Right to rise
When Can Women Close the Gap? A Meta-Analytic Test of Sex Differences in Performance and Rewards
Aparna Joshi, Jooyeon Son & Hyuntak Roh
Academy of Management Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
Drawing on macro and micro domains in gender research, we meta-analytically test how occupational, industry, and job-level factors can either mitigate or exacerbate differences in performance evaluations (k = 93; n = 95,882) and rewards (k = 97; n = 378,850) between men and women. Based on studies conducted across a variety of work settings and spanning nearly thirty years, we found that the sex differences in rewards (d = .56) (including salary, bonuses, and promotions) were fourteen times larger than sex differences in performance evaluations (d = .04) and that differences in performance evaluations did not explain reward differences between men and women. The percentage of men in an occupation and the complexity of jobs performed by employees enhanced the male-female gap in performance and rewards. In highly prestigious occupations women performed equally but were rewarded significantly lower than men. Only a higher representation of female executives at the industry level enabled women to reverse the gender gap in rewards and performance evaluations. Our configurational analysis also revealed that some occupational, job, and industry level attributes of the work context are jointly associated with higher differences in rewards and performance evaluations.
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Stereotype Threat and the Evaluative Context of Communication
Matthew McGlone & Abigail Pfiester
Journal of Language and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
We explored the impact of "stereotype threat" - that is, distress associated with the prospect of confirming a negative stereotype - on communication in evaluative contexts. Participants engaged in a conflict resolution simulation framed as diagnostic of their ability either to be a leader or to maintain close personal relationships. Women were less fluent and used more tentative language under leadership than relational maintenance framing, but men were less fluent and more tentative under relational maintenance than leadership framing. The influence of stereotype frame on the rates of disfluencies and tentative language was partially mediated by state anxiety. Our findings demonstrate that the effects of situationally induced stereotype threat on communication behavior are comparable to its effects on intellectual test performance. Consequences of stereotype threat for impression formation and strategies for reducing its impact on social interaction are discussed.
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Sex differences in academic achievement are not related to political, economic, or social equality
Gijsbert Stoet & David Geary
Intelligence, January-February 2015, Pages 137-151
Abstract:
The national differences in gender equality in economic and political participation have garnered considerable attention as an explanation of boys' better achievement in mathematics in most countries, but the debate is far from resolved. Using data from four international assessments of the academic achievement of 1.5 million 15 year olds (Programme for International Student Assessment, PISA), we demonstrate that the relation between sex differences in PISA achievement and national measures of gender equality is not consistent across assessments, and several of the positive findings are confounded by outliers. Further, for overall achievement across reading, mathematics, and science literacy girls outperformed boys in 70% of participating countries, including many with considerable gaps in economic and political equality, and they fell behind in only 4% of countries. The results raise doubts about the relation between national equality policies and mathematics achievement, and raise broader questions regarding women's underrepresentation in political, economic, and academic leadership despite stronger academic skills and regarding the long-term economic prospects and social stability of nations with many men who are not competitive in the modern economy.
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Efficacy vs. Equity: What Happens When States Tinker with College Admissions in a Race-Blind Era?
Sandra Black, Kalena Cortes & Jane Arnold Lincove
NBER Working Paper, December 2014
Abstract:
College admissions officers face a rapidly changing policy environment where court decisions have limited the use of affirmative action. At the same time, there is mounting evidence that commonly used signals of college readiness, such as the SAT/ACTs, are subject to race and socioeconomic bias. Our study investigates the efficacy and equity of college admissions criteria by estimating the effect of multiple measures of college readiness on freshman college grade point average and four-year graduation. Importantly, we take advantage of a unique institutional feature of the Texas higher education system to control for selection into admissions and enrollment. We find that SAT/ACT scores, high school exit exams, and advanced coursework are predictors of student success in college. However, when we simulate changes in college enrollment and college outcomes with additional admissions criteria, we find that adding SAT/ACT or high school exit exam criteria to a rank-based admissions policy significantly decreases enrollment among minorities and other groups, with the most negative effects generated by the SAT/ACT, while inducing only minimal gains in college GPA and four-year graduation rates.
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When Winning Is Really Losing: Teaching Awards and Women Political Science Faculty
Charity Butcher & Timothy Kersey
PS: Political Science & Politics, January 2015, Pages 138-141
Abstract:
Based on a recent survey of political science professors in the United States, women tend to win teaching awards at higher rates than their male counterparts. This may seem like good news for female faculty, particularly amid continuing reports of gender gaps in publications and citations as well as the "leaky pipeline" phenomenon within promotions. However, a closer look at these findings suggests that in cases in which such awards might be most beneficial to women, they are less likely than their male colleagues to receive such acknowledgments. In fact, women are more likely than men to receive these awards only in institutional contexts in which research output is more important for tenure and promotion than teaching. Thus, the achievement of teaching excellence may have an overall negative impact on the advancement of female faculty by reducing their time and focus available for research.
