Passed up
Discrimination and the Effects of Drug Testing on Black Employment
Abigail Wozniak
NBER Working Paper, May 2014
Abstract:
Nearly half of U.S. employers test job applicants and workers for drugs. A common assumption is that the rise of drug testing must have had negative consequences for black employment. However, the rise of employer drug testing may have benefited African-Americans by enabling non-using blacks to prove their status to employers. I use variation in the timing and nature of drug testing regulation to identify the impacts of testing on black hiring. Black employment in the testing sector is suppressed in the absence of testing, a finding which is consistent with ex ante discrimination on the basis of drug use perceptions. Adoption of pro-testing legislation increases black employment in the testing sector by 7-30% and relative wages by 1.4-13.0%, with the largest shifts among low skilled black men. Results further suggest that employers substitute white women for blacks in the absence of testing.
----------------------
The Effect of Banning Affirmative Action on College Admissions Policies and Student Quality
Kate Antonovics & Ben Backes
Journal of Human Resources, Spring 2014, Pages 295-322
Abstract:
Using administrative data from the University of California (UC), we present evidence that UC campuses changed the weight given to SAT scores, high school GPA, and family background in response to California’s ban on race-based affirmative action, and that these changes were able to substantially (though far from completely) offset the fall in minority admissions rates. For both minorities and nonminorities, these changes to the estimated admissions rule hurt students with relatively strong academic credentials and whose parents were relatively affluent and educated. Despite these compositional shifts, however, average student quality (as measured by expected first-year college GPA) remained stable.
----------------------
Gender Differences in Intellectual Performance Persist at the Limits of Individual Capabilities
Robert Howard
Journal of Biosocial Science, May 2014, Pages 386-404
Abstract:
Males predominate at the top in chess, and chess is a useful domain to investigate possible causes of gender differences in high achievement. Opportunity, interest and extent of practice can be controlled for. Organized chess has objective performance measures, extensive longitudinal population-level data and little gatekeeper influence. Previous studies of gender differences in chess performance have not controlled adequately for females on average playing fewer rated games and dropping out at higher rates. The present study did so by examining performance of international chess players at asymptote and over equal numbers of rated games. Males still were very disproportionately represented at the top. Top female players showed signs of having less natural talent for chess than top males, such as taking more rated games to gain the grandmaster title. The hypothesis that males predominate because many more males play chess was tested by comparing gender performance differences in nations with varying percentages of female players. In well-practised participants, gender performance differences stayed constant even when the average national percentage of female international players increased from 4.2% to 32.3%. In Georgia, where women are encouraged strongly to play chess and females constitute nearly 32% of international players, gender performance differences are still sizeable. Males on average may have some innate advantages in developing and exercising chess skill.
----------------------
Paul Beaudry & Ethan Lewis
American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2014, Pages 178-194
Abstract:
Male-female wage gaps declined significantly over the 1980s and 1990s, while returns to education increased. In this paper, we use cross-city data to explore whether, like the return to education, the change in the gender wage gap may reflect changes in skill prices induced by the diffusion of information technology. We show that male-female and education-wage differentials moved in opposite directions in response to the adoption of PCs. Our most credible estimates simply that changes in skill prices driven by PC adoption can explain most of the decline in the US male-female wage gap since 1980.
----------------------
When Work Disappears: Racial Prejudice and Recession Labour Market Penalties
David Johnston & Grace Lordan
London School of Economics Working Paper, February 2014
Abstract:
This paper assesses whether racial prejudice and labour market discrimination is counter-cyclical. This may occur if prejudice and discrimination are partly driven by competition over scarce resources, which intensifies during periods of economic downturn. Using British Attitudes Data spanning three decades, we find that prejudice does increase with unemployment rates. We find greater counter-cyclical effects for highly-educated, middle-aged, full-time employed men. For this group, a 1%-point increase in unemployment raises self-reported racial prejudice by 4.1%-points. This result suggests that non-White workers are more likely to encounter racially prejudiced employers and managers in times of higher unemployment. Consistent with the estimated attitude changes, we find using the British Labour Force Survey that racial employment and wage gaps increase with unemployment. The effects for both employment and wages are largest for high-skill Black workers. For example, a 1%-point increase in unemployment increases Black-White employment and wage gaps for the highly educated by 1.3%-points and 2.5%. Together, the attitude and labour market results imply that non-Whites disproportionately suffer during recessions. It follows that recessions exacerbate existing racial inequalities.
