Two and a half women
Allegra Hodges & Bernadette Park
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
As stereotypes of social groups undergo change, group members gain access to previously denied social and cultural roles. Although such access is desirable, to the extent that the behavior, traits, and attitudes required to succeed in a new role are in opposition to those required to do well in a still-valued old role, conflict in the self-concept may ensue. Specifically, the individual must necessarily fall short in social comparisons of the self to the ideal group member in 1 or both roles, threatening self-integrity. Examining the specific case of oppositional identities between career and mom roles, we argue that women respond to this conflict by shifting back and forth between activation of whichever identity is relevant in a given situational context in a way that men do not. This shifting of self-associations is hypothesized to deplete scarce cognitive resources, interfering with performance on a task that requires executive function capacity. In addition, to the extent the identities are viewed as trading off against one another, failure in 1 domain may be responded to by activating the alternate identity in an effort to restore self-integrity, again in a way that is not true for men. These hypotheses are explored across 4 studies, utilizing both college students in the midst of formulating - and working parents in the midst of negotiating - these identities.
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Stability and the justification of social inequality
Kristin Laurin, Danielle Gaucher & Aaron Kay
European Journal of Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Modern society is rife with inequality. People's interpretations of these inequalities, however, vary considerably: Different people can interpret, for example, the existing gender gap in wages as being the result of systemic discrimination, or as being the fair and natural result of genuine differences between men and women. Here, we examine one factor that may help explain differing interpretations of existing social inequalities: perceptions of system stability. System justification theory proposes that people are often motivated to rationalize and justify the systems within which they operate, legitimizing whatever social inequalities are present within them. We draw on theories and evidence of rationalization more broadly to predict that people should be most likely to legitimize inequalities in their systems when they perceive those systems as stable and unchanging. In one study, participants who witnessed stability, rather than change, in the domain of gender equality in business subsequently reported less willingness to support programs designed to redress inequalities in completely unrelated domains. In a second study, exposure to the mere concept of stability, via a standard priming procedure, led participants to spontaneously produce legitimizing, rather than blaming, explanations for existing gender inequality in their country. This effect, however, emerged only among politically liberal participants. These findings contribute to an emerging body of research that aims to identify the conditions that promote, and those which prevent, system-justifying tendencies.
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Motherhood and Earnings: Wage Variability by Major Occupational Category and Earnings Level
Christian Nsiah, Ron DeBeaumont & Annette Ryerson
Journal of Family and Economic Issues, June 2013, Pages 224-234
Abstract:
Prior research has indicated that women with children earn less than their childless counterparts. In addition, recent research has found that the motherhood wage penalty may be most severe for low-income earners. Using panel data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1979), we test two hypotheses. First, are there occupational differences in the motherhood wage penalty? Second, are there occupational differences in the relative wage penalty experienced by low and high wage mothers? Our results indicated that mothers in sales occupations are penalized at a significantly higher rate than mothers in non-sales occupations, while mothers in blue-collar occupations were penalized the least. Furthermore, the wage cost of motherhood was greatest amongst the highest earners in sales occupations.
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Above the glass ceiling: When are women and racial/ethnic minorities promoted to CEO?
Alison Cook & Christy Glass
Strategic Management Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
Using a dataset of all CEO transitions in Fortune 500 companies over a fifteen year period, we analyze mechanisms that shape the promotion probabilities and leadership tenure of women and racial/ethnic minority CEOs. Consistent with the theory of the glass cliff, we find that occupational minorities - defined as white women and men and women of color - are more likely than white men to be promoted CEO to weakly performing firms. Though we find no significant differences in tenure length between occupational minorities and white men, we find that when firm performance declines during the tenure of occupational minority CEOs, these leaders are likely to be replaced by white men. We term this phenomenon the savior effect.
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Hadas Mandel
Social Forces, June 2013, Pages 1183-1207
Abstract:
This study examines the long-term trends of two parallel and related gender effects, in light of the hypothesis that highly rewarded occupations will be the most penalized by the process of feminization. Using multilevel models of the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series data from 1970 to 2007, the study analyzes trends in women's occupational mobility and juxtaposes these trends with trends in the effects of feminization on occupational pay across diverse occupational wage groups. The findings reveal two opposing processes of gender (in)equality: during this period, many women had impressive success in entering highly rewarded occupations. Simultaneously, however, the negative effect of feminization on the pay levels of these occupations intensified, particularly in high-paid and male-typed occupations. Consequently, women found themselves moving "up the down staircase." The findings confirm the dynamic nature of gender discrimination and have broad implications for our understanding of the devaluation and exclusion mechanisms discussed in earlier literature.
