Not another white guy
Managing Women's Equality: Theodore Roosevelt, the Frontier Myth, and the Modern Woman
Leroy Dorsey
Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Fall 2013, Pages 423-456
Abstract:
Popular and political notions about Theodore Roosevelt's larger-than-life, masculine persona helped him to shape many of the issues facing the country at the turn of the twentieth century. His legacy of masculinity, however, has overshadowed his rhetoric about women's rights. Whether he was an opportunistic politician who sought to garner female support for his own ends or a staunch ally for women in their search for equality, Roosevelt responded to women's plight in the same way he did regarding many of the nation's problems — he invoked the Frontier Myth as a catalyst for change. His prepresidential rhetoric constructed the frontier woman as an essential actor in the early development of the country and as a synthesis of competing ideologies in modern America: she embraced the rugged individualism needed on the wild frontier and proved her equality with men, but she also upheld her civic responsibility to birth a mighty nation. In his presidential and postpresidential discourse, Roosevelt evoked that mythic memory of the frontier woman as a lesson for modern women to consider as a means to achieve some level of cultural equality.
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Sun Hyun Park & James Westphal
Administrative Science Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study examines social discrimination in the attributions that top executives make about the performance of other firms with minority CEOs in their communications with journalists. Drawing from the literatures on intergroup relations and status competition, our theory suggests how out-group biases and negative forms of envy toward higher-status minority CEOs may increase the propensity for white male CEOs to make negative or internal attributions for the low performance of the minority CEOs’ firms. We also examine how CEOs’ internal attributions in conversations with journalists increase the tendency for those journalists to attribute performance to internal causes in reporting on the minority CEOs’ firms. We consider how the gender and race of journalists could moderate the influence of CEOs’ performance attributions on journalists’ reports, such that female or racial minority journalists would be less easily persuaded by white male CEOs’ internal attributions for the low performance of firms with female or racial minority CEOs, and thus less prone to issuing negative statements about the CEOs’ leadership. Empirical analyses based on original survey data from a large sample of CEOs and journalists provided strong support for our hypotheses. We discuss implications of the findings for theory and research on social discrimination in the corporate elite and social psychological determinants of corporate leader reputation.
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Affirmative Action: One Size Does Not Fit All
Kala Krishna & Alexander Tarasov
NBER Working Paper, October 2013
Abstract:
This paper identifies a new reason for giving preferences to the disadvantaged using a model of contests. There are two forces at work: the effort effect working against giving preferences and the selection effect working for them. When education is costly and easy to obtain (as in the U.S.), the selection effect dominates. When education is heavily subsidized and limited in supply (as in India), preferences are welfare reducing. The model also shows that unequal treatment of identical agents can be welfare improving, providing insights into when the counterintuitive policy of rationing educational access to some subgroups is welfare improving.
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Ryan Seebruck & Scott Savage
Sociological Inquiry, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examine how an assistant coach's race and the race of his supervisor (the head coach) interact to affect future job quality. While past research argues that homophily is beneficial to job mobility, we find differential effects based on the race. OLS and OLR regression analyses on the quality of one's first head coaching job in NCAA men's basketball indicate that black assistant coaches working under black head coaches (black homophily) are significantly disadvantaged compared to all other racial combinations: white assistants with white supervisors (white homophily), white assistants with black supervisors (white heterophily), and black assistants with white supervisors (black heterophily). In contrast, there is no significant difference in job quality among the latter three groups: white homophily, white heterophily, and black heterophily. This indicates that while homophily is neither advantageous nor disadvantageous for whites, it is disadvantageous for black job candidates. This racially based disadvantage makes it difficult for minority job candidates to break through the glass ceiling and has real-world financial implications.
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Narrow imaginations: How imagining ideal employees can increase racial bias
Jazmin Brown-Iannuzzi, Keith Payne & Sophie Trawalter
Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, November 2013, Pages 661-670
Abstract:
When people make important decisions, such as selecting a job candidate or graduate school applicant based on how well they fit with that imagined ideal. In two experiments we provide evidence that imagining the ideal has unintended consequences. Imagining an ideal candidate for a professional job led participants to preferentially imagine a White candidate (Experiment 1) and to preferentially hire a White candidate over a Black candidate with matched qualifications (Experiment 2). These effects were independent of explicit prejudice, suggesting that even low-prejudice individuals may be affected by this bias. However, an alternative imagery strategy — imagining a variety of suitable applicants — was effective at remediating the bias. In some cases discrimination may result not from prejudiced attitudes but from failures of the imagination.
