Checking privilege
Race and Quarterback Survival in the National Football League
Brian Volz
Journal of Sports Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study examines data from the 2001 to 2009 National Football League (NFL) seasons to determine whether Black quarterbacks face discrimination. When controlling for injury, age, experience, performance, team investment, backup quality, and bye weeks, Black quarterbacks are found to be 1.98–2.46 times more likely to be benched. Marginal evidence is also found that Black quarterbacks face less discrimination in areas with a larger percentage of Black residents. Additionally, it has been observed that when White quarterbacks are benched, the team improves by more than when Black quarterbacks are benched. This provides evidence that there is a cost to this discrimination.
---------------------
Is It Harder for Older Workers to Find Jobs? New and Improved Evidence from a Field Experiment
David Neumark, Ian Burn & Patrick Button
NBER Working Paper, October 2015
Abstract:
We design and implement a large-scale field experiment – a resume correspondence study – to address a number of potential limitations of existing field experiments testing for age discrimination, which may bias their results. One limitation that may bias these studies towards finding discrimination is the practice of giving older and younger applicants similar experience in the job to which they are applying, to make them “otherwise comparable.” The second limitation arises because greater unobserved differences in human capital investment of older applicants may bias existing field experiments against finding age discrimination. We also study ages closer to retirement than in past studies, and use a richer set of job profiles for older workers to test for differences associated with transitions to less demanding jobs (“bridge jobs”) at older ages. Based on evidence from over 40,000 job applications, we find robust evidence of age discrimination in hiring against older women. But we find that there is considerably less evidence of age discrimination against men after correcting for the potential biases this study addresses.
---------------------
Gender Gaps in Performance: Evidence from Young Lawyers
Ghazala Azmat & Rosa Ferrer
London School of Economics Working Paper, October 2015
Abstract:
This paper documents and studies the gender gap in performance among associate lawyers in the United States. Unlike other high-skilled professions, the legal profession assesses performance using transparent measures that are widely used and comparable across firms: the number of hours billed to clients and the amount of new client revenue generated. We find clear evidence of a gender gap in annual performance with respect to both measures. Male lawyers bill ten percent more hours and bring in more than twice the new client revenue than do female lawyers. We demonstrate that the differential impact across genders in the presence of young children and differences in aspirations to become a law firm partner account for a large share of the difference in performance. We also show that accounting for performance has important consequences for gender gaps in lawyers' earnings and subsequent promotion. Whereas individual and firm characteristics explain up to 50 percent of the earnings gap, the inclusion of performance measures explains a substantial share of the remainder. Performance measures also explain a sizeable share of the gender gap in promotion.
---------------------
Measuring the effect of the timing of first birth on wages
Jane Leber Herr
Journal of Population Economics, January 2016, Pages 39-72
Abstract:
I study the effect of first-birth timing on women’s wages, defining timing in terms of labor force entry, rather than age. Considering the mechanisms by which timing may affect wages, each is a function of experience rather than age. This transformation also highlights the distinction between a first birth after labor market entry versus before. I show that estimates based on age understate the return to delay for women who remain childless at labor market entry and have obscured the negative return to delay — to a first birth after labor market entry rather than before — for all but college graduates. My results suggest, however, that these returns to first-birth timing may hold only for non-Hispanic white women.
---------------------
Quality of evidence revealing subtle gender biases in science is in the eye of the beholder
Ian Handley et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 27 October 2015, Pages 13201–13206
Abstract:
Scientists are trained to evaluate and interpret evidence without bias or subjectivity. Thus, growing evidence revealing a gender bias against women — or favoring men — within science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) settings is provocative and raises questions about the extent to which gender bias may contribute to women’s underrepresentation within STEM fields. To the extent that research illustrating gender bias in STEM is viewed as convincing, the culture of science can begin to address the bias. However, are men and women equally receptive to this type of experimental evidence? This question was tested with three randomized, double-blind experiments — two involving samples from the general public (n = 205 and 303, respectively) and one involving a sample of university STEM and non-STEM faculty (n = 205). In all experiments, participants read an actual journal abstract reporting gender bias in a STEM context (or an altered abstract reporting no gender bias in experiment 3) and evaluated the overall quality of the research. Results across experiments showed that men evaluate the gender-bias research less favorably than women, and, of concern, this gender difference was especially prominent among STEM faculty (experiment 2). These results suggest a relative reluctance among men, especially faculty men within STEM, to accept evidence of gender biases in STEM. This finding is problematic because broadening the participation of underrepresented people in STEM, including women, necessarily requires a widespread willingness (particularly by those in the
majority) to acknowledge that bias exists before transformation is possible.
