Girls rule, boys drool
Phoebe Clarke & Ian Ayres
Journal of Socio-Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Many studies have sought to estimate the effects of participating in sports on ex-athletes’ adult lives. This paper contributes to the existing literature in two ways. First, it adopts an instrumental-variables method pioneered by Betsey Stevenson (2010) in which variation in rates of boys’ athletic participation across states before the passage of Title IX is used to instrument for changes in girls’ athletic participation following its passage, thereby avoiding selection bias and allowing for causal estimates. Second, it looks at the effect of participating in sports not on economic, but on social outcomes. In particular, we find that a ten percentage-point increase in state-level female sports participation generates a five to six percentage-point rise in the rate of female secularism, a five percentage-point increase in the proportion of women who are mothers, and a six percentage-point rise in the proportion of mothers who, at the time that they are interviewed, are single mothers. While our results appear to paint a picture of independence from potentially patriarchal institutions (church and marriage), further research is necessary to understand whether our results can be attributed to a single story such as this one or whether they are the products of multiple causal mechanisms.
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Do Female Politicians Empower Women to Vote or Run for Office? A Regression Discontinuity Approach
David Broockman
Electoral Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
Persistent gender gaps in political officeholding and mass political participation jeopardize women’s equal representation in government. This paper brings new evidence to the longstanding hypotheses that the presence of additional female candidates and officeholders helps address these gaps by empowering other women to vote or run for office themselves. With a regression discontinuity approach and data on 3,813 US state legislative elections where a woman opposed a man, I find that the election of additional women in competitive US state legislative elections has no discernible causal effects on other women’s political participation at the mass or elite levels. These estimates are precise enough to rule out even substantively small effects. These estimates stand in stark contrast to a number of similar findings from India, suggesting that although electing the first women in a society can have these empowering effects, remaining barriers to women’s inclusion in American democracy go beyond what further increases in female officeholding can themselves erode.
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Age at Menarche and Choice of College Major: Implications for STEM Majors
Anna Brenner-Shuman & Warren Waren
Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, February-April 2013, Pages 28-34
Abstract:
Even though boys and girls in childhood perform similarly in math and spatial thinking, after puberty fewer young women pursue majors that emphasize abilities such as science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) in college. If postpubertal feminization contributes to a lower likelihood of choosing STEM majors, then young women who enter puberty early should be the least likely to pursue those majors later in their education. In this study, we investigate the association between age at menarche and the choice of STEM major. We surveyed 150 undergraduate women from a variety of majors in a large, public university and created logistic regression models to estimate their likelihood of choosing a STEM major. We found that early-maturing girls are less likely to enter STEM majors. We posit that the earlier a young woman enters puberty, the earlier and more extensively she is affected by the “leaky pipeline.”
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Frédérique Autin, Nyla Branscombe & Jean-Claude Croizet
Psychology of Women Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
We investigate how selection policies — the rules defining access to a valued position — can act as situational cues signaling social identity threat or safety among women and men. College students took a logic test ostensibly determining their assignment to a position of leader or subordinate for a subsequent task. Study 1 showed that when only the test score determined the selection, women experienced more identity threat and performed worse than men. When the policy allowed the selection of women at a lower level of performance than men to promote diversity, men’s performance decreased compared to the merit condition, falling to the level of women’s performance and thus closing the gender gap. Study 2 replicated these findings and established that the meaning derived from selection practices affects candidates’ performance. A third policy that also preferentially selected women, but to correct for unequal treatment based on gender, leads to a reversed gender gap (i.e., women outperformed men). These findings suggest that structural features of test settings including selection practices can constrain individuals’ potential access to opportunities.
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Nicole Kronberger & Ilona Horwath
Basic and Applied Social Psychology, November/December 2013, Pages 534-546
Abstract:
Stereotype threat may not only affect academic performance and persistence but also the relationship between the two variables. An analysis of the trajectories of 2,397 individuals who began majors in engineering shows a gender gap in graduation rates for those with high and average GPAs. Survey data (N = 455) furthermore highlight that good grades, while reducing academic self-doubt, ironically accentuate female students' social discomfort, and that after dropout, women are more likely than men to show signs of disidentification. For a minority that is met with negative competence expectations, good intellectual performance is no guarantee for persistence.