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‘Big’ men: Male leaders’ height positively relates to followers’ perception of charisma
Melvyn Hamstra
Personality and Individual Differences, January 2014, Pages 190–192
Abstract:
Physical height is associated with beneficial outcomes for the tall individual (e.g., higher salary and likelihood of occupying a leadership position), presumably because being tall constituted an adaptive characteristic in ancestral societies. Although this account hinges on the presence of an evolved positive social-perceptual bias toward tall people, little direct evidence exists for this claim. Physical height literally implies the ability to reach higher, see further, and have greater overview; it also affords dominance, which others may equate with ability as well. Hence, leaders’ physical height may be positively related to followers’ belief that a leader has extraordinary talents, that is, charisma. However, because leadership positions were, in ancestral societies, occupied by males, an evolutionary perspective might further suggest that height is less relevant to followers’ perceptions of female leaders. In line with this reasoning, the current study found a positive relationship between male leaders’ height and their followers’ perceptions of charisma, while no such relationship was found for female leaders.
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Women in Negotiation: Effects of Gender and Power on Negotiation Behavior
Alain Hong & Per van der Wijst
Negotiation and Conflict Management Research, November 2013, Pages 273–284
Abstract:
Research on gender and negotiation has shown that women are often left worse off at the negotiation table and tend to negotiate less favorable outcomes than men. These findings may be, in part, due to the socialization of men and women, which has resulted in a greater negotiation advantage for men than for women. It is, however, hypothesized that power affects men's and women's negotiation behavior in such a way that it positively influences women's negotiation behavior while men remain unaffected by it. In an experimental setting using a face-to-face distributive bargaining situation, participants were primed with the experience of having power and were subsequently asked to negotiate with an opponent about the asking price of a house. The results of this study show that women who were primed with the experience of having power made better first offers and negotiated better outcomes than women who were not. Men's first offers and negotiation outcomes turned out not to be affected by power. Moreover, results also show that power significantly reduced differences in negotiation outcomes between men and women. All in all, this study shows that power influences men's and women's behavior in negotiation differently.
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On the motivation of quid pro quo sexual harassment in men: Relation to masculine gender role stress
Robert Mellon
Journal of Applied Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Male office workers reported levels of distress elicited by personal violations of a range of masculine gender role expectations, as well as their proclivities to coerce sexual favors from “attractive” subordinate women via bribery or extortion. Sexual harassment proclivity levels were directly correlated with levels of distress related to four dimensions of masculine gender role violations, including acts of subordination to women, public expression of emotional behavior, inadequate heterosexual prowess, and inferiority in athletic and intellectual domains. These findings accord with an interpretation that men's quid pro quo sexual harassment may be motivated by the social punishment of their own failures to conform to masculine gender role expectations, including, but importantly, not limited to the expectation that men should punish women's violations of feminine gender role norms.
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Does Beauty Matter in Undergraduate Education?
Tatyana Deryugina & Olga Shurchkov
University of Illinois Working Paper, August 2013
Abstract:
Physically attractive individuals achieve greater success in terms of earnings and status than those who are less attractive. However, much about the mechanism behind this “beauty premium” remains unknown. We use a rich dataset to shed light on its nature at the college level. We find that students judged to be more attractive perform significantly worse on standardized tests but, conditional on test scores, are not evaluated more favorably at the point of admission. Controlling for test scores, more attractive students receive marginally better grades in some cases. Finally, there is substantial beauty-based sorting into areas of study and occupations.
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Marcin Pęski & Balázs Szentes
American Economic Review, October 2013, Pages 2412-2436
Abstract:
We consider a dynamic economy in which agents are repeatedly matched and decide whether or not to form profitable partnerships. Each agent has a physical color and a social color. An agent's social color acts as a signal, conveying information about the physical color of agents in his partnership history. Before an agent makes a decision, he observes his match's physical and social colors. Neither the physical color nor the social color is payoff relevant. We identify environments where equilibria arise in which agents condition their decisions on the physical and social colors of their potential partners. That is, they discriminate.