---------------------
Curtis Chan & Michel Anteby
Administrative Science Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
In this article, we examine a case of task segregation — when a group of workers is disproportionately allocated, relative to other groups, to spend more time on specific tasks in a given job — and argue that such segregation is a potential mechanism for generating within-job inequality in the quality of a job. When performing those tasks is undesirable, this allocation has unfavorable implications for that group’s experienced job quality. We articulate the processes by which task segregation can lead to workplace inequality in job quality through an inductive, interview-based case study of airport security-screening workers in a unit of the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) at a large urban airport. Female workers were disproportionately allocated to the pat-down task, the manual screening of travelers for prohibited items. Our findings suggest that this segregation led to overall poorer job quality outcomes for women. Task segregation overexposed female workers to processes of physical exertion, emotional labor, and relational strain, giving rise to work intensity, emotional exhaustion, and lack of coping resources. Task segregation also seemed to disproportionately expose female workers to managerial sanctions for taking recuperative time off and a narrowing of their skill set that may have contributed to worse promotion chances, pay, satisfaction, and turnover rates for women. We conclude with a theoretical model of how task segregation can act as a mechanism for generating within-job inequality in job quality.
---------------------
Leading at the top: Understanding women's challenges above the glass ceiling
Christy Glass & Alison Cook
Leadership Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Women leaders contribute positively to organizations yet remain significantly underrepresented in corporate leadership positions. While the challenges women face are well-documented, less understood are the factors that shape the experience and success of women who, against significant odds, rise above the glass ceiling. This paper advances scholarship on women and leadership by analyzing the conditions under which women are promoted to top leadership positions and exploring the opportunities and challenges they face post-promotion. We draw on two data sources: comparison of the career trajectories of all women who have ever served as CEO in the Fortune 500 with a matched sample of men CEOs as well as in-depth interviews with women executives across a variety of sectors. Our analysis reveals that women are more likely than men to be promoted to high risk leadership positions and often lack the support or authority to accomplish their strategic goals. As a result, women leaders often experience shorter tenures compared to male peers. We consider the implication of our findings for theory, research and practice.
---------------------
The gender difference in the value of winning
Zhuoqiong (Charlie) Chen, David Ong & Roman Sheremeta
Economics Letters, forthcoming
Abstract:
We design an all-pay auction experiment in which we reveal the gender of the opponent. Using this design, we find that women bid higher than men, but only when bidding against other women. These findings, interpreted through a theoretical model incorporating differences in risk attitude and the value of winning, suggest that women have a higher value of winning than men.
---------------------
Racism and discrimination versus advantage and favoritism: Bias for versus bias against
Nancy DiTomaso
Research in Organizational Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Almost all academic literature across disciplines and most of the news media explain racial inequality as the result of the discrimination and racism of whites toward nonwhites. In contrast, I argue that it is the favoritism or advantages that whites provide to other whites that is the primary mechanism by which racial inequality is reproduced in the post-civil rights period in the U.S. I provide evidence for my argument with data at the individual, organizational, and societal levels. I also discuss how my argument accords with management theory about diversity and inequality, considering the literature on anti-racism, implicit or unconscious bias, micro-inequities (or micro-aggressions), the need for mentors, and white privilege. I end with a discussion of objections that might be raised with regard to my framing of racial inequality as the result of whites providing advantages to other whites, including concerns about egregious negative acts toward nonwhites. Overall, I argue that my argument that favoritism takes precedence over racism and discrimination is consistent with the research evidence in the field.
