What women want
Choice, Discrimination, and the Motherhood Penalty
Tamar Kricheli-Katz
Law & Society Review, September 2012, Pages 557-587
Abstract:
Recent studies have documented substantial penalties associated with motherhood and suggest that discrimination plays an important role in producing them. In this article, I argue that the degree to which motherhood is conceptualized as a choice affects the penalties associated with making this choice. Two methods are employed to evaluate this argument. The first method is an analysis of state differences in the wage penalties for motherhood, in which hierarchical linear modeling is used with data from the 1988-2004 Current Population Survey. The second method is a hiring experiment in a highly controlled setting. The wage analysis shows that, net of the usual individual and state-level factors that affect wages, mothers are penalized more in states where motherhood is perceived to be a woman's choice. The hiring experiment distinguishes between productivity-based and discrimination-based explanations for the penalty and provides strong evidence for a causal relationship between perceptions of choice and discrimination against mothers.
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Steffen Andersen et al.
Review of Economics and Statistics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Recent literature presents evidence that men are more competitively inclined than women. Since top-level careers usually require competitiveness, competitiveness differences provide an explanation for gender gaps in wages and differences in occupational choice. A natural question is whether women are born less competitive, or whether they become so through the process of socialization. To pinpoint when in the socialization process the difference arises, we compare the competitiveness of children in matrilineal and patriarchal societies. We find that while there is no difference at any age in the matrilineal society, girls become less competitive around puberty in the patriarchal society.
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Labels and leaders: The influence of framing on leadership emergence
Geoffrey Ho, Margaret Shih & Daniel Walters
Leadership Quarterly, October 2012, Pages 943-952
Abstract:
In two studies, this paper examines the influence of task framing on leadership emergence in mixed-gender dyads. In Study 1, we found that males are more likely to emerge as leaders when a paper-folding task is framed as masculine (i.e., Building Project) relative to feminine (i.e., Art Project). Furthermore, females are more likely to emerge as leaders when a paper-folding task is framed as feminine relative to masculine. In Study 2, we conceptually replicate these results using a weaving task (framed as Knot-Tying Task vs. Hair-Braiding Task) and find that perceived competence is the mechanism through which task framing affects leadership emergence. Taken together, these results suggest that task framing can influence the emergence of leaders because of changes in perceptions of competence. These findings are discussed in the context of related theoretical findings and managerial implications are elaborated on.
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Gender, social norms, and survival in maritime disasters
Mikael Elinder & Oscar Erixson
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 14 August 2012, Pages 13220-13224
Abstract:
Since the sinking of the Titanic, there has been a widespread belief that the social norm of "women and children first" (WCF) gives women a survival advantage over men in maritime disasters, and that captains and crew members give priority to passengers. We analyze a database of 18 maritime disasters spanning three centuries, covering the fate of over 15,000 individuals of more than 30 nationalities. Our results provide a unique picture of maritime disasters. Women have a distinct survival disadvantage compared with men. Captains and crew survive at a significantly higher rate than passengers. We also find that: the captain has the power to enforce normative behavior; there seems to be no association between duration of a disaster and the impact of social norms; women fare no better when they constitute a small share of the ship's complement; the length of the voyage before the disaster appears to have no impact on women's relative survival rate; the sex gap in survival rates has declined since World War I; and women have a larger disadvantage in British shipwrecks. Taken together, our findings show that human behavior in life-and-death situations is best captured by the expression "every man for himself."
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Curtis Price
Managerial and Decision Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Experimental evidence has documented that competition may enhance the performance of male subjects in some tasks when competition is imposed exogenously by the experimenter. This note describes data for a task where a simple agency relationship is established in the laboratory between two groups of agents, managers, and workers. The manager chooses from either the piece rate or tournament payment scheme for the worker. The results show that male performance decreases when the tournament is chosen for them by the manager and also suggests that the gender of the manager may be an important facet of the agency relationship.