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Kim Bissell & Lauren Reichart Smith
Journal of Sports Media, Fall 2013, Pages 1-30
Abstract:
This study represents a content analysis of five matches of the US women's beach volleyball team during the 2008 Summer Games. Play-by-play commentary and between-play commentary were analyzed for all five games, and all court shots and camera angles were coded. The main objective of this study was to observe the visual and verbal aspects of the prime-time broadcasts of the women's beach volleyball games to determine if the US female athletes were portrayed in a sexualized nature or determine if the athletes were reported on in a way that emphasized sexuality or gender first and athleticism second. Findings from over 1,500 comments and 2,500 camera shots were contradictory to past research, suggesting viewers were shown coverage of the games that often emphasized the athletes' strength and athleticism. Practical considerations and implications are discussed.
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Ask and Ye Shall Receive? How Gender and Status Moderate Negotiation Success
Emily Amanatullah & Catherine Tinsley
Negotiation and Conflict Management Research, November 2013, Pages 253–272
Abstract:
The backlash effect is a well-documented negative social reaction toward women who are seen as violating gender norms because they engage in counterstereotypical (noncommunal, agentic) behaviors during the performance of their jobs. This social disincentive has been shown to account for women's diminished likelihood to initiate negotiations relative to men. But we question whether women who ignored this disincentive and initiated negotiations would even receive the resources they requested. We extend past research by showing women also incur financial penalties for initiating negotiations. This financial penalty can be explained by women's lower ascribed status relative to men's status and fortunately can be attenuated if women have achieved status. In two studies, we find consistent evidence that women who ask do not receive unless they have externally conferred status.
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Gender Stereotypes, Information Search, and Voting Behavior in Political Campaigns
Tessa Ditonto, Allison Hamilton & David Redlawsk
Political Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
It is still unclear exactly how gender influences vote choice. Using an information processing perspective, we argue that instead of directly influencing vote choice, candidate gender guides the amounts and types of information that voters search for during a campaign, and that effects of gender on vote choice ultimately come from differences in information search influenced by candidate gender. Using two unique experimental datasets, we test the effects of candidate gender on vote choice and information search. We find that subjects change their search based on a candidate’s gender, seeking out more competence-related information about female candidates than they do for male candidates, as well as more information related to “compassion issues.” We also find that evaluations of candidates’ traits and issue positions are important predictors of subjects’ vote choice.
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Explaining the Marginalization of Women in Legislative Institutions
Yann Kerevel & Lonna Rae Atkeson
Journal of Politics, October 2013, Pages 980-992
Abstract:
Previous research suggests that women tend to be marginalized in legislatures or denied access to important agenda-setting resources that reduce their effectiveness as legislators after gaining office. However, previous studies have not been able to disentangle competing theoretical explanations for this marginalization. Some suggest it is due to explicit gender discrimination, while others suggest institutional norms such as incumbency are to blame. We address this puzzle with data from the Mexican Chamber of Deputies, an institution without incumbency, by examining gender differences in rates of bill sponsorship, bill passage rates, and committee assignments before and after the adoption of gender quotas. We find little evidence that female legislators are marginalized in the Mexican Chamber of Deputies, tentatively suggesting incumbency, rather than discrimination, may explain evidence of marginalization in other legislatures. Furthermore, we find little evidence to support the notion that implementing gender quotas has negative consequences.
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All in the Family: The Role of the Sheriff's Wife in 20th-Century Mom and Pop Jails
Rick Ruddell & Ken Leyton-Brown
Women & Criminal Justice, Fall 2013, Pages 267-285
Abstract:
A content analysis of newspaper articles published between 1900 and 1970 revealed that sheriffs' wives played a key role in the day-to-day operations of jails in rural America. Although few of these women had official law enforcement status, they admitted and supervised arrestees, thwarted jail escapes, apprehended escapees, and challenged lynch mobs. In addition, many of these women managed the day-to-day jail operations and cared for the inmates. Our analyses revealed that these women were often unpaid and that their work toward making jail conditions more humane has gone unacknowledged. Analyses of contemporary Bureau of Justice Statistics data revealed that staffing patterns of women employed in local jails and state prisons today are highest in jurisdictions where mom and pop jails were most prevalent. This study sheds light on the contributions that these women made to rural law enforcement, including paving the way for women in local corrections.