----------------------
Overwork and the Slow Convergence in the Gender Gap in Wages
Youngjoo Cha & Kim Weeden
American Sociological Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Despite rapid changes in women’s educational attainment and continuous labor force experience, convergence in the gender gap in wages slowed in the 1990s and stalled in the 2000s. Using CPS data from 1979 to 2009, we show that convergence in the gender gap in hourly pay over these three decades was attenuated by the increasing prevalence of “overwork” (defined as working 50 or more hours per week) and the rising hourly wage returns to overwork. Because a greater proportion of men engage in overwork, these changes raised men’s wages relative to women’s and exacerbated the gender wage gap by an estimated 10 percent of the total wage gap. This overwork effect was sufficiently large to offset the wage-equalizing effects of the narrowing gender gap in educational attainment and other forms of human capital. The overwork effect on trends in the gender gap in wages was most pronounced in professional and managerial occupations, where long work hours are especially common and the norm of overwork is deeply embedded in organizational practices and occupational cultures. These results illustrate how new ways of organizing work can perpetuate old forms of gender inequality.
----------------------
Gender Ratios at Top PhD Programs in Economics
Galina Hale & Tali Regev
Economics of Education Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Analyzing university faculty and graduate students data for ten of the top U.S. economics departments between 1987 and 2007, we find persistent differences in the gender compositions of both faculty and graduate students across departments. There is a positive correlation between the share of female faculty and the share of women in the PhD class graduating six years later. Using instrumental variable analysis, we find robust evidence that this relation is causal. These results contribute to our understanding of the persistent under-representation of women in economics, as well as for the persistent segregation of women in the labor force.
----------------------
Aaron Hill, Arun Upadhyay & Rafik Beekun
Strategic Management Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
We present competing hypotheses regarding whether gender and ethnic minority CEOs endure inequities resulting in lower compensation and higher likelihood of job exit or benefit from their valuable, rare, and inimitable minority status, resulting in higher compensation and lower likelihood of job exit. Using a longitudinal sample, we find support for the resource-based hypothesis regarding compensation that suggests CEOs benefit from their minority status to receive higher compensation than white male CEOs receive. However, we also find mixed support for our hypotheses relating CEO minority status to the likelihood of exit. We find that the effects of minority status on likelihood of exit are significantly different for female and ethnic minority CEOs such that the former relationship is negative while the latter is positive.
----------------------
Beneath the Surface: The Decline in Gender Injury Gap
Labour Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Gender differences in the labor market are typically measured by the wage gap. In this paper, we investigate how extending the analysis to an additional job amenity, namely workplace safety, may shed new light on the evolution of gender differences. Our results show that focusing on one unique measure of the gender gap may provide a biased view of the actual progress of women in the labor market. In our data, a significant reduction in the wage gap has been accompanied by a relative increase in injury risk for some groups of workers, e.g. low skill female workers. The decreased gender wage gap for these workers does not necessarily imply an overall improvement in their labor market outcomes.
----------------------
The motherhood wage gap in the UK over the life cycle
Tarja Viitanen
Review of Economics of the Household, June 2014, Pages 259-276
Abstract:
This paper examines the impact of children on female wages in the UK using the National Child Development Study. The use of a longitudinal cohort study enables to estimate of the effect of children on wages for the same sample of women throughout their life-cycle until completed fertility. This study confirms some of the negative effects of motherhood on wages as found in the previous literature. The effect of a first child is on average 8.1 % at age 23, 22 % at age 33, 4.8 % at age 42 and 0 % at age 51. The effect of a second child is 16 % on average at age 33 only. Longitudinal nature of the data also allows the estimation of long run effects and the results indicate that the negative wage gap of motherhood persists even 30 years after first entering motherhood.
----------------------
Eran Shor et al.
Social Science Quarterly, forthcoming
Objectives: One possible source for the gap in media coverage between female and male subjects is the political affiliation of the media source. The objective of this present study was to test whether there is a difference between more liberal and more conservative newspapers in coverage rates of female subjects.