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Elizabeth Brown & Amanda Diekman
European Journal of Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Despite women's increasing representation in elected offices across a range of countries, women remain a minority of elected officials. Although greater gender equality in political leadership may be assumed to promote gender equality in other domains,' the presence of female candidates might ironically facilitate attitudes associated with legitimizing gender inequality. Using experimental methods, we demonstrate that the presence of a female political candidate, relative to a male political candidate, leads to greater beliefs that the sociopolitical system is just (Experiment 1), greater legitimacy of the gender status hierarchy (Experiment 2), and greater implicit preference for stability (Experiment 3). Ironically, within a context in which women are generally underrepresented as political leaders, the increasing presence of women as political candidates might lead to stronger legitimization of the current sociopolitical system, potentially inhibiting social change.
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Measuring Stereotypes of Female Politicians
Monica Schneider & Angela Bos
Political Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
One explanation for the dearth of women in elected office is that voters stereotype candidates based on their gender. Research in this vein often assumes that female candidates will be stereotyped similarly to women (e.g., as compassionate) and measures stereotypes as such. We question this assumption, proposing instead that female politicians constitute a subtype - a new stereotypical category with its own qualities - of the broader group of women. We compare the content of female politician stereotypes to other relevant comparison groups including politicians, male politicians, and female professionals. Using a classic methodology to determine stereotype content (Katz & Braly, 1933), we find that female politicians do not share the qualities that are ascribed to women (e.g., warm, empathetic). Our results show that female politicians seem to be "losing" on male stereotypical qualities while also not having any advantage on qualities typical of women. The content of female politician stereotypes is nebulous and lacks clarity in comparison to all other groups examined. We discuss implications for the future measurement of politician stereotypes.
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Gender Stereotypes, Candidate Evaluations, and Voting for Women Candidates: What Really Matters?
Kathleen Dolan
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Elections involving women candidates in the United States can offer unsettling examples of voter gender stereotypes, but research on women candidates provides little in the way of available data that allow us to link stereotypes to voter decision-making. This project reports results from a 2010 survey designed to examine gender stereotypes, candidate evaluations, and voting behavior in U.S. House elections with women candidates running against men. In general, stereotypes are not a central part of candidate evaluations or voting decisions, but the political party of the woman candidate can shape their role in candidate evaluations and vote choice.
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How Competitive are Female Professionals? A Tale of Identity Conflict
Bram Cadsby, Maroš Servátka & Fei Song
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
We develop and test experimentally the argument that gender/family and/or professional identities, activated through priming, influence preference for competition. We focus on female professionals for whom these identities may conflict and male professionals for whom they may be reinforcing. We primed MBA-student participants by administering questionnaires concerning either gender/family or professional issues. Subsequently, participants undertook a real-effort task and chose between piece-rate and competitive-tournament compensation. For females, professional priming resulted in a significantly greater preference for competition than gender/family priming. Priming had significantly different effects for males. This contrast highlights an identity conflict for female professionals, not present for males.
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Michelle Haynes & Madeline Heilman
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
We investigated the tendency of women to undervalue their contributions in collaborative contexts. Participants, who believed they were working with another study participant on a male sex-typed task, received positive feedback about the team's performance. Results indicated that women and men allocated credit for the joint success very differently. Women gave more credit to their male teammates and took less credit themselves unless their role in bringing about the performance outcome was irrefutably clear (Studies 1 and 2) or they were given explicit information about their likely task competence (Study 4). However, women did not credit themselves less when their teammate was female (Study 3). Together these studies demonstrate that women devalue their contributions to collaborative work, and that they do so by engaging in attributional rationalization, a process sparked by women's negative performance expectations and facilitated by source ambiguity and a satisfactory "other" to whom to allocate credit.
