Standing out
Resource Wealth and Women’s Economic and Political Power in the U.S. States
Joel Simmons
Comparative Political Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
Ross argues that oil wealth reduces women’s economic and political power, but critics maintain that accounting for a community’s attitudes toward gender equality makes the gendered resource curse disappear. This article disentangles the two perspectives by studying the effects of resource wealth on women’s economic and political status in the U.S. states, where resource wealth varies significantly while cultural differences are comparatively small. Data between 1997 and 2012 reveal evidence of a gendered resource curse, consistent with Ross. I also update the theory of the gendered resource curse by showing, via a culture-augmented labor-leisure model of workforce participation, that far from being irrelevant when accounting for varying attitudes toward gender roles, resource wealth and those patriarchal attitudes combine to suppress even more women’s economic and political influence. Data from the U.S. states support this expectation as well.
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Biased Perceptions of Racially Diverse Teams and Their Consequences for Resource Support
Robert Lount et al.
Organization Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examine whether observers hold biases that can negatively affect how racially diverse teams are evaluated, and ultimately treated, relative to racially homogeneous groups. In three experiments, which held the actual content of observed behavior constant across diverse and homogeneous teams, observers were less willing to allocate additional resources to diverse teams. Through applying both statistical mediation (Studies 1 and 2) and moderation-of-process methods (Study 3), our findings supported the expectation that biased perceptions of relationship conflict accounted for this reduced support of diverse teams. Implications for diverse teams in organizations are discussed.
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Apply Yourself: Racial and Ethnic Differences in College Application
Sandra Black, Kalena Cortes & Jane Arnold Lincove
NBER Working Paper, July 2015
Abstract:
Access to higher education begins with a student’s decision whether and where to apply to college. This paper examines racial and ethnic differences in college application behavior of high school graduates, using two recent graduation cohorts from Texas. We estimate racial and ethnic differences in the probability of applying to college, controlling for a student’s college readiness, high school quality, certainty of college admissions, and high school fixed effects. We then investigate racial and ethnic differences in the choice of where to apply. We enhance the typical model of college matching by considering the social setting and high school feeder patterns of state universities. We find that racial and ethnic gaps in application rates, particularly for Hispanic students, are not explained by differential levels of college readiness, high school quality, or information regarding college admission processes. When applying to college, minorities are influenced by more than just matching their academic ability to the institution, and prefer institutions with a large proportion of same race students and campuses where same race students from their high school have been successful in the past.
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Hiring Preferences in Online Labor Markets: Evidence of a Female Hiring Bias
Jason Chan & Jing Wang
University of Minnesota Working Paper, June 2015
Abstract:
Online labor marketplaces facilitate the efficient matching of employers and workers across geographical boundaries. The exponential growth of this nascent online phenomenon holds important social and economic implications, as the hiring decisions made on these online platforms implicate the incomes of millions of workers worldwide. Despite this importance, limited effort has been devoted to understanding whether potential hiring biases exist in online labor platforms and how they affect hiring outcomes. Using a novel proprietary dataset from a leading online labor platform, we investigate the impact of gender-based stereotypes on hiring outcomes. After accounting for endogeneity via a holistic set of job and worker controls, a matched sample approach, and a quasi-experimental technique, we find evidence of a positive hiring bias in favor of female workers. We find that the observed hiring bias diminishes as employers gain more hiring experience on the platform. Sub-analyses show that women are highly preferred in feminine-typed occupations, while men are only slightly preferred in masculine-typed occupations. Interestingly, women gain an advantage in gender-neutral jobs. We further run an experiment to uncover the underlying gender-specific traits that influence hiring outcomes. Our findings provide key insights for several groups of stakeholders including policymakers, platform owners, hiring managers, and workers. Managerial and practical implications are discussed.
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Leigh Wilton et al.
Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, July 2015, Pages 315-325
Abstract:
The present studies examined whether colorblind diversity messages, relative to multicultural diversity messages, serve as an identity threat that undermines performance-related outcomes for individuals at the intersections of race and gender. We exposed racial/ethnic majority and minority women and men to either a colorblind or multicultural diversity statement and then measured their expectations about overall diversity, anticipated bias, and group task performance (Study 1, N = 211), as well as their expectations about distinct race and gender diversity and their actual performance on a math test (Study 2, N = 328). Participants expected more bias (Study 1) and less race and gender diversity (Study 2) after exposure to a colorblind versus a multicultural message. However, the colorblind message was particularly damaging for women of color, prompting them to expect the least diversity overall and to perform worse (Study 1), as well as to actually perform worse on a math test (Study 2) than the multicultural message. White women demonstrated the opposite pattern, performing better on the math test in the colorblind versus the multicultural condition, whereas racial minority and majority men’s performances were not affected by different messages about diversity. We discuss the importance of examining psychological processes that underscore performance-related outcomes at the junction of race and gender.
