Friday, June 11, 2010
Ladies First
Ladies first? A field study of discrimination in coffee shops
Caitlin Knowles Myers, Marcus Bellows, Hiba Fakhoury, Douglas Hale, Alexander Hall & Kaitlin Ofman
Applied Economics, May 2010, Pages 1761-1769
Abstract:
Despite anecdotal and survey evidence suggesting the presence of discrimination against customers in stores, restaurants and other small-transaction consumer markets, few studies exist that identify or quantify the nature of any unequal treatment. We provide evidence from a field study of wait times in Boston-area coffee shops that suggests that female customers wait an average of 20 seconds longer for their orders than do male customers even when controlling for gender differences in orders. We find that this differential in wait times is inverse to the proportion of employees who are female and directly related to how busy the coffee shop is at the time of the order. This supports the conclusion that the observed differential is driven at least in part by employee animus and/or statistical discrimination rather than unobserved heterogeneity in the purchasing behaviour of female customers.
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Melissa Miller, Jeffrey Peake & Brittany Anne Boulton
Politics & Gender, June 2010, Pages 169-198
Abstract:
Studies of press coverage afforded women running for public office indicate that historically, women tend to garner less coverage overall and that the coverage they do receive tends to focus disproportionately on their appearance, personality, and family status at the expense of their qualifications and issue positions. This study examines newspaper coverage of U.S. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. Notably, Clinton did not allege that she was receiving too little coverage or coverage that focused disproportionately on her clothing or appearance. Rather, she charged that she was being treated negatively relative to her chief rival, U.S. Senator Barack Obama. More than 6,000 articles from 25 leading newspapers from across the country were content-coded from Labor Day through Super Tuesday in order to assess Clinton's coverage on two dimensions: traditional and tonal. On a range of traditional indicators of bias, such as coverage amount and mentions of candidate appearance, Clinton's coverage clearly broke established patterns typically afforded women presidential candidates. However, the tone of Clinton's coverage was decidedly negative relative to her male competitors. Normative implications of this mixed bag of fairness and bias are discussed.
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Strategic behavior across gender: A comparison of female and male expert chess players
Christer Gerdes & Patrik Gränsmark
Labour Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper aims to measure differences in risk behavior among expert chess players. The study employs a panel data set on international chess with 1.4 million games recorded over a period of 11 years. The structure of the data set allows us to use individual fixed-effect estimations to control for aspects such as innate ability as well as other characteristics of the players. Most notably, the data contains an objective measure of individual playing strength, the so-called Elo rating. In line with previous research, we find that women are more risk-averse than men. A novel finding is that men choose more aggressive strategies when playing against female opponents even though such strategies reduce their winning probability.
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The Price of Power: Power Seeking and Backlash Against Female Politicians
Tyler Okimoto & Victoria Brescoll
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Two experimental studies examined the effect of power-seeking intentions on backlash toward women in political office. It was hypothesized that a female politician's career progress may be hindered by the belief that she seeks power, as this desire may violate prescribed communal expectations for women and thereby elicit interpersonal penalties. Results suggested that voting preferences for female candidates were negatively influenced by her power-seeking intentions (actual or perceived) but that preferences for male candidates were unaffected by power-seeking intentions. These differential reactions were partly explained by the perceived lack of communality implied by women's power-seeking intentions, resulting in lower perceived competence and feelings of moral outrage. The presence of moral-emotional reactions suggests that backlash arises from the violation of communal prescriptions rather than normative deviations more generally. These findings illuminate one potential source of gender bias in politics.
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Gender and the Ballot Box: Is Winning a Curse for Women?
Jay Schwarz
University of Pittsburgh Working Paper, January 2010
Abstract:
How might the past electoral success of a woman affect the political landscape and chances of winning for future female candidates? Some suggest a successful woman will "open doors" for future women candidates. Recent work in the developing world using randomly assigned gender quotas indicates that experience with female leaders changes the electorate's attitudes [Beaman et al., 2009]. I ask a related question in a different context: how do American voters respond to greater experience with women leaders as a result of free elections. Using a new data set, I estimate the effect of a female winning a previous election on the number of male and female candidates in the current election. I also see if the electability of males and females is affected. To handle endogeniety problems, I only consider extremely close elections between males and females in California school board elections. Results show a past female win decreases (increases) the number of female (male) candidates and also reduces the number of females elected. Further analysis suggests that in the wake of a female winning a close election, the electorate is biased against electing non-incumbent females and biased toward electing incumbent males. These results have great relevance for the prospects of gender parity in public decision-making and policy.
