Diverse choice
The Strength of Whites’ Ties: How employers reward the referrals of black and white jobseekers
Fabiana Silva
Social Forces, forthcoming
Abstract:
Sociologists commonly point to jobseekers’ racially segregated networks and employers’ discriminatory behavior to explain racial inequality in employment. Network scholars argue that, given segregated networks and black and white employees’ unequal position in the labor market, employers’ reliance on employee referrals reproduces black disadvantage. Scholars of discrimination focus instead on employers’ unequal treatment of equally qualified black and white jobseekers. Drawing on an original experiment with a sample of white individuals with hiring responsibilities, I seek to bridge these literatures by examining whether respondents’ racial prejudice affects how they reward employee referrals of black and white applicants from black and white employees. I use a measure of implicit prejudice that is resistant to social desirability and that can capture biases among people who genuinely believe they are unbiased. Whether evaluated by low-prejudiced or high-prejudiced respondents, white applicants benefit greatly from same-race referrals. In contrast, black applicants do not benefit from same-race referrals, even when they are evaluated by low-prejudiced respondents. In fact, black applicants only benefit from having a referral when two conditions are met: the referring employee is white and they are evaluated by a relatively low-prejudiced respondent. These findings suggest that in addition to their disadvantage in access to employee referrals, black jobseekers suffer from a disadvantage in returns to these referrals.
How gender determines the way we speak about professionals
Stav Atir & Melissa Ferguson
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
Gender inequality persists in many professions, particularly in high-status fields, such as science, technology, engineering, and math. We report evidence of a form of gender bias that may contribute to this state: gender influences the way that people speak about professionals. When discussing professionals or their work, it is common to refer to them by surname alone (e.g., “Darwin developed the theory of evolution”). We present evidence that people are more likely to refer to male than female professionals in this way. This gender bias emerges in archival data across domains; students reviewing professors online and pundits discussing politicians on the radio are more likely to use surname when speaking about a man (vs. a woman). Participants’ self-reported references also indicate a preference for using surname when speaking about male (vs. female) scientists, authors, and others. Finally, experimental evidence provides convergent evidence: participants writing about a fictional male scientist are more likely to refer to him by surname than participants writing about an otherwise identical female scientist. We find that, on average, people are over twice as likely to refer to male professionals by surname than female professionals. Critically, we identified consequences of this gender bias in speaking about professionals. Researchers referred to by surname are judged as more famous and eminent. They are consequently seen as higher status and more deserving of eminence-related benefits and awards. For instance, scientists referred to by surname were seen as 14% more deserving of a National Science Foundation career award.
The Origins and Real Effects of the Gender Gap: Evidence from CEOs' Formative Years
Ran Duchin, Mikhail Simutin & Denis Sosyura
Arizona State University Working Paper, May 2018
Abstract:
CEOs allocate more investment capital to male managers than to female managers in the same divisions. Using data from individual Census records, we find that this gender gap is driven by CEOs who grew up in male-dominated families — those where the father was the only income earner and had more education than the mother. The gender gap also increases for CEOs who attended all-male high schools and grew up in neighborhoods with greater gender inequality. The effect of gender on capital budgeting introduces frictions and erodes investment efficiency. Overall, the gender gap originates in CEO preferences developed during formative years and produces significant real effects.
Career Choices and the Evolution of the College Gender Gap
Martín Rossi & Christian Ruzzier
World Bank Economic Review, June 2018, Pages 307–333
Abstract:
The opportunity cost for men of pursuing a college degree has been rising due to the increase in the rewards to becoming a superstar in occupations typically dominated by men, like professional sports. This suggests a novel explanation for the evolution of the college gender gap (which shows a clear upward trend in female college enrollments relative to male enrollments). Causal evidence from a natural experiment in European soccer markets — that provides exogenous variation in the expected earnings for men associated with a superstar path — supports this explanation: an increase in male earnings has a significant positive effect on the ratio of female to male tertiary enrollment in college education. Results are robust to using different samples of countries, to allowing for regional time trends, to analyzing lagged effects, to changing the definition of the treatment, and to exploiting alternative definitions of exposure.