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Who Believes in Me? The Effect of Student-Teacher Demographic Match on Teacher Expectations
Seth Gershenson, Stephen Holt & Nicholas Papageorge
American University Working Paper, July 2015
Abstract:
Teachers are an important source of information for traditionally disadvantaged students. However, little is known about how teachers form expectations and whether they are systematically biased. We investigate whether student-teacher demographic mismatch affects high school teachers’ expectations for students’ educational attainment. Using a student fixed effects strategy that exploits expectations data from two teachers per student, we find that non-black teachers of black students have significantly lower expectations than do black teachers. These effects are larger for black male students and math teachers. Our findings add to a growing literature on the role of limited information in perpetuating educational attainment gaps.
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David Neumark, Joanne Song & Patrick Button
NBER Working Paper, July 2015
Abstract:
We explore the effects of disability discrimination laws on hiring of older workers. A concern with anti-discrimination laws is that they may reduce hiring by raising the cost of terminations and – in the specific case of disability discrimination laws – raising the cost of employment because of the need to accommodate disabled workers. Moreover, disability discrimination laws can affect non-disabled older workers because they are fairly likely to develop work-related disabilities, yet are not protected by these laws. Using state variation in disability discrimination protections, we find little or no evidence that stronger disability discrimination laws lower the hiring of non-disabled older workers. We similarly find no evidence of adverse effects of disability discrimination laws on hiring of disabled older workers.
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Effects of Power on Mental Rotation and Emotion Recognition in Women
Tali Nissan, Oren Shapira & Nira Liberman
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Based on construal-level theory (CLT) and its view of power as an instance of social distance, we predicted that high, relative to low power would enhance women’s mental-rotation performance and impede their emotion-recognition performance. The predicted effects of power emerged both when it was manipulated via a recall priming task (Study 1) and environmental cues (Studies 2 and 3). Studies 3 and 4 found evidence for mediation by construal level of the effect of power on emotion recognition but not on mental rotation. We discuss potential mediating mechanisms for these effects based on both the social distance/construal level and the approach/inhibition views of power. We also discuss implications for optimizing performance on mental rotation and emotion recognition in everyday life.
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Nicole Stephens et al.
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
A growing social psychological literature reveals that brief interventions can benefit disadvantaged students. We tested a key component of the theoretical assumption that interventions exert long-term effects because they initiate recursive processes. Focusing on how interventions alter students’ responses to specific situations over time, we conducted a follow-up lab study with students who had participated in a difference-education intervention 2 years earlier. In the intervention, students learned how their social-class backgrounds mattered in college. The follow-up study assessed participants’ behavioral and hormonal responses to stressful college situations. We found that difference-education participants discussed their backgrounds in a speech more frequently than control participants did, an indication that they retained the understanding of how their backgrounds mattered. Moreover, among first-generation students (i.e., students whose parents did not have 4-year degrees), those in the difference-education condition showed greater physiological thriving (i.e., anabolic-balance reactivity) than those in the control condition, which suggests that they experienced their working-class backgrounds as a strength.
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Katrina Walsemann, Jennifer Ailshire & Gilbert Gee
Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, forthcoming
Background: Student loans are the second largest source of personal debt in the USA and may represent an important source of financial strain for many young adults. Little attention has been paid to whether debt is associated with sleep duration, an important health-promoting behaviour. We determine if student loans are associated with sleep duration. Since black young adults are more likely to have student debt and sleep less, we also consider whether this association varies by race.
Methods: Data come from the US National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997. The main analytic sample includes 4714 respondents who were ever enrolled in college and who reported on sleep duration in 2010. Most respondents had completed their college education by 2010, when respondents were 25 to 31 years old. Multivariable linear regression models assessed the cross-sectional association between student loans accumulated over the course of college and sleep duration in 2010, as well as between student debt at age 25 and sleep duration in 2010.
Results: Black young adults with greater amounts of student loans or more student debt reported shorter sleep duration, controlling for occupation, hours worked, household income, parental net worth, marital status, number of children in the household and other sociodemographic and health indicators. There was no association between student loans or debt with sleep for white or latino adults and other racial/ethnic groups.
Conclusions: Student loans may contribute to racial inequities in sleep duration. Our findings also suggest that the student debt crisis may have important implications for individuals’ sleep, specifically and public health, more broadly.