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Gender Inequality in Deliberative Participation
Christopher Karpowitz, Tali Mendelberg & Lee Shaker
American Political Science Review, August 2012, Pages 533-547
Abstract:
Can men and women have equal levels of voice and authority in deliberation or does deliberation exacerbate gender inequality? Does increasing women's descriptive representation in deliberation increase their voice and authority? We answer these questions and move beyond the debate by hypothesizing that the group's gender composition interacts with its decision rule to exacerbate or erase the inequalities. We test this hypothesis and various alternatives, using experimental data with many groups and links between individuals' attitudes and speech. We find a substantial gender gap in voice and authority, but as hypothesized, it disappears under unanimous rule and few women, or under majority rule and many women. Deliberative design can avoid inequality by fitting institutional procedure to the social context of the situation.
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Olga Shurchkov
Journal of the European Economic Association, forthcoming
Abstract:
Gender gaps in the workplace are widespread. One explanation for gender inequality stems from the effects of the interaction between competition and two pressure sources, namely, task stereotypes and time constraints. This study uses a laboratory experiment to find that the gender gap in performance under competition and preferences for competition can be partly explained by the differential responses of men and women to the above pressures. In particular, while women underperform the men in a high-pressure math-based tournament, women greatly increase their performance levels and their willingness to compete in a low-pressure verbal environment, such that they actually surpass the men. This effect appears largely due to the fact that extra time in a verbal competition improves the quality of women's work, reducing their mistake share. On the other hand, men use this extra time to increase only the quantity of work, which results in a greater relative number of mistakes. A labor market study suggests that the nature of the job and the stress level are correlated with the gender gap in the labor market in a manner consistent with the results of my experiment.
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The Labor Market Consequences of Gender Differences in Job Search
Stefan Eriksson & Jonas Lagerström
Journal of Labor Research, September 2012, Pages 303-327
Abstract:
This paper uses data from an Internet-based CV database to investigate if women are more restrictive than men in their choice of search area, and if this is of importance in the early stages of the hiring process. We show that women are less likely to search in the metropolitan areas or far away from where they currently live. Moreover, our results indicate that these differences are important: Female searchers get fewer firm contacts, and we show that this is to a large extent explained by their more restrictive search area. When we include controls for the searchers' search area, the negative gender effect disappears. However, the results differ somewhat across subgroups: For highly skilled women the search area is important, but there remains an unexplained negative gender effect. Our results suggest that gender differences in job search may be important to consider in studies of gender differences in labor market outcomes.
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Women and Work in the Philadelphia Almshouse, 1790-1840
Monique Bourque
Journal of the Early Republic, Fall 2012, Pages 383-413
Abstract:
This essay examines women's presence in the almshouse of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the early republic. Welfare institutions were dependent on poor women's labor in two vital ways: first, institutions required a cheap and flexible workforce in order to operate with reasonable efficiency, and women provided much of that labor, particularly in household functions within the institution. Second, making labor a fundamental part of the relief process allowed administrators to argue that public funds were being used responsibly to ameliorate poverty without promoting a permanently dependent population. While the Philadelphia almshouse maintained a manufactory from 1807 into the 1880s, an industrial factory model was not feasible for almshouse manufacture: the necessity of providing for inmates as a public institution, and the flexibility demanded in effective employment of able-bodied paupers, rendered the almshouse manufactory ineffectual as an urban manufacturing enterprise. Administrators probably never expected to extract enough labor from the inmates for the institution either to turn a profit or to become self-sufficient, but antebellum administrators maintained that labor had moral value. Administrators' treatment of women's work in the institution reflected ambivalence about women's role in an industrializing economy, concern about women's employment in industrial production, and unease about the moral threat posed by poor women as members of (and contributors to) a permanent underclass. Focusing on women's particular connections to these institutions as inmates and workers can shed further light on the influence of local relationships in the welfare process, and on the gendered nature of poverty in the early republic.