Meta-lay theories of scientific potential drive underrepresented students’ sense of belonging to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)
Aneeta Rattan et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, July 2018, Pages 54-75
Abstract:
The current research investigates people’s perceptions of others’ lay theories (or mindsets), an understudied construct that we call meta-lay theories. Six studies examine whether underrepresented students’ meta-lay theories influence their sense of belonging to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). The studies tested whether underrepresented students who perceive their faculty as believing most students have high scientific aptitude (a universal metatheory) would report a stronger sense of belonging to STEM than those who think their faculty believe that not everyone has high scientific aptitude (a nonuniversal metatheory). Women PhD candidates in STEM fields who held universal rather than nonuniversal metatheories felt greater sense of belonging to their field, both when metatheories were measured (Study 1) and manipulated (Study 2). Undergraduates who held more universal metatheories reported a higher sense of belonging to STEM (Studies 3 and 4) and earned higher final course grades (Study 3). Experimental manipulations depicting a professor communicating the universal lay theory eliminated the difference between African American and European American students’ attraction to a STEM course (Study 5) and between women and men’s sense of belonging to STEM (Study 6). Mini meta-analyses indicated that the universal metatheory increases underrepresented students’ sense of belonging to STEM, reduces the extent of social identity threat they experience, and reduces their perception of faculty as endorsing stereotypes. Across different underrepresented groups, types of institutions, areas of STEM, and points in the STEM pipeline, students’ metaperceptions of faculty’s lay theories about scientific aptitude influence their sense of belonging to STEM.
Gendered styles of student-faculty interaction among college students
Emma Cohen
Social Science Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Scholars have examined gender differences in many areas of college life, but we know little about how men and women may interact differently with faculty — an activity with strong links to student outcomes. Using data from the National Survey of Student Engagement, I investigate whether men and women demonstrate different styles of interaction with faculty. I find that women are more likely than men to engage frequently in instrumental interactions, such as emailing and discussing course logistics with faculty. In contrast, men are more likely than women to have frequent higher order interactions, such as discussing ideas and participating in research. These findings introduce a new typology of student-faculty interaction and contribute to our understanding of gendered pathways through higher education.
The Mommy Effect: Do Women Anticipate the Employment Effects of Motherhood?
Ilyana Kuziemko et al.
NBER Working Paper, June 2018
Abstract:
After decades of convergence, the gender gap in employment outcomes has recently plateaued in many rich countries, despite the fact that women have increased their investment in human capital over this period. We propose a hypothesis to reconcile these two trends: that when they are making key human capital decisions, women in modern cohorts underestimate the impact of motherhood on their future labor supply. Using an event-study framework, we show substantial and persistent employment effects of motherhood in U.K. and U.S. data. We then provide evidence that women do not anticipate these effects. Upon becoming parents, women (and especially more educated women) adopt more negative views toward female employment (e.g., they are more likely to say that women working hurts family life), suggesting that motherhood serves as an information shock to their beliefs. Women on average (and, again, more educated women in particular) report that parenthood is harder than they expected. We then look at longer horizons — are young women's expectations about future labor supply correct when they make their key educational decisions? In fact, female high school seniors are increasingly and substantially overestimating the likelihood they will be in the labor market in their thirties, a sharp reversal from previous cohorts who substantially underestimated their future labor supply. Finally, we specify a model of women's choice of educational investment in the face of uncertain employment costs of motherhood, which demonstrates that our results can be reconciled only if these costs increased unexpectedly across generations. We end by documenting a collage of empirical evidence consistent with such a trend.
Twitter Makes It Worse: Political Journalists, Gendered Echo Chambers, and the Amplification of Gender Bias
Nikki Usher, Jesse Holcomb & Justin Littman
International Journal of Press/Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Given both the historical legacy and the contemporary awareness about gender inequity in journalism and politics as well as the increasing importance of Twitter in political communication, this article considers whether the platform makes some of the existing gender bias against women in political journalism even worse. Using a framework that characterizes journalists’ Twitter behavior in terms of the dimensions of their peer-to-peer relationships and a comprehensive sample of permanently credentialed journalists for the U.S. Congress, substantial evidence of gender bias beyond existing inequities emerges. Most alarming is that male journalists amplify and engage male peers almost exclusively, while female journalists tend to engage most with each other. The significant support for claims of gender asymmetry as well as evidence of gender silos are findings that not only underscore the importance of further research but also suggest overarching consequences for the structure of contemporary political communication.
Equilibrium Grade Inflation with Implications for Female Interest in STEM Majors
Thomas Ahn et al.
Duke University Working Paper, May 2018
Abstract:
We estimate an equilibrium model of grading policies where professors set grading policies and students register and study for classes, in part, based on these policies. Professors value enrollment, learning, and student study time, and set policies taking into account how other professors grade. Male and female students value course types, the benefits associated with higher grades, and effort costs differently. We calculate how much of the differences in grading policies across fields is driven by differences in demand for courses in those fields and how much is due to differences in professor preferences across fields. We also decompose differences in female/male course taking across fields driven by differences in i) cognitive skills, ii) valuation of grades, iii) cost of studying, and iv) field preferences. We then run counterfactual simulations to evaluate changes to grading policies. Restrictions on grading policies that equalize grade distributions across classes result in higher (lower) grades in science (non-science) fields but more (less) work being required. As women are willing to study more than men, this restriction on grading policies results in more women pursuing the sciences and more men pursuing the non-sciences.