---------------------
Michael Kofoed & Elizabeth McGovney
U.S. Military Academy Working Paper, October 2015
Abstract:
We use random assignment of role models to cadets at the United States Military Academy at West Point to investigate the effect of same gender or race mentors on occupation choice in the United States Army. Women and racial minorities have traditionally been underrepresented in certain branches in the Army and these disparities seem to persist over time. We find that when a female cadet is assigned a female tactical officer, the cadet is 5.9 and 18.1 percentage points more likely to pick her officer's branch as her first or among her top three branch preferences respectively. These results are robust to controlling for a limited choice set for females and the timing of the mentorship. We find that black cadets paired with black officers are 6.1 percentage points more likely to pick their role model's branch. However, we find no results for Hispanic cadets.
---------------------
A Paper Ceiling: Explaining the Persistent Underrepresentation of Women in Printed News
Eran Shor et al.
American Sociological Review, October 2015, Pages 960-984
Abstract:
In the early twenty-first century, women continue to receive substantially less media coverage than men, despite women’s much increased participation in public life. Media scholars argue that actors in news organizations skew news coverage in favor of men and male-related topics. However, no previous study has systematically examined whether such media bias exists beyond gender ratio imbalances in coverage that merely mirror societal-level structural and occupational gender inequalities. Using novel longitudinal data, we empirically isolate media-level factors and examine their effects on women’s coverage rates in hundreds of newspapers. We find that societal-level inequalities are the dominant determinants of continued gender differences in coverage. The media focuses nearly exclusively on the highest strata of occupational and social hierarchies, in which women’s representation has remained poor. We also find that women receive greater exposure in newspaper sections led by female editors, as well as in newspapers whose editorial boards have higher female representation. However, these differences appear to be mostly correlational, as women’s coverage rates do not noticeably improve when male editors are replaced by female editors in a given newspaper.
---------------------
Sex, Race, and Job Satisfaction Among Highly Educated Workers
Joni Hersch & Jean Xiao
Vanderbilt University Working Paper, September 2015
Abstract:
There has been a considerable amount of work focusing on job satisfaction and sex, generally finding that women are more satisfied than men despite having objectively worse job conditions. But there is little evidence on whether job satisfaction differs by race or ethnicity. We use data from the 2010 National Survey of College Graduates to examine the relation between job satisfaction and race and ethnicity among Asian, black, Hispanic/Latino, and white workers. Overall job satisfaction does not differ by sex among college graduates. Relative to white workers of the same sex, Asian and black workers are far less satisfied. The lower satisfaction of Asian and black workers relative to white workers is not explained by immigrant status, job match, or other individual or job characteristics.
---------------------
Cynthia DuBois
American Law and Economics Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
There is a dearth of affirmative action policies designed to impact executive level hiring. The National Football League's (NFL) “Rooney Rule” is the exception. The Rooney Rule requires NFL teams to interview at least one minority candidate for any head coaching vacancy. Using a difference-in-differences approach, I present evidence that the Rooney Rule had a significant, positive impact on the likelihood that a minority candidate would fill an NFL head coaching vacancy. The Rooney Rule could serve as a case study for other types of firms wishing to enact “soft” affirmative action policies to impact executive hiring.
---------------------
Virtues of a Hardworking Role Model to Improve Girls’ Mathematics Performance
Céline Bagès, Catherine Verniers & Delphine Martinot
Psychology of Women Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Previous research has shown that female role models can improve women’s math performance, whereas male role models can lower it. In this field experiment, we examined the following research questions: (a) Does the explanation a role model gives for the role model’s success in math help girls perform as well as boys in math, regardless of the role model’s gender? And (b) what are the underlying mechanisms of the role models’ influence? Sixth graders were exposed to the description of a female or male role model before a difficult math test; they were informed about the reason for the role model’s math success (exerted effort vs. being gifted vs. no explanation). The results indicated that girls scored as well as boys on a difficult math test after exposure to a hardworking role model. They performed less well than boys after exposure to a role model whose success was not explained or was explained by the role model’s gift. Moreover, serial mediation analyses showed that both boys and girls identified more with the hardworking role model than with the other two role models, which increased the boys’ and girls’ perceived self-efficacy in math and in turn increased math performance. We discuss the contributions of this study to identifying relevant role models for girls in math.
