Who Gets a Shot
Who Gets the Benefit of the Doubt? Performance Evaluations, Medical Errors, and the Production of Gender Inequality in Emergency Medical Education
Alexandra Brewer et al.
American Sociological Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Why do women continue to face barriers to success in professions, especially male-dominated ones, despite often outperforming men in similar subjects during schooling? With this study, we draw on role expectations theory to understand how inequality in assessment emerges as individuals transition from student to professional roles. To do this, we leverage the case of medical residency so that we can examine how changes in role expectations shape assessment while holding occupation and organization constant. By analyzing a dataset of 2,765 performance evaluations from a three-year emergency medicine training program, we empirically demonstrate that women and men are reviewed as equally capable at the beginning of residency, when the student role dominates; however, in year three, when the colleague role dominates, men are perceived as outperforming women. Furthermore, when we hold resident performance somewhat constant by comparing feedback to medical errors of similar severity, we find that in the third year of residency, but not the first, women receive more harsh criticism and less supportive feedback than men. Ultimately, this study suggests that role expectations, and the implicit biases they can trigger, matter significantly to the production of gender inequality, even when holding organization, occupation, and resident performance constant.
Why East Asians but not South Asians are underrepresented in leadership positions in the United States
Jackson Lu, Richard Nisbett & Michael Morris
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 3 March 2020, Pages 4590-4600
Abstract:
Well-educated and prosperous, Asians are called the “model minority” in the United States. However, they appear disproportionately underrepresented in leadership positions, a problem known as the “bamboo ceiling.” It remains unclear why this problem exists and whether it applies to all Asians or only particular Asian subgroups. To investigate the mechanisms and scope of the problem, we compared the leadership attainment of the two largest Asian subgroups in the United States: East Asians (e.g., Chinese) and South Asians (e.g., Indians). Across nine studies (n = 11,030) using mixed methods (archival analyses of chief executive officers, field surveys in large US companies, student leader nominations and elections, and experiments), East Asians were less likely than South Asians and whites to attain leadership positions, whereas South Asians were more likely than whites to do so. To understand why the bamboo ceiling exists for East Asians but not South Asians, we examined three categories of mechanisms — prejudice (intergroup), motivation (intrapersonal), and assertiveness (interpersonal) — while controlling for demographics (e.g., birth country, English fluency, education, socioeconomic status). Analyses revealed that East Asians faced less prejudice than South Asians and were equally motivated by work and leadership as South Asians. However, East Asians were lower in assertiveness, which consistently mediated the leadership attainment gap between East Asians and South Asians. These results suggest that East Asians hit the bamboo ceiling because their low assertiveness is incongruent with American norms concerning how leaders should communicate. The bamboo ceiling is not an Asian issue, but an issue of cultural fit.
Racial Discrimination in the Lab: Evidence of Statistical and Taste-Based Discrimination
David Wozniak & Timothy MacNeill
Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Using a lab experiment that simulates a labor market, we investigate racial discrimination for employee selection. We find that discrimination against Blacks persists even when information about candidates’ past performance/abilities is known. The experiment design allows us to observe within-subject variation in discrimination based on different information available about candidates, which helps distinguish between statistical and taste-based discrimination. We find evidence of discrimination by Non-Blacks against Blacks whenever race is salient. Some hiring discrimination against Blacks is statistical, since it is based on distrust of applicants’ self-reported abilities, and is also present in the discrimination of Blacks against their own group. But discrimination by Non-Blacks against Blacks is likely taste-based as it endures when more accurate information about abilities is known and even when such discrimination is costly. We suggest that the institutional and social climate may shape the prevalence of this type of discrimination.
The persistence of pay inequality: The gender pay gap in an anonymous online labor market
Leib Litman et al.
PLoS ONE, February 2020
Abstract:
Studies of the gender pay gap are seldom able to simultaneously account for the range of alternative putative mechanisms underlying it. Using CloudResearch, an online microtask platform connecting employers to workers who perform research-related tasks, we examine whether gender pay discrepancies are still evident in a labor market characterized by anonymity, relatively homogeneous work, and flexibility. For 22,271 Mechanical Turk workers who participated in nearly 5 million tasks, we analyze hourly earnings by gender, controlling for key covariates which have been shown previously to lead to differential pay for men and women. On average, women’s hourly earnings were 10.5% lower than men’s. Several factors contributed to the gender pay gap, including the tendency for women to select tasks that have a lower advertised hourly pay. This study provides evidence that gender pay gaps can arise despite the absence of overt discrimination, labor segregation, and inflexible work arrangements, even after experience, education, and other human capital factors are controlled for. Findings highlight the need to examine other possible causes of the gender pay gap. Potential strategies for reducing the pay gap on online labor markets are also discussed.