Competitive Pressure Widens the Gender Gap in Performance: Evidence from a Two‐Stage Competition in Mathematics
Nagore Iriberri & Pedro Rey‐Biel
Economic Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
In two‐stage elimination math contests participants from four different age groups compete to pass from stage 1 to stage 2 and later to be among the winners. Although female participants have higher Math grades at school the gender gap reverses in the two stages of the contests. More importantly, following the same individual participant across different stages, we find that the gender gap in performance increases from stage 1 to stage 2. The increase in female underperformance is attributed to higher competitive pressure and alternative explanations based on selection, discrimination and differences in reaction to increasing difficulty are ruled out.
Sex differences in the effects of acute stress on behavior in the ultimatum game
Farid Youssef et al.
Psychoneuroendocrinology, October 2018, Pages 126-131
Abstract:
Acute stress affects human decision making. It has been argued that there are systematic sex differences in behavioral responses to acute stress, with males showing a ‘fight or flight’ and females showing a ‘tend and befriend’ response. A ‘tend and befriend’ response would suggest that women become more cooperative under acute stress, while men do not. We investigated the effects of acute stress on social behavior. We induced stress via the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) and then immediately after measured how participants reacted to offers made in the ultimatum game by a male proposer. We found that female participants were less likely to reject offers under stress (n = 25) vs. no stress (n = 37), p = 0.009, independent of how fair these offers were, cooperative behavior consistent with the ‘tend and befriend’ hypothesis. Male participants when stressed (n = 30) did not show differences in rejections rates compared to the control condition (n = 26), p = 0.41. Our results provide support for a qualitatively different behavioral response to acute stress among men and women.
Cognitive consequences of the timing of puberty
Kristian Koerselman & Tuomas Pekkarinen
Labour Economics, October 2018, Pages 1-13
Abstract:
In this paper, we use British cohort data to study the degree to which children at different stages of pubertal development at age 11 and 16 differ in their cognitive and behavioral outcomes at age 16 as well as in their completed educational attainment and adult earnings. Controlling for age 7 cognitive skills, region of birth, father’s socioeconomic status and parents’ education, we show that boys’ late pubertal development is associated with lower levels of cognitive skills at 16, lower final educational attainment, and lower earnings in adulthood. For girls we find a similar negative relationship between late puberty and cognitive skills, but only imprecise relationships between the timing of puberty and adult outcomes. We fail to find evidence of strong associations with either motivation or problem behavior in adolescence for either gender, suggesting a more direct link between pubertal and cognitive development.
Tort Reforms and the Gender Distribution of Physicians
Hsueh-Hsiang Li & Alexandra Bernasek
Eastern Economic Journal, June 2018, Pages 437–454
Abstract:
Exploiting variation in tort laws at the state level, this paper finds empirical evidence of gender differences in responding to malpractice lawsuit liability by physicians. We find that a cap on non-economic damages increases female physicians’ relative representation in reform states by 1.297 percentage points (or 3.2 percent) among young physicians. This result is robust to the inclusion of state economic conditions, demographics, and the gender distribution of physicians by their state of birth, state of medical education, and state of residency training. No gender differences are found among physicians who are 35 years of age or older.
Reducing STEM gender bias with VIDS (video interventions for diversity in STEM)
Corinne Moss-Racusin et al.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, June 2018, Pages 236-260
Abstract:
Gender biases contribute to the underrepresentation of women in STEM. In response, the scientific community has called for methods to reduce bias, but few validated interventions exist. Thus, an interdisciplinary group of researchers and filmmakers partnered to create VIDS (Video Interventions for Diversity in STEM), which are short videos that expose participants to empirical findings from published gender bias research in 1 of 3 conditions. One condition illustrated findings using narratives (compelling stories), and the second condition presented the same results using expert interviews (straightforward facts). A hybrid condition included both narrative and expert interview videos. Results of two experiments revealed that relative to controls, VIDS successfully reduced gender bias and increased awareness of gender bias, positive attitudes toward women in STEM, anger, empathy, and intentions to engage in behaviors that promote gender parity in STEM. The narratives were particularly impactful for emotions, while the expert interviews most strongly impacted awareness and attitudes. The hybrid condition reflected the strengths of both the narratives and expert interviews (though effects were sometimes slightly weaker than the other conditions). VIDS produced substantial immediate effects among both men and women in the general population and STEM faculty, and effects largely persisted at follow-up.