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May Ling Halim & Madeline Heilman
Journal of Applied Social Psychology, November 2013, Pages 2330–2340
Abstract:
Two studies indicated that being a nontraditional job applicant due to voluntary interruption of college attendance had detrimental consequences for employment evaluation. These negative reactions were more severe for women than for men. Women with interrupted attendance received the most negative responses (Studies 1 and 2). Choosing to interrupt college attendance increased perceived instability and also positively affected perceived flexibility, and these characterizations were related to evaluative outcomes (Study 2). Moreover, both instability and flexibility characterizations contributed to the gender-discrepant consequences of interrupted college attendance. Female applicants were rated more negatively on flexibility characterizations than were male applicants. Furthermore, although there were no gender differences in ratings of instability, instability ratings were found to negatively impact evaluations of female applicants, but not male applicants.
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Pathways to Science and Engineering Bachelor Degrees for Men and Women
Joscha Legewie & Thomas DiPrete
Sociological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Despite the striking reversal of the gender gap in educational attainment and the near gender parity in math performance, women pursue science and engineering (S/E) degrees at much lower rates than their male peers do. Current efforts to increase the number of women in these fields and close the gender gap focus on different life-course periods but lack a clear understanding of the importance of these periods and how orientations towards S/E fields develop over time. In this paper, we examine the gendered pathways to a S/E bachelor degree from middle school to high school and college based on a representative sample from the 1973-1974 birth cohort. Using a counterfactual decomposition analysis, we determine the relative importance of these different life-course periods and thereby inform the direction of future research and policy. Our findings confirm previous research that highlights the importance of early encouragement for gender differences in S/E degrees. But our findings also attest to the crucial role of the high school years as a decisive period for the gender gap while challenging the focus on college in research and policy. Indeed, if female high school seniors had the same orientation towards and preparation for S/E fields as their male peers, the gender gap in S/E degrees would be closed by as much as 82%.
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Joseph Robinson-Cimpian et al.
Developmental Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
A recent wave of research suggests that teachers overrate the performance of girls relative to boys and hold more positive attitudes toward girls’ mathematics abilities. However, these prior estimates of teachers’ supposed female bias are potentially misleading because these estimates (and teachers themselves) confound achievement with teachers’ perceptions of behavior and effort. Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998–1999 (ECLS-K), Study 1 demonstrates that teachers actually rate boys’ mathematics proficiency higher than that of girls when conditioning on both teachers’ ratings of behavior and approaches to learning as well as past and current test scores. In other words, on average girls are only perceived to be as mathematically competent as similarly achieving boys when the girls are also seen as working harder, behaving better, and being more eager to learn. Study 2 uses mediation analysis with an instrumental-variables approach, as well as a matching strategy, to explore the extent to which this conditional underrating of girls may explain the widening gender gap in mathematics in early elementary school. We find robust evidence suggesting that underrating girls’ mathematics proficiency accounts for a substantial portion of the development of the mathematics achievement gap between similarly performing and behaving boys and girls in the early grades.
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Gender peer effects in university: Evidence from a randomized experiment
Hessel Oosterbeek & Reyn van Ewijk
Economics of Education Review, February 2014, Pages 51–63
Abstract:
Recent studies for primary and secondary education find positive effects of the share of females in the classroom on achievement of males and females. This study examines whether these results can be extrapolated to higher education. We conduct an experiment in which the shares of females in workgroups for first year students in economics and business are manipulated and students are randomly assigned to these groups. Males tend to postpone, but not abandon, their dropout decision when surrounded by more females and perform worse on courses with high math content. There is also a modest reduction in absenteeism early in the year. Overall, however, we find no substantial gender peer effects on achievement. This in spite of the fact that according to students’ perceptions, both their own, and their peers’ behavior are influenced by the share of females.
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Is School Feminine? Implicit Gender Stereotyping of School as a Predictor of Academic Achievement
Anke Heyder & Ursula Kessels
Sex Roles, December 2013, Pages 605-617
Abstract:
One cause proposed for boys’ relatively lower academic achievement is a “feminisation” of schools that might result in a lack of fit between boys’ self-concept and academic engagement. Research so far has investigated math-male and language-female stereotypes, but no school-female stereotypes. Our study tested for implicit gender stereotyping of school and its impact on boys’ achievement in N = 122 ninth-graders from a large city in Western Germany using the Go/No-go Association Task (GNAT). Gender role self-concept and grades in math (representing an academic domain stereotyped as male) and German (domain stereotyped as female) were assessed using written questionnaires. It was found that, overall, students associated school more strongly with female than with male, and that this association of school with female was related to boys’ academic achievement. The more strongly boys associated school with female and the more they ascribed negative masculine traits to themselves, the lower their grades in German were. Boys’ academic achievement in math was unrelated to the extent to which they perceived school as feminine and themselves as masculine. Girls’ grades in both German and math were unrelated to their gender stereotyping of school. These findings emphasize the importance of fit between a student’s gender, gender role self-concept and gender stereotyping of school for academic achievement. Strategies to improve this fit are discussed.