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Signaling Change During a Crisis: Refining Conditions for the Glass Cliff
Clara Kulich et al.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, November 2015, Pages 96–103
Abstract:
Research into the glass cliff indicates that adverse company circumstances, compared to favorable ones, increase the likelihood of women to be appointed in leadership positions. Study 1 refined the conditions under which a glass cliff occurs by demonstrating a preference for a female leader when a company’s performance was attributed to past leadership (an internal, controllable cause) but not when it was attributed to global economic circumstances (an external, uncontrollable cause). Study 2 replicated the glass cliff for a controllable context and revealed that the female candidate’s potential to signal change, rather than her quality and suitability as a leader, accounted for the preference of the female candidate. We conclude that women, as non-traditional leaders, are strategic choices of companies with the aim to signal change to the outside world (e.g., investors) when past leadership is held responsible for a crisis. However, they are not expected to actually impact on the company’s performance through their leadership quality.
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Women Don't Mean Business? Gender Penalty in Board Appointments
Isabelle Solal & Kaisa Snellman
INSEAD Working Paper, July 2015
Abstract:
This paper examines the relationship between board diversity and firm performance. Using 14 years of panel data on U.S. firms, we show that increasing gender diversity has no impact on objective measures of firm performance, but does result in a systematic decrease in the firm’s market value. We explain this finding by suggesting that the decision to appoint female directors will alter the market’s perception of the appointing firm. In a second panel study, we show that firms perceived to be committed to diversity similarly suffer a decrease in firm value. Finally, we show through an experiment that female board appointments are taken as a signal that the firm is motivated by social performance goals, to the detriment of pure profit maximization. Collectively, these three studies suggest that female board appointments are viewed as diversity measures, and as a signal of a broader commitment of the firm to social welfare goals, as opposed to strict shareholder value maximization. This mechanism, we argue, operates irrespective of the actual or perceived competence of the female nominee. We discuss the implications of our findings for future research on board diversity and firm performance.
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Sarah Prenovitz et al.
NBER Working Paper, August 2015
Abstract:
The Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program (MMUF) was established in 1988 to encourage underrepresented minority (URM) students to pursue PhD study with an eye towards entering academia. Fellows have completed PhDs at high rates relative to other students, but they are selected for their interest and potential, so this reflects both the effects of the program and the abilities of the students themselves. In order to understand one impact of the program we investigate its causal effect - how many of its fellows earned PhDs who would not have done so without the MMUF’s support. In this paper we use restricted access administrative data from the Mellon Foundation and the National Science Foundation’s Survey of Earned Doctorates to investigate the effect of the MMUF on PhD completions by underrepresented minority students who graduate from participating institutions. We find no evidence that participation in the program causes a statistically significant increase in the PhD production rate of URM students and increases in larger than 0.4 percentage points lie outside a 95% confidence interval using our unweighted baseline estimates. We also do not find evidence that increasing the intensity of the program by adding more fellows increases the PhD production rate, which is particularly notable as this estimate is upward-biased: the number of fellows likely reflects the strength of the candidate pool in a given year.
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Game, set, and match: Do women and men perform differently in competitive situations?
Michael Jetter & Jay Walker
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, November 2015, Pages 96–108
Abstract:
This paper analyzes potential gender differences in competitive environments using a sample of over 100,000 professional tennis matches. Focusing on two phenomena of the labor and sports economics literature, we find robust evidence for (i) the hot-hand effect (an additional win in the most recent ten matches raises the likelihood of winning by 3.2 to 3.4 percentage points) and (ii) the clutch-player effect, as top players are excelling in Grand Slam tournaments, the most important events. Overall, we find virtually no gender differences for the hot-hand effect and only minor distinctions for the clutch-player effect.
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Identity, Overconfidence, and Investment Decisions
Francesco D'Acunto
University of California Working Paper, August 2015
Abstract:
Why are men more risk tolerant than women, and why do they invest more than women? I test whether identity stereotypes help explain this heterogeneity. I manipulate identity in a controlled environment by priming its salience to subjects. Men whose identity is primed take on more risk, and invest more often and more money than controls. The salience of male identity increases men's beliefs about experiencing good outcomes in a game of chance. Inducing overconfidence similarly makes men take on more risk and invest more. The effects are stronger for older cohorts of men, consistent with the notion that gender-identity stereotypes have become less stark over the last decades.