Methods: We used computational methods to analyze a unique large-scale data set (complied by the Lydia Text Analysis System) and compared the 2010 female coverage rates in 168 newspapers.
Results: Contrary to our expectations, we found that conservative media tend to cover female subjects no less (and even slightly more) than liberal media. However, the difference was no longer significant once we controlled for newspaper distribution.
Conclusion: The common view that liberal newspapers are more likely to cover female subjects was not supported by this study. Both conservative and liberal newspapers are much more likely to cover males.
----------------------
The Self-Expressive Edge of Occupational Sex Segregation
Erin Cech
American Journal of Sociology, November 2013, Pages 747-789
Abstract:
Recent gender scholarship speculates that occupational sex segregation is reproduced in large part through the gendered, self-expressive career decisions of men and women. This article examines the effects of college students’ expression of their self-conceptions on their likelihood of entering occupations with a high or low proportion of women and theorizes the consequences of this mechanism for gender inequality. The author uses unique longitudinal data on students from four U.S. colleges to examine how the gender composition of students’ field at career launch is influenced by their earlier self-conceptions. Students with emotional, unsystematic, or people-oriented self-conceptions enter fields that are more “female,” even net of their cultural gender beliefs. Results suggest that cultural ideals of self-expression reinforce occupational sex segregation by converting gender-stereotypical self-conceptions into self-expressive career choices. The discussion section broadens this theoretical framework for understanding the role of self-expression in occupational sex segregation and notes the difficulty of addressing this mechanism through social or policy actions.
----------------------
Can Descriptive Representation Change Beliefs about a Stigmatized Group? Evidence from Rural India
Simon Chauchard
American Political Science Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Can descriptive representation for a stigmatized group change the beliefs and intentions of members of dominant groups? To address this question, I focus on quotas (reservations) that allow members of the scheduled castes to access key executive positions in India's village institutions. To measure the psychological effect of reservations, I combine a natural experiment with an innovative MP3-player-based self-administered survey that measures various beliefs and behavioral intentions. Results provide credible causal evidence that reservations affect the psychology of members of dominant castes. Even though villagers living in reserved villages continue to think poorly of members of the scheduled castes (stereotypes do not improve), reservation affects two other types of beliefs: perceived social norms of interactions and perceived legal norms of interactions. These changes in beliefs in turn appear to have far-reaching consequences for intercaste relations, as villagers’ discriminatory intentions also decrease under reservation.
----------------------
David Zhu, Wei Shen & Amy Hillman
Administrative Science Quarterly, June 2014, Pages 240-270
Abstract:
This study advances a recategorization perspective to explain how an increasing number of directors have successfully obtained major board appointments and played important roles on boards despite their demographic differences from incumbent directors. We theorize and show that existing directors tend to select a demographically different new director who can be recategorized as an in-group member based on his or her similarities to them on other shared demographic characteristics. We further explain how a new director’s prior social ties to existing directors strengthen this recategorization process and posit that recategorization increases demographically different directors’ tenures and likelihood of becoming board committee members and chairs. Results from analyses of Fortune 500 boards from 1994 to 2006 provide strong support for our theory. This study suggests that increased board diversity on some demographic characteristics is associated with reduced diversity on others. It also suggests that some demographic characteristics, such as gender and ethnicity, would be more salient during the recategorization process than other characteristics. As a result, female and ethnic minority directors would need to be more similar to incumbents along shared dimensions than other demographically different directors (such as a young director) for them to be recategorized into the in-group.
----------------------
Lorraine Evans & Kim Davies
Women & Criminal Justice, Spring 2014, Pages 106-125
Abstract:
This article utilizes a longitudinal approach to assess the visibility of women as police officers in primetime crime shows from 1950 to 2008 and compares these numbers for television to actual data on women who work as police officers in the United States. We find that as expected, annual labor force data and crime show data both indicate increases in the number of minorities and women working in the criminal justice system over time. Given the robust literature on the general underrepresentation of women on television, however, we did not expect to uncover that both White and minority women are overrepresented as police officers on television every year compared to the occupational reality. Implications of the findings are discussed.
