Promoting identity
Progress in Women’s Representation in Top Leadership Weakens People’s Disturbance with Gender Inequality in Other Domains
Oriane Georgeac & Aneeta Rattan
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, forthcoming
Abstract:
Conventional wisdom suggests that progress for women in the domain of top leadership representation will naturally spread to other domains of gender inequality, whether in organizations or beyond. Extending social–cognitive theories of exemplar-based information processing to the study of social progress perceptions for stigmatized groups, we theorized that perceiving substantial female representation in top leadership may instead reduce people’s concern with ongoing gender inequality in other domains. Study 1 (N = 331) finds that perceiving greater female representation in top corporate echelons decreases people’s disturbance with the gender pay gap, but not with wealth inequality generally. Study 2a (N = 350) and its replication Study 2b (N = 1,098) present correlational evidence of the proposed psychological mechanism: an overgeneralization of women’s access to equal opportunities. Study 3 (N = 454) provides experimental evidence for this psychological process, tests attributions of the gender pay gap to women’s personal career choices as an alternative mechanism, and introduces a control condition to determine the directionality of the effect. Study 4 (N = 326) replicates and extends the basic effect across various domains of gender inequality within and outside of the workplace. Taken together, these studies highlight the importance of acknowledging the fragmented nature of social progress across domains of inequality, and highlight the psychological underpinnings of a previously overlooked potential barrier for progress toward gender equality.
Implicit Stereotypes: Evidence from Teachers’ Gender Bias
Michela Carlana
Quarterly Journal of Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
I study whether exposure to teacher stereotypes, as measured by the Gender-Science Implicit Association Test, affects student achievement. I provide evidence that the gender gap in math performance, defined as the score of boys minus the score of girls in standardized tests, substantially increases when students are assigned to math teachers with stronger gender stereotypes. Teacher stereotypes induce girls to underperform in math and self-select into less demanding high schools, following the track recommendation of their teachers. These effects are at least partially driven by a lower self-confidence on own math ability of girls exposed to gender-biased teachers. Stereotypes impair the test performance of girls, who end up failing to achieve their full potential. I do not detect statistically significant effects on student outcomes of literature teacher stereotypes.
Scaling Down Inequality: Rating Scales, Gender Bias, and the Architecture of Evaluation
Lauren Rivera & András Tilcsik
American Sociological Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Quantitative performance ratings are ubiquitous in modern organizations — from businesses to universities — yet there is substantial evidence of bias against women in such ratings. This study examines how gender inequalities in evaluations depend on the design of the tools used to judge merit. Exploiting a quasi-natural experiment at a large North American university, we found that the number of scale points used in faculty teaching evaluations — whether instructors were rated on a scale of 6 versus a scale of 10 — significantly affected the size of the gender gap in evaluations in the most male-dominated fields. A survey experiment, which presented all participants with an identical lecture transcript but randomly varied instructor gender and the number of scale points, replicated this finding and suggested that the number of scale points affects the extent to which gender stereotypes of brilliance are expressed in quantitative ratings. These results highlight how seemingly minor technical aspects of performance ratings can have a major effect on the evaluation of men and women. Our findings thus contribute to a growing body of work on organizational practices that reduce workplace inequalities and the sociological literature on how rating systems — rather than being neutral instruments — shape the distribution of rewards in organizations.
Men’s Overpersistence and the Gender Gap in Science and Mathematics
Andrew Penner & Robb Willer
Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World, March 2019
Abstract:
Large and long-standing gaps exist in the gender composition of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Abundant research has sought to explain these gaps, typically focusing on women, though these gaps result from the decisions of men as well as women. Here we study gender differences in STEM persistence with a focus on men’s choices, finding that men persist in these domains even where opting out could lead to greater material payoffs. Study 1 employed a novel experimental paradigm for measuring “overpersistence,” finding that undergraduate men chose mathematics questions over verbal questions at higher rates than undergraduate women on a test in which mathematics questions were substantially more difficult than verbal questions and participants were paid for correct answers. Study 2 analyzed data from a nationally representative longitudinal survey, finding that men are more likely than women to retake college STEM courses after failing them and that men’s STEM retaking after failure is as likely to lead to lower later life earnings as to higher earnings. Finally, in Study 3, we used a survey-embedded experiment to examine the intervening factors driving men’s overpersistence in a diverse sample of adults. Integrating prior theoretical work, we find evidence for a model in which cultural stereotypes of male superiority in mathematics lead men both to be more confident in and identify more with the mathematics domain, factors that in turn lead men to pursue math to a greater extent than women.