---------------------
When Performance Trumps Gender Bias: Joint vs. Separate Evaluation
Iris Bohnet, Alexandra van Geen & Max Bazerman
Management Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Gender bias in the evaluation of job candidates has been demonstrated in business, government, and academia, yet little is known about how to overcome it. Blind evaluation procedures have been proven to significantly increase the likelihood that women musicians are chosen for orchestras, and they are employed by a few companies. We examine a new intervention to overcome gender bias in hiring, promotion, and job assignments: an “evaluation nudge” in which people are evaluated jointly rather than separately regarding their future performance. Evaluators are more likely to base their decisions on individual performance in joint than in separate evaluation and on group stereotypes in separate than in joint evaluation, making joint evaluation the profit-maximizing evaluation procedure. Our work is inspired by findings in behavioral decision research suggesting that people make more reasoned choices when examining options jointly rather than separately and is compatible with a behavioral model of information processing.
---------------------
Gender Differences in Competitiveness: Evidence from Educational Admission Reforms
Arnt Hopland & Ole Henning Nyhus
B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper studies whether increased competition has adverse consequences for students’ intrinsic motivation by studying an upper secondary admission reform in Norway. While earlier students were enrolled into their neighboring school, the new system introduces school choice, where admission is based on performance in lower secondary school. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we find that whereas the motivation for boys seems to be unaffected by the increased competition, there are adverse consequences on the motivation for girls.
---------------------
Discrimination and Worker Evaluation
Costas Cavounidis & Kevin Lang
NBER Working Paper, October 2015
Abstract:
We develop a model of self-sustaining discrimination in wages, coupled with higher unemployment and shorter employment duration among blacks. While white workers are hired and retained indefinitely without monitoring, black workers are monitored and fired if a negative signal is received. The fired workers, who return to the pool of job-seekers, lower the average productivity of black job-seekers, perpetuating the cycle of lower wages and discriminatory monitoring. Under suitable parameter values the model has two steady states, one corresponding to each population group. Discrimination can persist even if the productivity of blacks exceeds that of whites.
---------------------
Carol Terregino, Meghan McConnell & Harold Reiter
Academic Medicine, forthcoming
Purpose: To examine whether academic scores, experience scores, and Multiple Mini Interview (MMI) core personal competencies scores vary across applicants' self-reported ethnicities, and whether changes in weighting of scores would alter the proportion of ethnicities underrepresented in medicine (URIM) in the entering class composition.
Method: This study analyzed retrospective data from 1,339 applicants to the Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School interviewed for entering classes 2011-2013. Data analyzed included two academic scores-grade point average (GPA) and Medical College Admission Test (MCAT)-service/clinical/research (SCR) scores, and MMI scores. Independent-samples t tests evaluated whether URIM ethnicities differed from non-URIM across GPA, MCAT, SCR, and MMI scores. A series of "what-if" analyses were conducted to determine whether alternative weighting methods would have changed final admissions decisions and entering class composition.
Results: URIM applicants had significantly lower GPAs (P < .001), MCATs (P < .001), and SCR scores (P < .001). However, this pattern was not found with MMI score (non-URIM 10.4 [1.6], URIM 10.4 [1.3], P = .55). Alternative weighting analyses show that including academic/experiential scores impacts the percentage of URIM acceptances. URIM acceptance rate declined from 57% (100% MMI) to 43% (10% GPA/10% MCAT/10% SCR/70% MMI), 39% (30% GPA/70% MMI), to as low as 22% (50% MCAT/50% MMI).
Conclusions: Sole reliance on the MMI for final admissions decisions, after threshold academic/experiential preparation are met, promotes diversity with the accepted applicant pool; weighting of "the numbers" or what is written about the application may decrease the acceptance of URIM applicants.