----------------------
Dustin Hahn & Glenn Cummins
International Journal of Sport Communications, March 2014, Pages 34–47
Abstract:
Studies examining factors that influence credibility perceptions have demonstrated the importance of a source’s gender and attractiveness. However, scholars have only begun to extend these findings to credibility in the context of mediated sports. This experiment tested the relationship that gender and attractiveness have with credibility and whether this varies as a function of the gender of the athlete in a given story. Results indicate that reporters’ gender and attractiveness and athlete gender affect perceptions of credibility such that when reporters are of the opposite gender of an athlete, they are perceived as most credible when they are less attractive. Results also reveal a gender bias such that reporters are perceived as most credible when covering male athletes, regardless of reporter gender. Explanations are offered for these findings, in addition to a discussion of the implications for news practitioners.
----------------------
Martin Latsch & Bettina Hannover
Social Psychology, Spring 2014, Pages 112-126
Abstract:
We investigated effects of the media’s portrayal of boys as “scholastic failures” on secondary school students. The negative portrayal induced stereotype threat (boys underperformed in reading), stereotype reactance (boys displayed stronger learning goals towards mathematics but not reading), and stereotype lift (girls performed better in reading but not in mathematics). Apparently, boys were motivated to disconfirm their group’s negative depiction, however, while they could successfully apply compensatory strategies when describing their learning goals, this motivation did not enable them to perform better. Overall the media portrayal thus contributes to the maintenance of gender stereotypes, by impairing boys’ and strengthening girls’ performance in female connoted domains and by prompting boys to align their learning goals to the gender connotation of the domain.
----------------------
Who Takes the Parliamentary Floor? The Role of Gender in Speech-making in the Swedish Riksdag
Hanna Bäck, Marc Debus & Jochen Müller
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Legislative speeches are an important instrument for parties and members of parliament (MPs) to signal their positions and priorities. This raises the question of who speaks when. We evaluate whether a MP’s presence on the floor depends on his or her gender. We hypothesize that female MPs give in general less speeches in parliament and that this pattern results from debates dealing with “harder” policy issues. Our expectations are supported when analyzing a new data set containing information on the number and content of speeches given in the Swedish Riksdag between 2002 and 2010.
----------------------
Jun Gu et al.
Journal of Organizational Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Studies show that Whites tend to show the lowest level of support for affirmative action (AA) policies. Opponents of AA often argue that this is because it violates principles of meritocracy. However, self-interest (based on social identification with those adversely affected) could also explain their opposition. In three studies, we varied whether an Asian or White male is adversely affected by AA to test another explanation; namely, that Whites' fairness judgments are based on both the adversely affected person's race and the fairness evaluator's ideological beliefs. Although we found some support for the meritocratic explanation, this was not sufficient to explain why Whites view AA as (un)fair. Instead, we found strong support for our prediction that Whites who are opposed to equality perceive more unfairness when a White (vs. Asian) was harmed by AA, whereas Whites who endorse egalitarian ideologies perceive the opposite. This finding suggests that neither self-interest nor meritocratic explanations can fully account for Whites' opposition to AA.
----------------------
Parvenus and Conflict in Elite Cohorts
Michael Lindsay et al.
Social Science Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Previous studies find that greater workplace diversity leads to higher degrees of conflict in low and medium-status workgroups. This paper examines whether similar dynamics operate in elite cohorts. We use data from a survey of White House Fellows (N=475) to look at how the presence of parvenus — individuals from underrepresented groups in elite environments — change the rate at which fellows reported conflict with each other and with the director of the program. We find that there is no unified “parvenu experience.” Analysis of the interaction between race and cohort diversity reveals inflection points consistent with Kanter’s (1977) theory of tokenism, but the effects of increasing diversity diverge: for Hispanics, conflict with the director increases with diversity, while for Asians, conflict falls with diversity. While other groups’ level of conflict with their peers stays roughly constant, Asians’ reported level of conflict with their peers increases with diversity.
