at least one female executive, and the presence of at least one female section chief are associated with increases in corporate profitability in the manufacturing sector. North American multinationals operating in Japan also enjoy outsized benefits from hiring and promoting female managers. The results are robust to controlling for time effects and company fixed effects and the time-varying use of temporary and part-time employees. Some of the competitive benefit of employing female managers is shown to flow from compensation savings, but a much larger part arises from direct productivity increases. Prior economic theory on discrimination implied that those who hire inexpensive and underutilized female talent will see a performance benefit; we find, however, that due to possible social comparison costs, only companies whose compensation of female talent compares well with an external benchmark will see a significant performance benefit.
----------------------
Ideological Wage Inequalities? The Technical/Social Dualism and the Gender Wage Gap in Engineering
Erin Cech
Social Forces, forthcoming
Abstract:
Can professional cultures contribute to wage inequality? Recent literature has demonstrated how widely held cultural biases reproduce ascriptive inequalities in the workforce, but cultural belief systems within professions have largely been ignored as mechanisms of intra-profession inequality. I argue that cultural ideologies about professional work, which may seem benign and have little salience outside of a profession's boundaries, play an important role in reproducing wage inequalities therein. Using nationally representative data on engineers, I demonstrate that patterns of sex segregation and gendered wage allocation in engineering break consistently along the lines predicted by its "technical/social dualism" - an ideological distinction between "technical" and "social" engineering subfields and work activities. After explaining how these findings deepen our understanding of gender inequality in engineering, the article discusses how the consideration of professional cultures may open up fresh areas of inquiry into intra-profession inequality more generally.
----------------------
Littisha Bates & Jennifer Glick
Social Science Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Black youth often lag behind their non-Hispanic white peers in educational outcomes, including teacher-evaluated school performance. Using data from four waves of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort, the analyses presented here identify the extent to which children receive different evaluations from their teachers depending on the racial/ethnic match of teachers and students. This study is distinct from previous work because we examine the assessment of an individual child by multiple teachers. The results indicate that Black children receive worse assessments of their externalizing behaviors (e.g. arguing in class, disrupting instruction) when they have a non-Hispanic white teacher than when they have a Black teacher. Further, these results exist net of school context and the teacher's own ratings of the behavior of the class overall.
----------------------
Gender Sorting across K-12 Schools in the United States
Mark Long & Dylan Conger
American Journal of Education, May 2013, Pages 349-372
Abstract:
This article documents evidence of nonrandom gender sorting across K-12 schools in the United States. The sorting exists among coed schools and at all grade levels, and it is highest in the secondary school grades. We observe some gender sorting across school sectors and types: for instance, males are slightly underrepresented in private schools and charter schools and are substantially overrepresented in irregular public schools, a large share of which educates students with special needs and juvenile justice involvement. Gender sorting within sectors and types is also quite prevalent and appears to be highest within the private schools (where single-sex schools are more common) and irregular public schools. We find that gender sorting is higher in counties that have higher shares of enrollment in private and nonregular public schools. This sorting occurs even though parents have similar stated preferences for school attributes for their sons and daughters.
----------------------
Are firms willing to employ a greying and feminizing workforce?
V. Vandenberghe
Labour Economics, June 2013, Pages 30-46
Abstract:
Are employers willing to employ more older individuals, in particular older women? Higher employment among the older segments of the population will only materialize if firms are willing to employ them. Although several economists have started considering the demand side of the labour market for older individuals, few have considered its gender dimension properly; despite evidence that lifting the overall senior employment rate in the EU requires significantly raising that of women older than 50. In this paper, we posit that labour demand and employability depend to a large extent on how the age/gender composition of the workforce affects firm's profits. Using unique firm-level panel data we produce robust evidence on the causal effect of age/gender on productivity (value added per worker), total labour costs and gross profits. We take advantage of the panel structure of data and resort to first differences to deal with a potential time-invariant heterogeneity bias. Moreover, inspired by recent developments in the production function estimation literature, we also address the risk of simultaneity bias (endogeneity of firm's age-gender mix choices in the short run) by combining first differences with i) the structural approach suggested by Ackerberg, Caves and Frazer (2006), ii) alongside more traditional IV-GMM methods (Blundell and Bond, 1998) where lagged values of labour inputs are used as instruments. Results suggest no negative impact of rising shares of older men on firm's gross profits, but a large negative effect of larger shares of older women. Another interesting result is that the vast and highly feminized services industry does not seem to offer working conditions that mitigate older women's productivity and employability disadvantage, on the contrary. This is not good news for older women's employability and calls for policy interventions in the Belgian private economy aimed at combating women's decline of productivity with age and/or better adapting labour costs to age-gender productivity profiles.