---------------------
Sarah von Schrader & Zafar Nazarov
Journal of Disability Policy Studies, December 2015, Pages 153-163
Abstract:
Using two administrative data sets from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), this study examines the relationship between employer and environmental characteristics and Americans With Disability Act (ADA) discrimination charge rate. Results of a multiple regression analysis using a sample of mid- to large-sized private employers indicate that establishment size is negatively correlated with ADA charge rate, whereas several other employer characteristics are positively associated with charge rate, including parent organization size, federal contractor status, transportation or services industries, and relatively high minority representation. One of the main concerns of contemporary disability policy is reducing discrimination in employment, and our findings can inform employers, policymakers, and organizations working with employers to reduce perceived discrimination by identifying those employers most likely to receive charges. Further research is needed to better understand what specific behaviors, practices, and policies within these different types of establishments explain their differential charge rates.
---------------------
Are women less career centric than men? Structure, culture, and identity investments
Stephen Sweet et al.
Community, Work & Family, forthcoming
Abstract:
Some work/family scholars assume that gender differences in career centrality (i.e. the importance of career to one's identity) are a result of differential job characteristics and family demands; others trace these differences to pre-existing cultural orientations. Using the 2010 Generations of Talent data from 9210 employees working in 11 countries for 7 multinational companies, this study verifies the existence of gender differences in career centrality and explores structural and cultural explanations. Gender disparities in career centrality are modest, indicating that women's and men's identification with careers is more similar than is commonly asserted; the most pronounced (but still relatively small) disparities are observed in Japan and China. A large portion of the gender gap is explained by job characteristics, supporting structural explanations. Family demands contribute to explaining the gap as well, but the findings are unexpected: having minor children is associated with higher career centrality for both women and men. In support of cultural explanations, however, traditional gender beliefs are associated with lower career centrality, especially for women, while two job characteristics (job variety and peer relations) have distinct links to career centrality for women and men. Findings challenge the common assumption that family identities compete against work identities.
---------------------
Women on board: Does boardroom gender diversity affect firm risk?
Vathunyoo Sila, Angelica Gonzalez & Jens Hagendorff
Journal of Corporate Finance, forthcoming
Abstract:
We investigate the relationship between boardroom gender diversity and firm risk. To identify a causal effect of gender on risk, we use a dynamic model that controls for reverse causality and for gender and risk being influenced by unobservable firm factors. We find no evidence that female boardroom representation influences equity risk. We also show that findings of a negative relationship between the two variables are spurious and driven by unobserved between-firm heterogeneous factors.
---------------------
On efforts in teams with stereotypes
Shiva Sikdar
Economics Letters, forthcoming
Abstract:
Diversity in the workplace implies a balance in positions held by different social groups in organizations. We analyze the effect of negative stereotypes about the abilities of individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds on efforts and outcomes in teams. A project’s success depends on the abilities and efforts of agents from different backgrounds. Under simultaneous effort contribution, the stereotype lowers efforts of all agents and the project’s success chance. When the principal assigns the disadvantaged/stereotyped agent as leader in effort contribution, the effect of the stereotype is mitigated and the project’s success chance is the highest; this also maximizes the principal’s expected payoff. Although the principal offers symmetric incentives, the stereotyped agent often exerts higher effort.
---------------------
Taking Race Off the Table: Agenda Setting and Support for Color-Blind Public Policy
Rosalind Chow & Eric Knowles
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Whites are theorized to support color-blind policies as an act of racial agenda setting — an attempt to defend the existing hierarchy by excluding race from public and institutional discourse. The present analysis leverages work distinguishing between two forms of social dominance orientation (SDO): passive opposition to equality (SDO-E) and active desire for dominance (SDO-D). We hypothesized that agenda setting, as a subtle hierarchy-maintenance strategy, would be uniquely tied to high levels of SDO-E. When made to believe that the hierarchy was under threat, Whites high in SDO-E increased their endorsement of color-blind policy (Study 1), particularly when the racial hierarchy was framed as ingroup advantage (Study 2), and became less willing to include race as a topic in a hypothetical presidential debate (Study 3). Across studies, Whites high in SDO-D showed no affinity for agenda setting as a hierarchy-maintenance strategy.