Measuring the impact of interaction between children of a matrilineal and a patriarchal culture on gender differences in risk aversion
Elaine Liu & Sharon Xuejing Zuo
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
Many studies find that women are more risk averse than men. Why does such a gender gap exist, and how malleable is this gender gap in risk aversion? The paper takes advantage of a rare setting in which children of the matrilineal Mosuo and the traditionally patriarchal Han attend the same schools in Yunnan, China to shed light on these questions. In particular, we exploit the fact that children would experience a shock in gender norms when they start to intermingle with children from other ethnic groups with the opposite gender norms at school. Using survey and field experiments, we elicit risk attitudes from Mosuo and Han elementary and middle school students. We find that, at the time when they first enter school, Mosuo and Han children exhibit opposite gender norms — Mosuo girls take more risks than Mosuo boys, while Han girls are more risk averse than Han boys, reflecting cultural differences. However, after Mosuo students spend more time with Han students, Mosuo girls become more and more risk averse. By age 11, Mosuo girls are also more risk averse than Mosuo boys. We also observe a shrinking gap in risk aversion for Han over time. Using random roommate assignment for boarding middle school students, we find Mosuo boys who have fewer Mosuo roommates behave more similarly to Han boys. This shows that risk preferences are shaped by culture and malleable in response to new environments.
Gender-role Incongruity and Audience-based Gender Bias: An Examination of Networking among Entrepreneurs
Mabel Abraham
Administrative Science Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
While most research explaining the persistence of gender inequality has focused on how decision makers’ own biases perpetuate inequities, a growing body of work points to mechanisms of bias that may arise when a decision maker is concerned with satisfying a third party or audience. Using data from 2007 to 2013 on 2,310 members of a popular networking organization for entrepreneurs, I examine the extent to which the presence of third parties leads to gender inequality in resource exchange, or connections to potential clients. I show that decision makers are most apt to favor male network contacts in exchanges involving a third party when considering whether to connect a contact in a male-typed occupation. Decision makers do not display this gender bias in exchanges that do not involve a third party or when sharing connections to potential clients with contacts in gender-neutral or female-typed occupations. This setting offers a unique opportunity to compare gender inequality in exchanges involving a third party with cases that do not involve a third party, providing direct evidence of the effects of audiences or third parties for gender inequality.
Students of color show health advantages when they attend schools that emphasize the value of diversity
Cynthia Levine et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
As the United States becomes more diverse, the ways in which mainstream institutions recognize and address race and ethnicity will be increasingly important. Here, we show that one novel and salient characteristic of an institutional environment, that is, whether a school emphasizes the value of racial and ethnic diversity, predicts better cardiometabolic health among adolescents of color. Using a diverse sample of adolescents who attend more than 100 different schools in predominantly urban locations, we find that when schools emphasize the value of diversity (operationalized as mentioning diversity in their mission statements), students of color, but not white students, have lower values on a composite of five biomarkers of inflammation, have less insulin resistance and compensatory β-cell activity, and have fewer metabolic syndrome signs and score lower on a continuous metabolic syndrome composite. These results suggest that institutions that emphasize diversity may play an unacknowledged role in protecting the health of people of color and, thus, may be a site for future interventions to reduce health disparities.
Pathways to Racial Equity in Higher Education: Modeling the Antecedents of State Affirmative Action Bans
Dominique Baker
American Educational Research Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
Eight states currently have bans on affirmative action, yet little research has focused on the characteristics of states that predict ban adoption. To begin filling this gap in the literature, I conduct discrete-time survival analysis on an aggregated data set of 47 states from 1995 to 2012 to investigate the extent to which various characteristics of a state predict its likelihood of adopting a statewide affirmative action ban. Results show that scarcity of access to state public flagship institutions and policy diffusion are associated with ban adoption. Aligning with the racial threat literature, the findings suggest that these bans are associated with concerns about the scarcity of access to selective higher education institutions (operationalized as state public flagships) for White students.
Will Girls Be Girls? Risk Taking and Competition in an All-Girls' School
Susan Laury, Daniel Lee & Kurt Schnier
Economic Inquiry, forthcoming
Abstract:
We conduct an experiment that examines the relationship between girls only schooling and risk taking and competitive behavior. In it, we compare decisions made by students in an all‐girls' school to those made by students in a closely matched coeducational school. We further investigate the developmental nature of this behavior by comparing choices made by younger students (Grades 7 and 8) with those of older students (Grades 11 and 12). We focus on the differences between those who select into the all‐girls' school, and find that although girls educated in a single sex environment are the most risk averse, they are also among the most competitive. These results lend texture to the hypothesis that “nurture matters” in the gender differences debate.