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Meike Kroneisen & Raoul Bell
Memory, forthcoming
Abstract:
The present study examines memory for social-exchange-relevant information. In Experiment 1 male and female faces were shown together with behaviour descriptions of cheating, altruistic, and neutral behaviour. Previous results have led to the hypothesis that people preferentially remember schema-atypical information. Given the common gender stereotype that women are kinder and less egoistic than men, this atypicality account would predict that source memory (that is, memory for the type of context to which a face was associated) should be enhanced for female cheaters in comparison to male cheaters. The results of Experiment 1 confirmed this hypothesis. Experiment 2 reveals that source memory for female faces associated with disgusting behaviours is enhanced in comparison to male faces associated with disgusting behaviours. Thus the atypicality effect generalises beyond social-exchange-relevant information, a result which is inconsistent with the assumption that the findings can be ascribed to a highly specific cheater detection module.
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Positive Female Role-Models Eliminate Negative Effects of Sexually Violent Media
Christopher Ferguson
Journal of Communication, forthcoming
Abstract:
Much debate has focused on the potential negative role of sexualized violent media on viewer attitudes toward women. One potential issue in previous literature is that depictions of sexuality and violence were confounded with subordinate depictions of female characters. The current study addressed this by randomly assigning young adults to watch either neutral media or sexually violent media with either subordinate or strong female characters. Women who watched sexually violent media were more anxious, and males who watched sexually violent media had more negative attitudes toward women, but only when female characters were subordinate. Sexual and violent content had no influence on viewer attitudes when strong female characters were present, suggesting these are not the crucial influence variables.
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Manuel Jiménez, Raúl Aguilar & José Alvero-Cruz
Psychoneuroendocrinology, September 2012, Pages 1577-1581
Abstract:
In this study, we report evidence from sport competition that is consistent with the biosocial model of status and dominance. Results show that testosterone levels rise and drop following victory and defeat in badminton players of both sexes, although at lower circulating levels in women. After losing the match, peak cortisol levels are observed in both sexes and correlational analyses indicate that defeat leads to rises in cortisol as well as to drops in testosterone, the percent change in hormone levels being almost identical in both sexes. In conclusion, results show the same pattern of hormonal responses to victory and defeat in men and women.
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Christian Cook, Blair Crewther & Alan Smith
American Journal of Human Biology, forthcoming
Objectives: To compare the baseline free testosterone (T) and cortisol (C) concentrations of elite and non-elite female athletes.
Methods: Eighteen females from different sports (track and field, netball, cycling, swimming, bob skeleton) were monitored over a 12-week period. Baseline measures of salivary free T and C concentrations were taken weekly prior to any training. The elites (n = 9) and non-elites (n = 9) were classified as international and national level competitors, respectively, with both groups matched by sport.
Results: The pooled free T concentrations of the elites (87 pg/ml) were significantly higher than the non-elites (41 pg/ml) and consistently so across all weekly time points (P < 0.001). Pooled free C concentrations were also greater in the elite group (2.90 ng/ml) than the non-elites (2.32 ng/ml) (P < 0.01).
Conclusions: The pooled baseline T and C measures were higher in elite female athletes than non-elites. Higher free T and C concentrations could indicate a greater capacity for physical performance at higher work rates, which is commensurate with the demands of elite sport. Speculatively, the T differences observed could influence female behavior and thereby help to regulate sporting potential.
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Gender in American Tobacco Cards 1880-1920: The Role of Coercive Competition
Jonathan Goldstein
Review of Political Economy, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper adds to the literature on Marxian coercive competition and its negative economic and social outcomes. An historical and econometric analysis of competitive intensity and the portrayal of women in one early form of tobacco advertising is conducted using an original data set. The historical analysis establishes the nature and intensity of competitive relations. Estimation results for a multinomial logit model for various portrayals of women show that a 1% increase in the market share of independent producers caused a 0.35-0.7% and 2.5-4.5% increase in the likelihood that women were included and treated exploitatively in ads in early and late competitive periods, respectively.
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Objectification as Self-affirmation in the Context of a Death-relevant Health Threat
Kasey Lynn Morris et al.