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The Gender Citation Gap in International Relations
Daniel Maliniak, Ryan Powers & Barbara Walter
International Organization, October 2013, Pages 889-922
Abstract:
This article investigates the extent to which citation and publication patterns differ between men and women in the international relations (IR) literature. Using data from the Teaching, Research, and International Policy project on peer-reviewed publications between 1980 and 2006, we show that women are systematically cited less than men after controlling for a large number of variables including year of publication, venue of publication, substantive focus, theoretical perspective, methodology, tenure status, and institutional affiliation. These results are robust to a variety of modeling choices. We then turn to network analysis to investigate the extent to which the gender of an article's author affects that article's relative centrality in the network of citations between papers in our sample. Articles authored by women are systematically less central than articles authored by men, all else equal. This is likely because (1) women tend to cite themselves less than men, and (2) men (who make up a disproportionate share of IR scholars) tend to cite men more than women. This is the first study in political science to reveal significant gender differences in citation patterns and is especially meaningful because citation counts are increasingly used as a key measure of research's quality and impact.
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Gender Differences in Salary in a Recent Cohort of Early-Career Physician-Researchers
Reshma Jagsi
Academic Medicine, forthcoming
Purpose: Studies have suggested that male physicians earn more than their female counterparts. The authors examined whether this disparity exists in a recently hired cohort.
Method: In 2010-2011, the authors surveyed recent recipients of National Institutes of Health (NIH) mentored career development (i.e., K08 or K23) awards, receiving responses from 1,275 (75% response rate). For the 1,012 physicians with academic positions in clinical specialties who reported salary, they constructed linear regression models of salary considering gender, age, race, marital status, parental status, additional doctoral degree, academic rank, years on faculty, specialty, institution type, region, institution NIH funding rank, K award type, K award funding institute, K award year, work hours, and research time. They evaluated the explanatory value of spousal employment status using Peters-Belson regression.
Results: Mean salary was $141,325 (95% confidence interval [CI] 135,607-147,043) for women and $172,164 (95% CI 167,357-176,971) for men. Male gender remained an independent, significant predictor of salary (+$10,921, P < .001) even after adjusting for specialty, academic rank, work hours, research time, and other factors. Peters-Belson analysis indicated that 17% of the overall disparity in the full sample was unexplained by the measured covariates. In the married subset, after accounting for spousal employment status, 10% remained unexplained.
Conclusions: The authors observed, in this recent cohort of elite, early-career physician-researchers, a gender difference in salary that was not fully explained by specialty, academic rank, work hours, or even spousal employment. Creating more equitable procedures for establishing salary is important.
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When Gender Matters: Macro-dynamics and Micro-mechanisms
Sarah Fulton
Political Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Does candidate sex matter to general election outcomes? And if so, under what conditions does sex exert an effect? Research conducted over the past 40 years has asserted an absence of a sex effect, consistently finding that women fare as well as men when they run. Nevertheless, this scholarship neglects sex-based differences in candidate valence, or non-policy characteristics such as competence and integrity that voters intrinsically value in their elected officials. If women candidates hold greater valence than men, and if women’s electoral success stems from this valence advantage, then women candidates would be penalized if they lacked the upper hand on valence. Recent research at the macro-level reports a 3 % vote disadvantage for women candidates when valence is held constant (Fulton, Political Res Q 65(2):303–314, 2012), but is based on only one general election year. The present study replicates Fulton’s (Political Res Q 65(2):303–314, 2012) research using new data from a more recent general election and finds a consistent 3 % vote deficit for women candidates. In addition, this paper extends these findings theoretically and empirically to the micro-level: examining who responds to variations in candidate sex and valence. Male independent voters, who often swing general elections, are equally supportive of women candidates when they have a valence advantage. Absent a relative abundance of valence, male independents are significantly less likely to endorse female candidates. If correct, the gender affinity effect is asymmetrical: male independent voters are more likely to support men candidates, and less likely to support women, but female independents fail to similarly discriminate.
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Not So Subtle: A Meta-Analytic Investigation of the Correlates of Subtle and Overt Discrimination
Kristen Jones et al.