Descriptive Norms and Gender Diversity: Reactance from Men
Maliheh Paryavi, Iris Bohnet & Alexandra van Geen
Harvard Working Paper, February 2019
Abstract:
Descriptive norms provide social information on others’ typical behaviors and have been shown to lead to prescriptive outcomes by “nudging” individuals towards norm compliance in numerous settings. This paper examines whether descriptive norms lead to prescriptive outcomes in the gender domain. We examine whether such social information can influence the gender distribution of candidates selected by employers in a hiring context. We conduct a series of laboratory experiments where ‘employers’ decide how many male and female ‘employees’ they want to hire for male- and female-typed tasks and examine whether employers are more likely to hire more of one gender when informed that others have done so as well. In this set-up descriptive norms do not have prescriptive effects. In fact, descriptive norms do not affect female employers’ hiring decisions at all and lead to norm reactance and backlash from male employers when informed that others have hired more women.
Reducing discrimination: A bias versus noise perspective
Jordan Axt & Calvin Lai
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Discrimination can occur when people fail to focus on outcome-relevant information and incorporate irrelevant demographic information into decision-making. The magnitude of discrimination then depends on (a) how many errors are made in judgment and (b) the degree to which errors disproportionately favor one group over another. As a result, discrimination can be reduced through two routes: reducing noise — lessening the total number of errors but not changing the proportion of remaining errors that favor one group — or reducing bias — lessening the proportion of errors that favor one group but not changing the total number of errors made. Eight studies (N = 7,921) investigate how noise and bias rely on distinct psychological mechanisms and are influenced by different interventions. Interventions that removed demographic information not only eliminated bias, but also reduced noise (Studies 1a and 1b). Interventions that either decreased (Studies 2a–2c) or increased (Study 3) the time available to evaluators impacted noise but not bias, as did interventions altering motivation to process outcome-relevant information (Study 4). Conversely, an intervention asking participants to avoid favoring a certain group impacted bias but not noise (Study 5). Finally, a novel intervention that both asked participants to avoid favoring a certain group and required them to take more time when making judgments impacted bias and noise simultaneously (Study 5). Efforts to reduce discrimination will be well-served by understanding how interventions impact bias, noise, or both.
Gender and box office performance
Julianne Treme, Lee Craig & Andrew Copland
Applied Economics Letters, May 2019, Pages 781-785
Abstract:
We analyse the box office–movie star relationship since the 1990s. We find that, on average, the contribution of at least one star was large, equalling roughly 10% of a film’s revenues. Also, consistent with the substantial difference in the average compensation between male and female stars, having a male star in a film generated a premium in the neighbourhood of 12%, while a female star had no statistical impact on a movie’s performance.
Why Female Decision‐Makers Shy away from Promoting Competition
Olga Shurchkov & Alexandra van Geen
Kyklos, forthcoming
Abstract:
Incentivizing subordinates is a crucial task of anyone in a decision‐making role. However, little is known about the mechanisms behind selection of different types of incentives. Our laboratory experiment characterizes the ways in which male and female decision‐makers assign incentives, and how these choices are perceived by those affected by them. We find that women are significantly less likely to select “competitive” incentives based on comparative performance of workers, particularly in the treatment where their workers can observe their gender. The results are not due to priming but are rather consistent with the explanation that women conform to gender stereotypes in anticipation of subsequent evaluation by workers. Indeed, female decision‐makers are significantly underrated relative to comparable males, even after controlling for incentive choice and an extensive set of individual characteristics. The gender difference in competency ratings can be attributed to male workers rating female decision‐makers disproportionately lower relative to their male counterparts. The gender gap in ratings appears to arise because of gender per se and not due to a differential impact of incentives on decision‐makers' gender.
A Female Leadership Trust Advantage in Times of Crisis: Under What Conditions?
Corinne Post, Ioana Latu & Liuba Belkin
Psychology of Women Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examined differences in trust for men and women leaders who adopt relational behaviors during an organizational crisis. We addressed two important shortcomings of previous research. First, we independently manipulated leader gender and leader relational behaviors (interpersonal emotion management) to identify their separate and interacting influences on trust outcomes, which may lead to a leadership advantage for women. Second, we examined how uncertainty about crisis outcomes affects the strength of this advantage. We operationalized trust as both evaluative and behavioral (investment in a company led by the leader). We found support from two experiments (N = 412 and N = 400) for the idea of a female leadership trust advantage in times of crisis. And we showed that the advantage is uniquely attributable to female leaders’ use of relational behaviors and is manifested only when crisis consequences are known. We observed these effects for both evaluative trust (Studies 1 and 2) and behavioral trust (Study 2). We invite more research on the conditions that contribute to the female leadership advantage, the gendered nature of leadership behaviors during organizational crises, and the relational leadership qualities that help restore trust in organizations during uncertain times.