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Women can't jump? - An experiment on competitive attitudes and stereotype threat
Christina Günther, Neslihan Arslan Ekinci, Christiane Schwieren & Martin Strobel
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
Gneezy et al. (2003) offer a partial explanation for the wage gap between men and women. In an experiment they found that women react less to competitive incentives. The task they used in their experiment can however be considered a male task. We replicate the experiment and extend it by treatments with a gender neutral task and a female task. For the male task we replicate their results, but for the neutral task women react as strongly to incentives than men and for the female task women react stronger than men. Our findings suggest a stereotype threat explanation. Women tend not to compete with men in areas where they (rightly or wrongly) think that they will lose anyway-and the same holds for men, although to a lower extent.
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Gender Differences in Executive Compensation: Variation with Board Gender Composition and Time
Susan Elkinawy & Mark Stater
Journal of Economics and Business, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper uses EXECUCOMP, COMPUSTAT and Investor's Responsibility Resource Center data to examine gender differences in executive salaries and total compensation from 1996-2004. We find that the salaries of female executives are about 5 percent lower than those of male executives, controlling for executive, firm, and board characteristics, and that the gap exists primarily in the lower officer ranks, where women are relatively highly concentrated. The gender difference in salary is larger in firms with more male-dominated boards; perhaps not coincidentally, such firms are also found to have fewer female executives in top managerial positions as well as lower probabilities of having any top female executives at all. The results of Oaxaca wage decompositions suggest that, although the magnitude of the gender difference decreases slightly over the sample period, the share of the gender difference that is due to unobserved factors remains basically steady or even increases. Thus, although women have become better represented in top executive jobs in recent decades, their relative salaries remain below those of men, possibly due in part to governance structures that remain male-dominated.
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The Roll Call Behavior of Men and Women in the U.S. House of Representatives, 1937-2008
Dennis Simon & Barbara Palmer
Politics & Gender, June 2010, Pages 225-246
Abstract:
Our analysis investigates the ideological differences in the voting records of male and female members of the U.S. House of Representatives using a relatively novel natural-experiment research design to account for variations in district-level factors. We ask whether it makes a difference when a woman succeeds a man or a man succeeds a woman in a given congressional district. To answer this question, we created a database consisting of predecessor-successor pairs in all elections to the House between 1937 and 2008. In the case of intraparty change, we find that there is no significant difference in the voting scores of female and male members of the House; the roll call scores of female Democrats who replace male Democrats are virtually identical, as are the scores of male Democrats who replace female Democrats. The same results hold for Republicans. We also demonstrate that when interparty change occurs in a district, there is no evidence that the resulting ideological change is greater when the successor or predecessor is a woman. In other words, the voting records of consecutive members of Congress that come from a particular district are virtually the same regardless of their gender.
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The sex ratio and male-on-female intimate partner violence
Stewart D'Alessio & Lisa Stolzenberg
Journal of Criminal Justice, forthcoming
Abstract:
Two divergent perspectives have been articulated in the literature regarding the effect that an unbalanced sex ratio is speculated to have on male-on-female intimate partner violence. Evolutionary psychology proffers that a high sex ratio (i.e., more men than women in the population) propagates competition among males for female mates. This competition for female mates is thought to engender sexual jealousy among men, which in turn results in male-on-female intimate partner violence. In contrast, the Guttentag and Secord thesis argues that a high sex ratio acts to attenuate rather than amplify male-on-female intimate partner violence because the relatively small number of women in the population makes them more highly valued and respected by men. Using data culled from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) and the Census, we investigate the relationship between the sex ratio and male-on-female intimate partner violence. We define male-on-female intimate partner violence as violence occurring within a marriage or boyfriend/girlfriend type relationship. Multivariate regression results furnish evidence supporting evolutionary psychology by demonstrating that a high sex ratio increases male-on-female intimate partner violence. Results also show that male-on-female intimate partner violence is higher in cities where more women work. Such a finding further buttresses the logic associated with evolutionary psychology because participation in the workforce is theorized to afford a woman a greater opportunity to meet and interact with men other than her husband or boyfriend.
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Paula Barata & Donna Stewart
Psychology of Women Quarterly, March 2010, Pages 43-55
Abstract:
Individual battered women have reported experiencing housing discrimination, but the extent of this problem has not been examined. This research used two experiments and a survey to determine if landlord discrimination could keep women from accessing rental units. In Study 1, a confederate asked 181 landlords about the availability of a rental unit in one of three living conditions (shelter, friends, no mention of current living conditions) and across two scenarios (does or does not have a child). Rental units were almost 10 times more likely to be available in the control condition compared to the shelter condition, χ2(1, N = 181) = 8.624, p = .003, and these results were not affected by whether or not the caller had a child, χ2(1, N = 181) = 0.214, p = .644. In Study 2, the confederate was employed and left a message on 92 landlords' answering machines in the same three living conditions. The hypothesized comparison between the shelter and the other two conditions combined was significant, χ2(1, N = 92) = 4.602, p = .032. Finally, in a telephone survey of 31 landlords, a substantial minority (23%) said they would not rent to a hypothetical battered woman. The results of our studies suggest that discrimination against battered women by landlords is a real problem that is likely contributing to the difficulties that women experience in finding safe and affordable long-term housing.