Self and Identity, forthcoming
Abstract:
Messages highlighting the risk of unhealthy behaviors threaten the self and can prompt a defensive response. From the perspective of self-affirmation theory, affirming an important value in a domain unrelated to the threat can reduce this defensiveness. Integrating terror management and objectification theory, this study examined objectification as a type of self-affirmation for women who highly value their appearance (i.e., high self-objectifiers) in the context of reactions towards a health message priming the association between breast cancer and death, and promoting the role of breast self-exams as an effective intervention. Self-objectification was found to moderate breast self-exam intentions and reactions to a BSE brochure when women were exposed to an objectifying image in the context of the death-relevant health threat. These findings show that for some women, objectification may provide the psychological fortitude necessary to actively confront threats to the self, and health, and may help to explain the pervasiveness of the phenomena.
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Inspirational or Self-Deflating: The Role of Self-Efficacy in Elite Role Model Effectiveness
Crystal Hoyt
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
This research examines the role of self-efficacy in women's responses to elite leadership role models. Previous research on role models has been equivocal, demonstrating that the impact of social comparisons on the self is multifaceted. Using an experimental methodology, 102 female participants were presented with role models (elite, nonelite, control) before serving as the leader of an ostensible three-person group. Findings revealed that women with low, as opposed to high, levels of leadership self-efficacy were less inspired by the highly successful role models and showed deflating contrast effects as demonstrated in their diminished identification with leadership, leadership aspirations, and leadership performance. Moreover, the performance effects were mediated by participants' identification with leadership. This research has identified an important self-regulatory variable that influences whether people engage in assimilative or contrastive processes when making strategic comparisons and it identifies the important role of self-perceptions in behavioral responses to role models.
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Leaks in the pipeline: Separating demographic inertia from ongoing gender differences in academia
Allison Shaw & Daniel Stanton
Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, 22 September 2012, Pages 3736-3741
Abstract:
Identification of the causes underlying the under-representation of women and minorities in academia is a source of ongoing concern and controversy. This is a critical issue in ensuring the openness and diversity of academia; yet differences in personal experiences and interpretations have mired it in controversy. We construct a simple model of the academic career that can be used to identify general trends, and separate the demographic effects of historical differences from ongoing biological or cultural gender differences. We apply the model to data on academics collected by the National Science Foundation (USA) over the past three decades, across all of science and engineering, and within six disciplines (agricultural and biological sciences, engineering, mathematics and computer sciences, physical sciences, psychology, and social sciences). We show that the hiring and retention of women in academia have been affected by both demographic inertia and gender differences, but that the relative influence of gender differences appears to be dwindling for most disciplines and career transitions. Our model enables us to identify the two key non-structural bottlenecks restricting female participation in academia: choice of undergraduate major and application to faculty positions. These transitions are those in greatest need of detailed study and policy development.
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The Complexity Conundrum: Why Hasn't the Gender Gap in Subjective Political Competence Closed?
Melanee Thomas
Canadian Journal of Political Science, June 2012, Pages 337-358
Abstract:
In the 1960s, the gender gap in subjective political competence was assumed to reflect women's lack of socioeconomic resources, their confinement to the domestic sphere and their gender role socialization. Since then, women have moved into the labour force in vast numbers and conceptions of gender roles have been radically altered under the influence of the feminist movement. Yet, the gender gap in subjective political competence persists. This paper uses the Canadian Election Studies (1965-2008) to analyze gender differences in subjective political competence across time. Not only is the association between affluence and subjective political competence weaker for women, but the effect of affluence has weakened over time for women but not for men. Few generational effects are found; this suggests that the politicizing role of feminist socialization is much weaker than had been anticipated.
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Gordon Gauchat, Maura Kelly & Michael Wallace
Gender & Society, forthcoming
Abstract:
Previous research on gender-based economic inequality has emphasized occupational segregation as the leading explanatory factor for the gender wage gap. Yet the globalization of the U.S. economy has affected gender inequality in fundamental ways and potentially diminished the influence of occupational gender segregation. We examine whether occupational gender segregation continues to be the main determinant of gender earnings inequality and to what extent globalization processes have emerged as important determinants of inequality between women's and men's earnings. We study factors contributing to the gender earnings ratio as well as the median earnings of men and women for 271 U.S. metropolitan areas. The results indicate that occupational segregation is still the leading determinant of gender earnings inequality, that its effects are only slightly diminished by the presence of globalization, and that various aspects of the global economy independently influence the gender earnings gap.