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Gender and Role in Conflict Management: Female and Male Managers as Third Parties
Imen Benharda, Jeanne Brett & Alain Lempereur
Negotiation and Conflict Management Research, May 2013, Pages 79-93
Abstract:
This study tested hypotheses drawn from the literature on gender, leadership, and conflict management about the outcomes facilitated by men and women in third party roles in dispute resolution in organizations. Data collected in association with an MBA teambuilding exercise showed that when women played third party roles in which they lacked authority over disputants, they were able to facilitate an outcome that was both acceptable to disputants and met organizational interests, more than men in these roles or than men and women in third party roles with authority. Behavioral data suggested that this effect was due to women in the third party peer role eschewing and men in the third party role displaying agentic behavior. The study contributes to the literature on gender, leadership, and conflict management by showing women's traditional leadership strengths of collaboration and participation can result in unique outcomes when they have less rather than more authority over disputants.
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Mariesa Herrmann & Jonah Rockoff
Labour Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
The health effects of menstruation are a controversial explanation for gender gaps in absenteeism and earnings. This paper provides the first evidence on this issue using data that combines labor market outcomes with information on health. We find that menstrual problems could account for some of the gender gap in illness-related absences, but menstrual problems are associated with other negative health conditions, suggesting our estimates may overstate causal effects. Nevertheless, menstrual problems explain very little of the gender gap in earnings.
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Victoria Brescoll, Jennifer Glass & Alexandra Sedlovskaya
Journal of Social Issues, June 2013, Pages 367-388
Abstract:
This article addresses two fundamental questions about flexible scheduling: Do managers use ascriptive information in deciding which requests for flexible work scheduling to grant among employees? And, do employees comprehend this managerial bias in deciding whether to ask for flexible work arrangements? Study 1 found that managers were most likely to grant flextime to high-status men seeking flexible schedules in order to advance their careers. In contrast, flexible scheduling requests from women were unlikely to be granted irrespective of their job status or reason. In Study 2, we found that employees were unaware of these managerial biases: women assigned high-status jobs and requests for career advancement reasons were the most likely to think their requests would be granted, while men in the same scenarios were least likely to believe this. Organizational and policy implications are discussed.
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Gender, the Labor Process and Dignity at Work
Martha Crowley
Social Forces, June 2013, Pages 1209-1238
Abstract:
This study brings together gender inequality and labor process research to investigate how divergent control structures generate inequality in work experiences for women and men. Content-coded data on 155 work groups are analyzed using Qualitative Comparative Analysis to identify combinations of control techniques encountered by female and male work groups and their relationship to outcomes measuring workplace dignity. Results suggest that male work groups more often encounter persuasive "bundles" of control that enhance autonomy, creativity, meaningfulness and satisfaction, while female work groups confront more coercive arrangements, especially direct supervision, that erode these and other foundations of dignity at work. I conclude with implications of these findings relative to understandings of the labor process, workplace sex segregation and forms of inequality not so easily quantified in dominant approaches to stratification.
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Justine Tinkler
Social Science Research, September 2013, Pages 1269-1283
Abstract:
Sexual harassment laws have led to important organizational changes in the workplace yet research continues to document resistance to their implementation and backlash against the people who mobilize such laws. Employing experimental research methods, this study proposes and tests a theory specifying the mechanisms through which sexual harassment policies affect gender beliefs. The findings show evidence that sexual harassment policies strengthen unequal gender beliefs among men and women most committed to traditional gender interaction norms. I also find that men and women's different structural locations in the status hierarchy lead to different, but related sets of concerns about the status threats posed by sexual harassment policies. By specifying the social psychological processes through which sexual harassment law affects beliefs about men and women, this study sets the stage for investigating ways to make laws designed to reduce inequality between social groups more effective.
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Do different factors explain male and female self-employment rates?
George Saridakis, Susan Marlow & David Storey
Journal of Business Venturing, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article challenges the assumption that the factors associated with the self-employment choices of women differ from those of men; specifically, we test the extent to which women are influenced by standard economic factors compared with family and social issues. We find that economic factors influence the self-employment choices made by men and by women in the long and short-run. Although some findings were sensitive to the chosen self-employment measure our short-run findings, in particular, are at variance with the interpretation that self-employed women are less likely to be influenced by economic factors than their male counterparts. Consequently, we argue that gender-based explanations have exaggerated the importance of social factors in the self-employment choices made by women.