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Allison Master, Sapna Cheryan & Andrew Meltzoff
Journal of Educational Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Computer science has one of the largest gender disparities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. An important reason for this disparity is that girls are less likely than boys to enroll in necessary “pipeline courses,” such as introductory computer science. Two experiments investigated whether high-school girls’ lower interest than boys in enrolling in computer science courses is influenced by stereotypes of the field. We further tested whether these stereotypes can be communicated by the physical classroom environment, and whether changing this environment alters girls’ interest. In 2 experiments (N = 269), a computer science classroom that did not project current computer science stereotypes caused girls, but not boys, to express more interest in taking computer science than a classroom that made these stereotypes salient. The gender difference was mediated by girls’ lower sense of belonging in the course, even beyond the effects of negative stereotype concerns, expectations of success, and utility value. Girls’ lower sense of belonging could be traced to lower feelings of fit with computer science stereotypes. Individual differences in fit with stereotypes predicted girls’ belonging and interest in a stereotypical, but not a nonstereotypical, classroom. Adolescence is a critical time for career aspirations. Girls may avoid computer science courses because current prevailing stereotypes of the field signal to them that they do not belong. However, providing them with an educational environment that does not fit current computer science stereotypes increases their interest in computer science courses and could provide grounds for interventions to help reduce gender disparities in computer science enrollment.
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Making Rights Work: Legal Mobilization at the Agency Level
Jennifer Woodward
Law & Society Review, September 2015, Pages 691–723
Abstract:
This article discusses how McCann's theory on legal mobilization and social change is generalizable to the legal decisions of agencies. I demonstrate how the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) routinely delayed and denied Title VII employment rights on the basis of sex and how this resulted in the formation of the National Organization for Women (NOW) to ensure that the sex provision of Title VII was enforced. The article also discusses the influence of NOW in shaping the first years of Title VII law and the organization's role in reversing EEOC decisions denying rights under the sex provision of the law.
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Jill Bradley-Geist, Ivy Rivera & Susan Geringer
Sex Roles, July 2015, Pages 29-42
Abstract:
Prior research demonstrates detrimental effects of sexism on female targets’ well-being and career outcomes. Extending research on those targeted by sexism, the current study explored the collateral damage of ambient sexism on bystanders observing sexism directed at others. An experiment with 218 U.S. undergraduates at a large West-coast public university assessed how ambient sexism directed at a female job applicant impacted male and female bystanders’ self-esteem and career aspirations. Results generally supported theoretical predictions regarding the moderating impact of bystander gender on the relationship between ambient sexism and bystander well-being. As hypothesized, ambient hostile sexism more negatively impacted female bystanders than male bystanders with regard to performance-based state self-esteem. Performance-based self-esteem in turn predicted career aspirations such that lower performance-based state self-esteem predicted lower career aspirations: gender moderated this mediated relationship such that the indirect effect was more negative for female bystanders than male bystanders. Gender also moderated the relationship between ambient benevolent sexism and appearance-based state self-esteem. Women observing benevolent sexism tended to report enhanced appearance-based esteem relative to women in the hostile sexism and control conditions, whereas men observing benevolent sexism reported significantly lower appearance esteem than men in the hostile sexism and control conditions. In sum, the current study suggests that women and men bystanders are impacted differently by ambient benevolent and hostile sexism.
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Double Jeopardy Upon Resumé Screening: When Achmed Is Less Employable Than Aïsha
Eva Derous, Ann Marie Ryan & Alec Serlie
Personnel Psychology, Autumn 2015, Pages 659–696
Abstract:
Applicants belong to multiple categories (e.g., male, ethnic minority) and a complex set of factors affects category activation and inhibition when making hiring decisions. Two field experiments with recruiters who regularly engage in resumé screening showed that the role of multiple categories (applicants’ ethnicity and sex) in discrimination depended on job type and prejudice. Specifically, in both low- and high-demand (i.e., complex) jobs, Arab women were rated more favorably than Arab men, particularly when considering levels of client contact. Across both studies, recruiters high in explicit ethnic prejudice were discriminatory only when applicants’ job qualifications fit the job position less, lending support for the attributional-ambiguity effect. Implicit attitudes did not play a strong role. Our study findings point to the complex nature of multiple categorization effects in the hiring process. Implications are considered as to how to avert hiring discrimination during resumé screening.
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Organized Labor and the Unionization of Hispanic, Chinese, and Filipino Americans
Daniel Schneider
Labor Studies Journal, June 2015, Pages 169-195
Abstract:
This work adds a systematic understanding of the diverse relationships of immigrants and minorities to organized labor in the United States. Using Current Population Survey data from 1994 to 2013, I interrogate the unionization of Hispanic, Chinese, and Filipino Americans. In comparison to whites, native-born and established immigrant Hispanics have higher rates of unionization, Filipinos (both immigrant and native born) are much likelier to join unions, and Chinese immigrants are less likely to be unionized and more likely to leave unions. Labor market position continues to have a profound effect on unionization; however, solidaristic characteristics also shape patterns of unionization.