The Effects of Professor Gender on the Post-Graduation Outcomes of Female Students
Hani Mansour et al.
NBER Working Paper, March 2020
Abstract:
Although women earn approximately 50 percent of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) bachelor’s degrees, more than 70 percent of scientists and engineers are men. We explore a potential determinant of this STEM gender gap using newly collected data on the career trajectories of United States Air Force Academy students. Specifically, we examine the effects of being assigned female math and science professors on occupation choice and postgraduate education. We find that, among high-ability female students, being assigned a female professor leads to substantial increases in the probability of working in a STEM occupation and the probability of receiving a STEM master’s degree.
Bridging the Gender Wage Gap: Gendered Cultural Sentiments, Sex Segregation, and Occupation-Level Wages
Robert Freeland & Catherine Harnois
Social Psychology Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
The extent to which cultural beliefs about gender shape occupation-level wages remains a central yet unresolved question in the study of gender inequality. Human capital theorists predict that gendered beliefs have no direct effect on occupation-level wages. Devaluation theorists argue that occupations associated with women and femininity are systematically devalued and thus underpaid. We test these explanations using data from the American Community Survey, the Occupational Information Network, and an affect control theory (ACT) data set of affective meanings. We use the ACT data set to operationalize occupational gendered cultural sentiments along two distinct dimensions: evaluation (goodness, caring, warmth) and potency (power, strength, competence). Hierarchical linear models show that potency but not evaluation affects occupational income net of individual and occupational controls. Path analyses show that potency has a direct effect net of occupational traits. The gender composition of an occupation indirectly affects occupational income through potency. The cultural meanings of potency/competence associated with masculinity, rather than the devaluation of feminine nurturant occupations, is the primary cultural mechanism linking gender composition and occupational reward.
Criminal History, Sex, and Employment: Sex Differences in Ex‐Offender Hiring Stigma
Colin Holloway & Richard Wiener
Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
Communities across the United States integrate thousands of men and women coming out of jail or prison each year and studies suggest that over 75% of this population will reoffend within a decade of release. According to research, positive employment outcomes are linked to preventing recidivism; however, employers routinely check or inquire about criminal histories and discriminate against ex‐offender applicants. The current research focused on employer stigma against applicants with a criminal history with an online sample of adults (N = 296). The analogue experiment examined hiring decisions for Black versus White applicants with or without a criminal history in order to explore the effect of race and criminal history on hiring outcomes. As expected, participants were less likely to recommend applicants with a criminal history for employment, but the sex of the respondent moderated the differences in racial bias. Male hiring decision makers did not differentiate between applicants with or without a criminal history when presented with a White applicant but did show a stigma against Black ex‐offenders versus Black applicants with a clean criminal history. Female hiring decision makers showed the opposite pattern demonstrating no preference between Black applicants with or without a criminal history but preferring White applicants without a criminal record versus White ex‐offenders. These findings suggest that male and female hiring managers are differently affected by the presence of a criminal history depending on the race of the applicant and these differences if replicated have interesting policy implications.
Explaining a reverse gender gap in advanced physics and computer science course‐taking: An exploratory case study comparing Hebrew‐speaking and Arabic‐speaking high schools in Israel
Halleli Pinson, Yariv Feniger & Yael Barak
Journal of Research in Science Teaching, forthcoming
Abstract:
In the past three decades in high‐income countries, female students have outperformed male students in most indicators of educational attainment. However, the underrepresentation of girls and women in science courses and careers, especially in physics, computer sciences, and engineering, remains persistent. What is often neglected by the vast existing literature is the role that schools, as social institutions, play in maintaining or eliminating such gender gaps. This explorative case study research compares two high schools in Israel: one Hebrew‐speaking state school that serves mostly middleclass students and exhibits a typical gender gap in physics and computer science; the other, an Arabic‐speaking state school located in a Bedouin town that serves mostly students from a lower socioeconomic background. In the Arabic‐speaking school over 50% of the students in the advanced physics and computer science classes are females. The study aims to explain this seemingly counterintuitive gender pattern with respect to participation in physics and computer science. A comparison of school policies regarding sorting and choice reveals that the two schools employ very different policies that might explain the different patterns of participation. The Hebrew‐speaking school prioritizes self‐fulfillment and “free‐choice,” while in the Arabic‐speaking school, staff are much more active in sorting and assigning students to different curricular programs. The qualitative analysis suggests that in the case of the Arabic‐speaking school the intersection between traditional and collectivist society and neoliberal pressures in the form of raising achievement benchmarks contributes to the reversal of the gender gap in physics and computer science courses.