Journal of Management, forthcoming
Abstract:
Extant research suggests subtle, interpersonal forms of discrimination, though often normalized and overlooked, may be just as detrimental to targets as compared to more traditional, overt forms of discrimination. To further examine this question, we meta-analyzed the current literature to estimate the relationship between discrimination and a host of psychological, physical health, and work-related correlates as a function of its form (subtle or overt). Analysis of 90 effect sizes suggested that subtle and overt forms of discrimination hold relationships of comparable magnitude with a host of adverse correlates. By demonstrating that these two forms of discrimination are not differentially related to relevant outcomes, our findings call into serious question the pervasive belief that subtle discrimination is less consequential for targets as compared to overt discrimination (Landy, 2008; McWhorter, 2008). Taken together, our results suggest that subtle discrimination is at least as important to consider and address as its overt counterpart. Implications for organizational scholars and practitioners are discussed.
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The emergence and reduction of bias in letters of recommendation
Whitney Botsford Morgan, Katherine Elder & Eden King
Journal of Applied Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Despite the widespread use of letters of recommendation (LORs) in selection systems, research has largely failed to consider the potential emergence of bias in interpretations of LORs. The present study fills this void by examining both race and gender bias in evaluations of LORs and assessing the efficacy of elaboration as a strategy for reducing such bias. Undergraduate students (n = 423) rated four LORs that varied with regard to applicant race and gender. Results suggest that bias does exist in evaluations of LORs, but that requiring raters to expand on their evaluations (i.e., elaborate) reduces this bias. Implications include elaboration as a strategy organizations can implement to reduce bias from emerging when relying on LORs as a selection tool.
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Tay McNamara & Marcie Pitt-Catsouphes
Social Science Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
Research finds gender differences in the size, quality, and consequences of social networks in the workplace. Building on these studies, we focus on one type of social network: task advice networks, which we define as the networks that act as conduits for information and knowledge directly related to work task completion. Using data on over 1300 employees, we test the relationships between task advice network size and two variables – organizational tenure and core self-evaluations, examining differences by gender. We find a larger positive association between core self-evaluations and task advice network size for men than for women. Additionally, we find that men, but not women, have larger networks when lower in tenure.
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Andrea Evers & Monika Sieverding
Psychology of Women Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Our study investigated gender differences in the long-term effects of education, work experience, agentic personality traits, and number of children on career success (i.e., salary) in medicine. German male and female students (N = 99) were surveyed at a German medical school (T1) and 15 years later (T2). Women interrupted their careers for longer than men (d = .92). Men had a substantially higher income at T2 (d = 1.07). Career interruptions, agentic personality traits, and high school grades were significant predictors of salary for both sexes. High final grades at medical school were significantly and positively related to salary but only for men. Low final grades at medical school and number of children predicted the length of career interruptions. For women, number of children was significantly and positively related to career interruptions. For men, number of children was significantly but negatively related to career interruptions. The findings corroborate research from other occupational fields, showing that a discontinuous work history has a negative influence on career success and that human capital variables are better rewarded for men than for women.
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Diversity among Norwegian Boards of Directors: Does a Quota for Women Improve Firm Performance?
Harald Dale-Olsen, Pål Schøne & Mette Verner
Feminist Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Exploiting the Norwegian boards of directors’ quota reform of 2003, this study evaluates the impact of increased diversity on firm performance. Applying difference-in-difference approaches to accounting data covering the period 2003–07, the paper compares the return on assets for non-finance public limited companies (PLCs) and ordinary limited companies (LTDs), whereof only the former were affected by the reform. The impact of the reform on firm performance is negligible. Neither changed return on total assets (ROA) nor changed operating revenues and cost can be attributed to the reform. However, following the reform PLCs have to a larger extent accumulated capital, financed by debt or by a combination of debt and own capital.
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What to wear? The influence of attire on the perceived professionalism of dentists and lawyers
Adrian Furnham, Pui Shuen Chan & Emma Wilson
Journal of Applied Social Psychology, September 2013, Pages 1838–1850
Abstract:
Using a sample of 201 participants and a between-subjects design, the perceived professionalism —suitability, capability, ease to talk to and friendliness — of male and female dentists and lawyers in various attires was examined. Results showed an absolute preference for male dentists and lawyers in professional and formal attire, respectively. Male dentists and lawyers in professional and formal attire were further rated as more suitable, capable, easier to talk to, and friendlier than female professionals, and than those dressed in smart or casual attire. Results are discussed in terms of positive dental outcomes and legal representation. Limitations are considered.