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Waverly Ding, Fiona Murray & Toby Stuart
Academy of Management Journal, October 2013, Pages 1443-1464
Abstract:
This article examines the gender difference in the likelihood that male and female academic scientists will join corporate scientific advisory boards (SABs). We assess (i) demand-side theories that relate the gap in scientists' rate of joining SABs to the opportunity structure of SAB invitations, and (ii) supply-side explanations that attribute that gap to scientists' preferences for work of this type. We statistically examine the demand- and supply-side perspectives in a national sample of 6,000 life scientists whose careers span more than 30 years. Holding constant professional achievement, network ties, employer characteristics, and research foci, male scientists are almost twice as likely as females to serve on the SABs of biotechnology companies. We do not find evidence in our data supporting a choice-based explanation for the gender gap. Instead, demand-side theoretical perspectives focusing on gender-stereotyped perceptions and the unequal opportunities embedded in social networks appear to explain some of the gap.
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Appointments, Pay and Performance in UK boardrooms by Gender
Ian Gregory-Smith, Brian Main & Charles O'Reilly
Economic Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper uses UK data to examine issues regarding the scarcity of women in boardroom positions. The paper examines appointments, pay and any associated productivity effects deriving from increased diversity. Evidence of gender-bias in the appointment of women as non-executive directors is found together with mixed evidence of discrimination in wages or fees paid. However, the paper finds no support for the argument that gender diverse boards enhance corporate performance. Proposals in favour of greater board diversity may be best structured around the moral value of diversity, rather than with reference to an expectation of improved company performance.
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Gender-Heterogeneous Working Groups Produce Higher Quality Science
Lesley Campbell et al.
PLoS ONE, October 2013
Abstract:
Here we present the first empirical evidence to support the hypothesis that a gender-heterogeneous problem-solving team generally produced journal articles perceived to be higher quality by peers than a team comprised of highly-performing individuals of the same gender. Although women were historically underrepresented as principal investigators of working groups, their frequency as PIs at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis is now comparable to the national frequencies in biology and they are now equally qualified, in terms of their impact on the accumulation of ecological knowledge (as measured by the h-index). While women continue to be underrepresented as working group participants, peer-reviewed publications with gender-heterogeneous authorship teams received 34% more citations than publications produced by gender-uniform authorship teams. This suggests that peers citing these publications perceive publications that also happen to have gender-heterogeneous authorship teams as higher quality than publications with gender uniform authorship teams. Promoting diversity not only promotes representation and fairness but may lead to higher quality science.
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Strategy Training Eliminates Sex Differences in Spatial Problem Solving in a STEM Domain
Mike Stieff et al.
Journal of Educational Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Poor spatial ability can limit success in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. Many initiatives aim to increase STEM achievement and degree attainment through selective recruitment of high-spatial students or targeted training to improve spatial ability. The current study examines an alternative approach to increasing achievement that includes problem-solving strategy training. In this study, we examined how training in multiple problem-solving strategies affects science achievement and its relations to sex and spatial ability. We compared 3 interventions that trained either mental imagery strategies, analytic problem-solving strategies, or their combination in the context of a college chemistry course. As predicted, students adopted more analytic strategies after analytic training, and women used significantly more analytic strategies than men after instruction. Training in the combined use of mental imagery and analytic strategies eliminated sex differences in achievement, but training in a single type of strategy resulted in a male achievement advantage. Our work demonstrates that achievement is dependent not only on spatial ability but also on strategy choice, and that strategy training offers a viable route to improving the performance of female students.
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Hierarchical Structure and Gender Dissimilarity in American Legal Labor Markets
Ronit Dinovitzer & John Hagan
Social Forces, forthcoming
Abstract:
Research on inequality in the legal profession underemphasizes the macro-level factors that structure legal work. This paper introduces two measures that characterize local legal labor markets. The index of gender dissimilarity is the proportion of women required to move into the private law firm sector from the public sector to create gender balance. The index of hierarchical market structure is defined by a concentration of elite law graduates, highly leveraged law firms, lucrative billings, and corporate clients. Women's salaries increase more rapidly than men's in these markets, yet men continue to out-earn women. Furthermore, HLM models indicate that in labor markets with greater gender dissimilarity, women's wages are significantly depressed. We explain this in terms of mechanisms of opportunity hoarding and exploitation (Tilly 1998).