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The Female Educational Advantage Among Adolescent Children of Immigrants
Cynthia Feliciano
Youth & Society, September 2012, Pages 431-449
Abstract:
The female advantage in educational achievement is especially puzzling in the case of children of immigrants because it departs from the pattern in most immigrants' home countries. Using data from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS), this study explores the female advantage in grades and expectations among adolescents and finds that the advantage is limited to youth from lower socioeconomic status immigrant families. In addition, gender disparities stem from educational trajectories in place earlier than eighth grade and are shaped by factors both at home and at school. Compared with girls, boys spend less time on homework and more time watching television, have more negative perceptions of school personnel and more negative peer experiences at school, and are more focused on family relationships, perhaps to the detriment of school relationships. These gendered experiences in families and schools early in life contribute to later educational disparities among children of immigrants.
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Peer Effects in College Academic Outcomes -- Gender Matters!
Carlena Cochi Ficano
Economics of Education Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
An extensive literature exploring a range of peer influences on both academic and non-academic outcomes continues to produce contradictory evidence regarding the existence and magnitude of peer effects. Our results provide no evidence of peer effects in models where peer academic ability is measured in the aggregate. However, models that control for own-gender and other gender peer performance identify strong, positive, and statistically significant male peer influence on male students. In contrast, females are unresponsive to either male or female peer average academic rating. The results highlight the possibility that significant own gendered effects for males may be masked by insignificant effects in the aggregate.
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Gender Diversity on European Banks' Boards of Directors
Ruth Mateos de Cabo, Ricardo Gimeno & María Nieto
Journal of Business Ethics, August 2012, Pages 145-162
Abstract:
This article investigates the gender diversity of the corporate board of European Union banks. Employing a large sample of 612 European banks from 20 European countries, it identifies organizational characteristics that could be predictive of women's presence on bank boards. We identify three factors that play a particularly important role in defining bank board gender diversity. First, the proportion of women on the board is higher for lower-risk banks. We argue that there may be some statistical discrimination behind this relation, although it could also be explained by a real risk-aversion hypothesis. Second, banks with larger boards have a higher proportion of women on their boards, which could be considered a signal of some kind of preference for homogeneity on small boards. Finally, banks that have a growth orientation are more prone to include women on their board, since they may be seen as providers of diverse external resources that are more valued by firms operating under critical circumstances.
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Person and Thing Orientations: Psychological Correlates and Predictive Utility
Anna Woodcock et al.
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Individuals differ in their orientation toward the people and things in their environment. This has consequences for important life choices. The authors review 15 studies on Person and Thing Orientations (PO-TO) using data from 7,450 participants to establish the nature of the constructs, their external correlates, and their predictive utility. These findings suggest that these two orientations are not bipolar and are virtually independent constructs. They differentially relate to major personality dimensions and show consistent sex differences, whereby women are typically more oriented toward people and men more oriented toward things. Additionally, these orientations influence personal preferences and interests. For university students, PO and TO uniquely predict choice of major and retention within thing-oriented fields (e.g., science and engineering).
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Fetal Testosterone, Socio-Emotional Engagement and Language Development
Brad Farrant et al.
Infant and Child Development, forthcoming
Abstract:
The present study investigated the relations among fetal testosterone, child socio-emotional engagement and language development in a sample of 467 children (235 boys) from the Western Australian Pregnancy Cohort (Raine) Study. Bioavailable testosterone concentration measured in umbilical cord blood taken at birth was found to be significantly negatively correlated with socio-emotional engagement and vocabulary development for boys but not for girls. Socio-emotional engagement mediated the effect of boys' fetal testosterone levels on their vocabulary development. However, the size of the effects was small, and fetal testosterone and socio-emotional engagement were no longer significant predictors of boys' vocabulary scores after accounting for the effects of other predictors including maternal age and education, parity, and parent-child book reading. It is concluded that further research into these associations is warranted in both typical and atypical development and that this research would profit from including a broader focus on the role that proximal processes such as socio-emotional engagement, joint attention and imitation have in mediating the developmental effects of prenatal factors such as fetal testosterone exposure.