A Pay Scale of Their Own: Gender Differences in Performance Pay
Jason Sockin & Michael Sockin
University of Texas Working Paper, December 2019
Abstract:
Using data from the online labor platform Glassdoor, we find that women earn 20% less and are 6.3 percentage points less likely to receive performance pay than men within the same employer and occupation. This substantial gender gap contributes to persistent disparities in total income and is directly related to the under-representation of women in performance-paying jobs. The gender gap worsens as women build their careers and is not driven by differences in latent ability and motivation, as proxied by school pedigree and major, or income growth. Instead, we find that women search less for, apply less to, and are less likely to be employed in performance-pay-intensive jobs, leading to shallower income growth since women earn and work for performance pay less often. These differences in search activity and representation cannot be explained by gender preferences for avoiding income risk, competition, managerial roles, or poor match quality.
Rent Sharing and Gender Discrimination: Causal Evidence from Collegiate Athletics
Mario Lackner & Christine Zulehner
Social Science Quarterly, forthcoming
Objective: In this article, we analyze whether firms with market power — measured by their market share — fill top management positions differently than firms with no market power. Market power gives firms the opportunity to share rents with their employees. If these firms or their owners also have a taste for discrimination, they may share their rents in a discriminatory way. Using data from top‐level collegiate athletics, we assess the effect of market power — measured by market share — on the relative employment and wages of female coaches.
Methods: To account for the potential endogeneity of market power and unobserved productivity of female coaches, we exploit the effect of an institutionalized cartel, that is, the Bowl Championship Series (BCS), on a college's athletic department market share. By exploiting particular organizational characteristics of the BCS as an exogenous shock, we establish a causal link between market power and female employment.
Results: Our results show that an increase in the market share has a negative effect on females relative to males among coaches.
Black–White achievement gaps differ by family socioeconomic status from early childhood through early adolescence
Daphne Henry, Laura Betancur Cortés & Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal
Journal of Educational Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Theory and limited research indicate that race and socioeconomic status (SES) interact dynamically to shape children’s developmental contexts and academic achievement, but little scholarship examines how race and SES intersect to shape Black–White achievement gaps across development. We used data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998–99 (N ≈ 9,100) — which tracks a nationally representative cohort of children in the United States — to investigate how race and family SES (i.e., parental education and household income) intersect to shape trajectories of academic skills development from kindergarten entry through the spring of eighth grade. Results reveal that household income and parental education were differentially related to academic development, with Black–White gaps narrowing (and Black children’s skills growing slightly faster) at higher income gradients but widening (and Black children’s skills developing more slowly) at higher levels of educational attainment. Despite performance advantages at kindergarten entry, large baseline disparities meant that higher-income Black students underperformed their White peers by middle school, whereas Black students with better-educated parents consistently trailed their White counterparts. Taken together, these findings suggest that failure to examine how race and SES intersect to shape achievement gaps may obscure complex patterns of educational inequality.
The Wage Penalty for Married Women of Career Interruptions: Evidence from the 1970s and the 1990s
John Bailey Jones, Minhee Kim & Byoung Park
Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, forthcoming
Abstract:
The goal of this paper is to assess how the wage penalty for career interruptions by married women changed between the 1970s and the 1990s. We estimate the wage penalty for career interruptions using the work‐history model and PSID data. We use several approaches to control for various forms of endogeneity and selection bias. Our empirical results suggest that (i) the wage penalty for married women's career interruptions increased from 40.4% to 73.7% over the period, (ii) the ratio of the wage penalty for married women to that of married men also increased, from 1.33 to 2.43, (iii) Blinder–Oaxaca decompositions show that changes in education‐ or occupation‐specific wage penalties account for most of the wage penalty increase.
An Honors Teacher Like Me: Effects of Access to Same-Race Teachers on Black Students’ Advanced-Track Enrollment and Performance
Cassandra Hart
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, forthcoming
Abstract:
Using rich administrative data from North Carolina and school-course fixed effects models, this study explores whether the availability of same-race instructors in advanced-track sections of courses affects Black high school students’ enrollment in, and performance in, advanced-track courses. The availability of at least one Black instructor at the advanced level is associated with a 2 percentage point increase in the uptake of advanced courses for Black students. However, conditional on enrollment in the advanced track, Black students are no more likely to pass advanced-track courses when taught by Black teachers. Positive effects on enrollment are driven by enrollment shifts for higher achieving students. Additional analyses showing benefits to non-Black students suggest that the main channels are not race-specific role model effects.