----------------------
Gender Differences in Involuntary Job Loss: Why Are Men More Likely to Lose Their Jobs?
Roger Wilkins & Mark Wooden
Industrial Relations, April 2013, Pages 582-608
Abstract:
Empirical studies have consistently reported that rates of involuntary job loss are significantly lower among female employees than among males. Only rarely, however, have the reasons for this differential been the subject of detailed investigation. In this article, household panel survey data from Australia are used that also find higher rates of job loss among men than among women. This differential, however, largely disappears once controls for industry and occupation are included. These findings suggest that the observed gender differential primarily reflects systematic differences in the types of jobs into which men and women select.
----------------------
Alan Gregory et al.
British Journal of Management, June 2013, Pages 174-190
Abstract:
Attitudes towards male and female managers within organizations are well documented, but how the stock market perceives their relative capabilities is less studied. Recent evidence documents a negative short-run market reaction to the appointment of female chief executive officers and suggests that female executives are less informed than their male counterparts about future corporate performance. These results appear to dispute the stock market value of having women on corporate boards. However, such short-run market reactions may retain a ‘gender bias', reflecting the prevalence of negative stereotypes, where the market reacts to ‘beliefs' rather than ‘performance'. This study tests for such bias by examining the stock market reaction to directors' trades in their own companies' shares, by measuring both the short-run and longer-term returns after the directors' trades. Allowing for firm and trade effects, some evidence is found that, in the longer term, markets recognize that female executives' trades are informative about future corporate performance, although initially markets underestimate these effects. This has important implications for research that has attempted to assess the value of board diversity by examining only short-run stock market responses.
----------------------
Darrell Steffensmeier, Jennifer Schwartz & Michael Roche
American Sociological Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
We extend the scarce research on corporate crime to include gender by developing and testing a gendered focal concerns and crime opportunities framework that predicts minimal and marginal female involvement in corporate criminal networks. Lacking centralized information, we developed a rich database covering 83 corporate frauds involving 436 defendants. We extracted information from indictments and secondary sources on corporate conspiracy networks (e.g., co-conspirator roles, company positions, and distribution of profit). Findings support the gendered paradigm. Typically, women were not part of conspiracy groups. When women were involved, they had more minor roles and made less profit than their male co-conspirators. Two main pathways defined female involvement: relational (close personal relationship with a main male co-conspirator) and utility (occupied a financial-gateway corporate position). Paralleling gendered labor market segmentation processes that limit and shape women's entry into economic roles, sex segregation in corporate criminality is pervasive, suggesting only subtle shifts in gender socialization and women's opportunities for significant white-collar crimes. Our findings do not comport with images of highly placed or powerful white-collar female criminals.
----------------------
Sexual Harassment in Law Enforcement: Incidence, Impact, and Perception
Kimberly Lonsway, Rebecca Paynich & Jennifer Hall
Police Quarterly, June 2013, Pages 177-210
Abstract:
The present study was designed to examine the incidence, impact, and perception of sexual harassment in law enforcement by utilizing a mixed methods approach and two data sources. In Study 1, quantitative data were provided by 679 male and female personnel in a large law enforcement agency. In Study 2, 531 female police officers provided qualitative responses to a national survey addressing a range of professional experiences. Most respondents from these two studies experienced behaviors that could potentially be sexually harassing. Very few were reported with a formal complaint, but retaliation was common and often severe. Regression analyses demonstrate that such experiences have a negative impact on both personal and professional outcomes. Yet narrative responses reveal that respondents do not typically appraise them negatively. Patterns are explored for the various types of behavior, the organizational status of those involved, the response strategy employed, and the outcome of the situation.
----------------------
The Power of Gendered Stereotypes in the US Marine Corps
Emerald Archer
Armed Forces & Society, April 2013, Pages 359-391
Abstract:
Gendered stereotypes in the US military context often result in the creation of barriers for women. Constant confrontation with these barriers may negatively impact a servicewoman's career. The author argues that gendered stereotypes in the US Marine Corps (USMC) have the potential to undermine a female Marine's performance, and sometimes the performance of others around her. Through the application of ethnographic content analysis to thirty-five in-depth interviews (seventeen female and eighteen male Marines), this article investigates the possible consequences of gendered stereotypes in the USMC. Four themes regarding the origination, socialization, and reinforcement of gender-role stereotypes in the USMC emerge through the interview process. Findings suggest gender-role stereotypes influence (1) the perceived abilities of female Marines, (2) the initial socialization of Marines, (3) camaraderie and opportunities for female Marine mentorship, and (4) a culture of double standards. The aforementioned themes are compared to findings in the literature and implications for camaraderie, shared sense of mission, and leadership are discussed.