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A spine of steel and a heart of gold: Newspaper coverage of the first female Speaker of the House
Yasmine Dabbous & Amy Ladley
Journal of Gender Studies, June 2010, Pages 181-194
Abstract:
Literature shows that politics remains associated with maleness in the American cultural discourse. For a female to be elected to office, she must balance common archetypical masculine characteristics that represent strong and capable leadership, with the nurturing expected of women. An in-depth qualitative analysis of Nancy Pelosi's news coverage in five major US dailies confirms these stereotypes. Portrayed as 'very strong' and 'decisive', the Speaker 'knows what she wants'. But the woman with 'the spine of steel' also possesses a 'heart of gold'. She is a mother of five and a grandmother of six, and, of course, wears Armani suits. The tension between the two opposite personalities - one predominantly 'masculine' and the other clearly 'feminine' - characterizes the coverage of the country's first female Speaker and reveals the implications of gendered news coverage on the way Pelosi is perceived as leader. The newspapers examined include the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle.
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Alexander Haslam, Michelle Ryan, Clara Kulich, Grzegorz Trojanowski & Cate Atkins
British Journal of Management, June 2010, Pages 484-497
Abstract:
This paper presents a comprehensive archival examination of FTSE 100 companies in the period 2001-2005, focusing on the relationship between the presence of women on company boards and both accountancy-based and stock-based measures of company performance. Consistent with work by Adams, Gupta and Leeth this analysis reveals that there was no relationship between women's presence on boards and 'objective' accountancy-based measures of performance (return on assets, return on equity). However, consistent with 'glass cliff' research there was a negative relationship between women's presence on boards and 'subjective' stock-based measures of performance. Companies with male-only boards enjoyed a valuation premium of 37% relative to firms with a woman on their board. Results support claims that women are found on the boards of companies that are perceived to be performing poorly and that their presence on boards can lead to the devaluation of companies by investors. Yet the findings also indicate that perceptions and investment are not aligned with the underlying realities of company performance.
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Makeba Parramore Wilbourn & Daniel Kee
Sex Roles, May 2010, Pages 670-683
Abstract:
Eagly's social role theory (Eagly and Steffen 1984) was tested examining children's gender role stereotypes via implicit information processing and memory measures. We explored whether children's occupational stereotypes were less restrictive for females who engaged in counterstereotypic occupations (Mary-Doctor) compared to males who engaged in counterstereotypic occupations (Henry-Nurse). Fifty-seven American eight- and nine-year-olds from a southwestern city were orally presented with stereotypic male and female names paired with masculine and feminine occupations and asked to create sentences using the name-occupation pairs. We conducted analyses of the created sentences as well as tested children's memories for the various pairings. Consistent with social role theory, the findings revealed that children's gender role stereotypes were more restrictive for males, than for females.
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The stagnation of male wages in the US
Jeff Madrick & Nikolaos Papanikolaou
International Review of Applied Economics, May 2010, Pages 309-318
Abstract:
In an analysis of US wages and salaries by sex, age and educational attainment between 1969 and 2008, we find that median wages and salaries of males with no more than a high school diploma have fallen over more than four decades for all but the oldest age group, which made only marginal gains. The median wages and salaries of males with a college degree have stagnated for at least 20, and up to 25, consecutive years within the 39-year period analyzed. Wages and salaries for typical female workers have risen, especially for those with college degrees, but they have not risen at strong rates by historical standards. The gap in incomes between males and females of comparable ages and education has narrowed but remains large.
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Demographic Preferences and Price Discrimination in New Vehicle Sales
Ashley Langer
University of California Working Paper, November 2009
Abstract:
Understanding why different demographic groups pay different prices is central to questions of consumer welfare and equity in many markets. In a monopolistically competitive setting like the new car market, sellers have an incentive to charge higher prices to consumers with more inelastic demand. Unlike seller animus or differences in bargaining skills, such "third-degree" price discrimination implies a distinctive pattern of product-specific price differentials across groups. This paper proposes and implements a simple test for the importance of third-degree price discrimination in the new vehicle market in the U.S. Specifically, I use micro data for a large sample of recent buyers to estimate separate random-coefficient discrete choice models for married and unmarried men and women, and calculate optimal markups for each group. Across 230 different vehicle models I find that observed price differences between groups closely track the predicted relative markups: a one-dollar increase in the predicted relative markups leads to a 30-45 cent rise in relative prices. This suggests that firms are partially successful in discriminating by gender and marital status, although arbitrage across groups or lack of co-ordination between dealers limits the extent of this discrimination. The estimates imply that the elimination of third-degree price discrimination would reduce the consumer surplus of single women by 5.6% of their total vehicle expenditure, and raise the surplus of married men by 5.4% of their total expenditure.