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Ana Catalano Weeks & Lisa Baldez
European Political Science Review, February 2015, Pages 119-144
Abstract:
This article addresses concerns that candidates nominated because of gender quota laws will be less qualified for office. While questions of candidate quality have long been relevant to legislative behavior, quota laws requiring a certain percentage of candidates for national office to be women have generated renewed interest. Gender quotas are often perceived to reduce the scope of political competition. By putting gender identity center stage, they preclude the possibility that elections will be based on 'ideas' or 'merit' alone. Other electoral rules that restrict candidate selection, such as the centralization of candidate selection common in closed list PR systems, have been found to reduce the quality of candidates. Rules that open selection, such as primaries, result in higher quality candidates. We exploit the institutional design of Italy's mixed electoral system in 1994, where quotas were applied only to the PR portion of the list, to compare the qualifications of men, women, and 'quota women'. We estimate regressions on several measures of deputies' qualifications for office and performance in office. We find that unlike other rules limiting candidate selection, quotas are not associated with lower quality on most measures of qualifications. In fact, quota women have more local government experience than other legislators and lower rates of absenteeism than their male counterparts. Contrary to critics, quota laws may have a positive impact on legislator quality. Once the quota law was rescinded, quota women were less likely to be re-elected than non-quota women or men, which suggests that discrimination - not qualification - limits women's status as candidates.
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Gender differences in latent cognitive abilities in children aged 2 to 7
Mohammed Palejwala & Jodene Goldenring Fine
Intelligence, January-February 2015, Pages 96-108
Abstract:
Gender differences in the latent cognitive abilities underlying the Wechsler Primary and Preschool Scale of Intelligence-Fourth Edition (WPPSI-IV) were investigated in children aged 2 to 7. Multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis was used to verify the measurement invariance of the WPPSI-IV factor model in boys and girls. Then the magnitude of gender differences in the means and variances of the abilities was estimated. Multiple-indicator multiple-cause models were implemented to explore whether the magnitude of these differences varied across age. Girls aged 2 to 7 demonstrated higher general intelligence. Girls aged 4 to 7 demonstrated an advantage in processing speed. A gender difference favoring boys in visual processing was absent in ages 2 to 3 but emerged in ages 4 to 7. Gender differences in fluid reasoning, short-term memory, and comprehension-knowledge were not found. The variability of any of the abilities did not differ among girls and boys. These results indicate that gender differences in cognitive abilities emerge in early childhood, which may contribute to gender differences in later educational outcomes.
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How financially literate are women? An overview and new insights
Tabea Bucher-Koenen et al.
NBER Working Paper, December 2014
Abstract:
We document strikingly similar gender differences in financial literacy across countries. When asked to answer questions that measure knowledge of basic financial concepts, women are less likely than men to answer correctly and more likely to indicate that they do not know the answer. In addition, women give themselves lower scores on financial literacy self-assessments than men. Both young and old women show low levels of financial literacy. Moreover, women for whom financial knowledge is likely to be very important - for example widows or single women - know little about concepts relevant for day-to-day financial decisions. Even women in favorable economic conditions are less financially knowledgeable than men. This is important because financial literacy has been linked to economic behavior, including retirement planning and wealth accumulation. Women live longer than men and are likely to spend time in widowhood. As a result, improving women's financial literacy is key to helping them prepare for retirement and promoting their financial security.
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Michele Williams & Evan Polman
Organization Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper investigates how professional workers' willingness to act with interpersonal sensitivity is influenced by the gender and power of their interaction partners. We call into question the idea that mixed-gender interactions involve more interpersonal sensitivity than all-male interactions primarily because women demonstrate more interpersonal sensitivity than do men. Rather, we argue that the social category "women" can evoke more sensitive behavior from others such that men as well as women contribute to an increase in sensitivity in mixed-gender interactions. We further argue that the presence of women may trigger increased sensitivity such that men can also be the recipients of more sensitivity when one or more women are present on a team. In a study of 202 management consultants, we found that the willingness to act with interpersonal sensitivity increased in interactions with women. Moreover, this effect was greater in interactions with women who had low reward power - i.e., females who better fit the expectations associated with the social category "women." We also found team-level effects. Professionals working with mixed-gender versus all-male client teams reported a greater willingness to act with interpersonally sensitive behavior toward male client team members. Our findings show that the willingness to act with interpersonal sensitivity is context dependent and shed light on the importance of studying interaction partner-level and team-level effects on willingness to act with interpersonal sensitivity.
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A Company I Can Trust? Organizational Lay Theories Moderate Stereotype Threat for Women
Katherine Emerson & Mary Murphy
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, February 2015, Pages 295-307
Abstract:
Women remain under-represented in the leadership of corporate America. According to stereotype threat theory, this under-representation may persist because women are concerned about being stereotyped in business settings. Three studies investigated whether an entity (fixed), compared with an incremental (malleable), organizational lay theory is threatening for women evaluating a consulting company. Men and women viewed a company mission statement or website containing an entity or incremental theory. Results revealed that women - more so than men - trusted the entity company less than the incremental company. Furthermore, only women's mistrust of the entity company was driven by their expectations about being stereotyped by its management. Notably, when combined with high or low representations of female employees, only organizational lay theories predicted trust. Finally, people's - particularly women's - mistrust of the entity company led them to disengage more before interacting with a representative. Implications for women's experiences and outcomes in workplace settings are discussed.