Gender, Sexual Orientation, and Behavioral Norms in the Labor Market
Marina Gorsuch
ILR Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
The author examines bias and behavioral norms based on sex and sexual orientation in the labor market. Using an online laboratory setting, participants were asked to evaluate résumés that were manipulated on sex, perceived LGBT status, and use of traditionally masculine or feminine adjectives. Findings show that male participants penalized résumés that included an LGBT activity, and the penalty was slightly stronger for male résumés. Additionally, men evaluated non-LGBT women who used feminine adjectives more positively than when they used masculine adjectives. Résumés of women with the LGBT activity and men were both immune to this effect. This outcome suggests that perceived-heterosexual women are discouraged from masculine behavior that would be rewarded in the labor market, whereas perceived-LGBT women are not. Men who had the strongest reaction to perceived-heterosexual women using masculine adjectives also had the strongest negative reaction to résumés with an LGBT activity. This pattern suggests that male decision makers are biased in ways that harm LGBT men, LGBT women, and heterosexual women in the labor market.
On a Firm’s Optimal Response to Pressure for Gender Pay Equity
David Anderson et al.
Organization Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
We present a theory of how a rational, profit-maximizing firm would respond to pressure for gender pay equity by strategically distributing raises to reduce the pay gap between its female and male employees at minimum cost. Using formal analysis and pay data from a real employer, we show that (1) employees in low-paying jobs and whose pay-related observables are similar to those of men at the firm are most likely to get raises; (2) counterintuitively, some men may get raises, and giving raises to certain women would increase the pay gap; and (3) a firm can reduce the gender pay gap as measured by a much larger percentage than the overall increase in pay to women at the firm. We also identify the conditions under which a firm could “explain away” a gender pay gap using other pay-related observables, such as job category, as well as the conditions under which this strategy would backfire. Our paper helps explain some empirical puzzles, such as the tendency for some men to get raises after gender equity pay reviews, and yields a rich set of implications for empirical research and practice.
Drawing the diversity line: Numerical thresholds of diversity vary by group status
Felix Danbold & Miguel Unzueta
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
This research estimates the points of relative group representation at which members of dominant and nondominant groups declare an organization to be diverse. Across 7 studies, members of dominant groups, relative to members of nondominant groups, reported that diversity was achieved at lower representations of the nondominant group within an organization. This was explained by the dominant group members’ relative opposition to using the equal representation of groups as a standard against which to judge diversity. This mediation was also replicated with the antiegalitarian dimension of social dominance orientation, suggesting that the setting of diversity thresholds serves a hierarchy relevant function. Group differences in thresholds of diversity were strongest when people were evaluating whether an organization was sufficiently (vs. descriptively) diverse, when group status was perceived to be threatened, and when the nondominant group was also a numerical minority in the relevant context.
Catching up to girls: Understanding the gender imbalance in educational attainment within race
Esteban Aucejo & Jonathan James
Journal of Applied Econometrics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We estimate a sequential model of schooling to assess the major contributing factors to the large gender imbalance in educational attainment within racial groups. First, we find that differences between males and females in measures of early behavior account for the majority of the gender gap for each racial group. Second, we show that black males have the largest response to improvements in family background characteristics, such that equalizing the distribution of family background characteristics for black and white youths reduces the gender gap in college enrollment among black youth by 50%.
Exploring bias in mechanical engineering students' perceptions of classmates
Shima Salehi, N.G. Holmes & Carl Wieman
PLoS ONE, March 2019
Abstract:
Gender disparity in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields is an on-going challenge. Gender bias is one of the possible mechanisms leading to such disparities and has been extensively studied. Previous work showed that there was a gender bias in how students perceived the competence of their peers in undergraduate biology courses. We examined whether there was a similar gender bias in a mechanical engineering course. We conducted the study in two offerings of the course, which used different instructional practices. We found no gender bias in peer perceptions of competence in either of the offerings. However, we did see that the offerings’ different instructional practices affected aspects of classroom climate, including: the number of peers who were perceived to be particularly knowledgeable, the richness of the associated network of connections between students, students’ familiarity with each other, and their perceptions about the course environment. These results suggest that negative bias against female students in peer perception is not universal, either across institutions or across STEM fields, and that instructional methods may have an impact on classroom climate.