----------------------
Marisa Perera & Edward Chang
Asian American Journal of Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
To understand whether interpersonal sources other than parents are involved in socially prescribed perfectionism, a set of interpersonal sources that may represent the unrealistically high expectations of socially prescribed perfectionism (viz., parents, teachers, friends, peers, siblings, romantic partner, and culture) was tested as a predictor of socially prescribed perfectionism in a sample of Asian American and European American university students. Results indicated there are several sources involved in the expectations associated with socially prescribed perfectionism in both Asian American and European American university students. Noteworthy, beyond variance accounted for expectations prescribed by parents, expectations prescribed by peers were found to account for a large amount of variance in socially prescribed perfectionism in Asian Americans and expectations prescribed by teachers were found to account for a large amount of variance in European Americans. Implications for future research involving ethnic variations in the interpersonal sources that represent the unrealistically high expectations of socially prescribed perfectionism are discussed.
----------------------
Gender-specific differences – first results from a survey on dental surgery
Margrit-Ann Geibel & Miriam Mayer
Journal of Gender Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study focuses on dental surgery from the perspective of practicing dentists through a nationwide survey among practicing dentists in Germany. Subjects were surveyed with respect to patient care and their training in dental surgery. With respect to surgical activity, this survey confirms male dominance in the field and that female dentists may be inclined grade surgical interventions as ‘complicated and risky’. Male dentists appear to be willing to take the same risks with greater self-confidence, whereas female dentists appear to overrate their personal uncertainty by underestimating their real technical capabilities. Though dental treatment in general is increasingly dominated by women, surgery is still dominated by male dentists. This can be viewed through observed gender differences with respect to risk perception and we advocate additional professional training of risk competence as mandatory for the future.
----------------------
Guys and Gals Going for Gold: The Role of Women’s Empowerment in Olympic Success
Aaron Lowen, Robert Deaner & Erika Schmitt
Journal of Sports Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We test the hypothesis that women’s empowerment correlates with women’s international athletic success. Greater gender equality (measured using the Gender Inequality Index) is associated with higher participation and medal counts in the Summer Olympic Games from 1996 through 2012. This relationship persists even after controlling for previously identified nation-level predictors of Olympic success and across alternative measures of success (such as shares of the total, percentage within each country, and medals per athlete). These results provide direct evidence for the long-standing claim that girls’ and women’s international athletic achievement is linked to women’s empowerment.
----------------------
Caregivers, firm policies and gender discrimination claims
Scott Adams, John Heywood & Laurie Miller
Review of Economics of the Household, June 2014, Pages 359-377
Abstract:
This paper explores a relatively new class of lawsuits claiming “caregiver discrimination.” Using the National Study of the Changing Workforce, it shows that claims of gender discrimination in general and caregiver discrimination in particular are more likely among women facing greater work-family conflict. Critically, firm policies that allow work from home or the use of personal time off to care for family needs are associated with reduced claims of caregiver discrimination holding all else constant. Importantly, these reduced claims are uniquely among women with greater family responsibilities.
----------------------
Emma Holliday et al.
Academic Medicine, May 2014, Pages 767-773.
Purpose: This study aimed to analyze gender differences in rank, career duration, publication productivity, and research funding among radiation oncologists at U.S. academic institutions.
Method: For 82 domestic academic radiation oncology departments, the authors identified current faculty and recorded their academic rank, degree, and gender. The authors recorded bibliographic metrics for physician faculty from a commercially available database (Scopus, Elsevier BV), including numbers of publications from 1996 to 2012 and h-indices. The authors then concatenated these data with National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding per Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools. The authors performed descriptive and correlative analyses, stratifying by gender and rank.
Results: Of 1,031 faculty, 293 (28%) women and 738 (72%) men, men had a higher median m-index, 0.58 (range 0-3.23) versus 0.47 (0-2.5) (P < .05); h-index, 8 (0-59) versus 5 (0-39) (P < .05); and publication number, 26 (0-591) versus 13 (0-306) (P < .05). Men were more likely to be senior faculty and receive NIH funding. After stratifying for rank, these differences were largely nonsignificant. On multivariate analysis, there were correlations between gender, career duration and academic position, and h-index (P < .01).
Conclusions: Determinants of a successful career in academic medicine are multifactorial. Data from radiation oncologists show a systematic gender association, with fewer women achieving senior faculty rank. However, women achieving seniority have productivity metrics comparable to those of male counterparts. This suggests that early career development and mentorship of female faculty may narrow productivity disparities.