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Simone Ispa-Landa & Jordan Conwell
Sociology of Education, January 2015, Pages 1-19
Abstract:
Studies of when youth classify academic achievement in racial terms have focused on the racial classification of behaviors and individuals. However, institutions - including schools - may also be racially classified. Drawing on a comparative interview study, we examine the school contexts that prompt urban black students to classify schools in racial terms. Through Diversify, a busing program, one group of black students attended affluent suburban schools with white-dominated achievement hierarchies (n = 38). Diversify students assigned schools to categories of whiteness or blackness that equated whiteness with achievement and blackness with academic deficiency. Students waitlisted for Diversify (n = 16) attended urban schools without white-dominated achievement hierarchies. These students did not classify schools as white or black, based on academic quality. We assert that scholars may productively conceive of schools, not just individual students, as sites of potential racial classification. Furthermore, the racial classification of schools reinforces antagonism between black students attending ''white'' and ''black'' schools and perpetuates harmful racial stereotypes.
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Ethnic Income Disparities in Israel
Pnina Plaut & Steven Plaut
Israel Affairs, Winter 2015, Pages 1-26
Abstract:
This article analyses income inequality in Israel and the role of ethnicity in creating or explaining it. It shows that in spite of relatively large 'raw' disparities in mean incomes across the ethnic groups, when controlling for other non-ethnic factors it is not generally the case that Arabs underperform in the Israeli labour markets compared with Jews, and in some cases Arabs outperform Jews, especially for men. Returns on education also do not appear to be lower for Arabs, other things being equal. In spite of the stereotypes, Ashkenazim generally do not outperform Mizrahim, or at most do so to a very small degree. The main 'advantaged' ethnic group are the native-born sabra Israelis. The main 'disadvantaged' demographic group are recent immigrants. Somewhat surprisingly, Ethiopians do not underperform compared with other immigrants, other things being equal.
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Measuring the Effect of Institutional Change on Gender Inequality in the Labour Market
Martina Dieckhoff, Vanessa Gash & Nadia Steiber
Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article examines the differential impact of labour market institutions on women and men. It carries out longitudinal analyses using repeat cross-sectional data from the EU Labour Force Survey 1992-2007 as well as time series data that measure institutional change over the same period. The results contribute to the literature on gendered employment, adding important insights into the impact of labour market institutions over and above family policies that have been the focus of most prior studies on the topic. We find differential effects of institutional change on male and female outcome. Our findings challenge the neo-classical literature on the topic. While our results suggest that men benefit more clearly than women from increases in employment protection, we do not find support for the neo-classical assertion that strong trade unions decrease female employment. Instead, increasing union strength is shown to have beneficial effects for both men's and women's likelihood of being employed on the standard employment contract. Furthermore, in line with other researchers, we find that rising levels of in kind state support to families improve women's employment opportunities.
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Sex as a source of power? Backlash against self-sexualizing women
Martina Infanger, Laurie Rudman & Sabine Sczesny
Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although women are thought to possess sexual power, they risk social and economic penalties (i.e., backlash; Rudman, 1998) when they self-sexualize (i.e., assert their power; Cahoon & Edmonds, 1989; Glick, Larsen, Johnson, & Branstiter, 2005). Why? Drawing on the status incongruity hypothesis (SIH), which predicts backlash against powerful women because they challenge the gender hierarchy, we expected prejudice against self-sexualizing women to be explained by a dominance penalty rather than a communality deficit (Rudman, Moss-Racusin, Phelan, & Nauts, 2012). Two experiments supported this hypothesis, and Experiment 3 further showed that the dominance penalty was explained by ascribing power motives to self-sexualized women. These findings extend the SIH's utility to the domain of self-sexualization and illuminate the scope of people's discomfort with female power. Implications for the advancement of gender equality are discussed.
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Justine Tinkler et al.
Social Science Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Research on gender and workplace decision-making tends to address either supply-side disparities between men's and women's human and social capital, or demand-side differences in the status expectations of women and men workers. In addition, this work often relies on causal inferences drawn from empirical data collected on worker characteristics and their workplace outcomes. In this study, we demonstrate how tangible education and work history credentials - typically associated with supply-side characteristics - work in tandem with cultural beliefs about gender to influence the evaluative process that underlies venture capital decisions made in high-growth, high-tech entrepreneurship. Using an experimental design, we simulate funding decisions by venture capitalists (VCs) for men and women entrepreneurs that differ in technical background and the presence of important social ties. We demonstrate the presence of two distinct aspects of VCs' evaluation: that of the venture and that of the entrepreneur, and find that the gender of the entrepreneur influences evaluations most when the person, rather than the venture, is the target of evaluation. Technical background qualifications moderate the influence of gendered expectations, and women receive more of a payoff than men from having a close contact to the evaluating VC. We discuss the implications for future research on gender and work.