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Andra Raisa Petca, Eliza Bivolaru & Timo Alexander Graf
Sport in Society, June 2013, Pages 611-630
Abstract:
Research reveals a stereotypical media portrayal of Olympic athletes [Bissel and Holt, 'Who's Got Game?']. Using panel data from the 2004 and the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, this study aims at identifying potential trends in visual representation of athletes. The analysis of online visuals of three media powers, Brazil (Latin America), Germany (Europe) and the USA (North America) allows for the investigation of culture-specific vs. global trends and for the identification of convergence/divergence forces across time in media. Differences between male and female representation with respect to category of sport, dynamic, camera angle, number of people, emotion and level of body exposure are assessed with Mann-Whitney U-tests. The findings suggest that although the web media reinforces some of the gender stereotypes, across the investigated time, an improvement towards gender evenness as well as a cross cultural convergence of athletes' portrayal is present. While some gender disparities still exist, the Internet seems to establish worldwide gender equity.
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Sex differences in degree performance at the University of Oxford
J. Mellanby, A. Zimdars & M. Cortina-Borja
Learning and Individual Differences, August 2013, Pages 103-111
Abstract:
For many years, men have outperformed women in the final degree examinations at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. This not only contradicts the trends at most other British universities but is particularly baffling since British females perform on par or better than their male peers in secondary school examinations. The present article draws on a longitudinal study of Oxford University applicants (n = 1929) to investigate competing explanations for this 'gender gap' in final examinations. The findings, based on detailed information of a subset of participants who were successful in gaining entrance to the University, found that their gender, their performance in first year exams and their expectation of obtaining a top grade (first class) degree were the strongest predictors of actual performance. Logistic regression models estimating the probability of obtaining a first showed that these two factors (first year exam marks and expectation of a first), both of which were higher in men, accounted for the gender gap. We argue that expectation of a first is an example of specific academic self-concept and that the higher level in men reflects different responses of the sexes to the particular academic environment of Oxford. The study also found that higher levels of self-esteem were associated with lower examination performance in both men and women.
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Pamela Stone & Lisa Ackerly Hernandez
Journal of Social Issues, June 2013, Pages 235-256
Abstract:
Using a model of the stigmatization of flexible work based on status legitimation theory, we analyze the experiences of a sample of 54 mothers who "opted out" of professional jobs. Qualitative text analysis reveals that features of women's workplaces are conducive to the creation and maintenance of flexibility stigma and bias and that women working flexibly are subjected to various forms of stigmatizing treatment, which plays a role in their decision to suspend their careers. We find limited evidence, however, that women perceive high levels of stigma and differential treatment as reflecting bias or prejudice. Instead, the majority appears to accept the legitimacy of professional time norms and view their treatment as justifiable. We identify factors that moderate or inhibit their perception of flexibility bias, as distinct from stigma per se, and discuss the limitations of our research as well as its implications for future research and policy.
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Anne-Kathrin Kronberg
Social Forces, June 2013, Pages 1117-1146
Abstract:
As jobs in the United States become less secure and traditional job ladders deteriorate, employees increasingly change employers to build their career. This article explores how this shift affects gender earnings disparities. I find that the effect of changing employers depends on whether changes occur in "good" or "bad" jobs and whether individuals leave voluntarily or involuntarily. Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics 1979-2009, gender disparities narrowed among voluntary leavers in good jobs and involuntary leavers in bad jobs. Disparities stagnated among voluntary leavers in bad jobs. The gender gap actually increased among involuntary leavers in good jobs. Although the causal mechanisms driving these trends are still unknown, the results indicate that the externalization opens opportunities primarily to those who are already in good positions.
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The Vancouver 'big six' gender-framed: NBC's prime-time coverage of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics
James Angelini, Andrew Billings & Paul MacArthur
Sport in Society, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study represents the first attempt to content-analyse on-air commentary surrounding the six 'major' Winter Olympic sports, operationalized as any event receiving at least three hours of aggregate prime-time coverage on the NBC broadcast network. Analysis of all 64 hours of NBC's prime-time coverage of the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Winter Games revealed 26 significantly different dialogue trends between male and female athletes. Gendered differences in the attribution of athletic success and failure were found in figure skating, alpine skiing and short-track speed skating, but not in bobsledding, freestyle skiing and snowboarding. Gendered differences in personality/physicality descriptors were found in alpine skiing, bobsled, figure skating, freestyle skiing and snowboarding, but not in short-track speed skating. Overall, figure skating generated the most gendered differences in commentary, while snowboarding and freestyle skiing had the fewest differences.