Face Value
Jennifer Wessel et al.
Psychology of Women Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Due to gender-based bias, women can be at a disadvantage when trying to enter into traditionally masculine fields (e.g., engineering) or job positions (e.g., top management). The present study examined the effectiveness of two verbal gender presentation strategies that women might be able to use to improve their evaluations in traditionally masculine hiring contexts: verbalizing agentic traits (describing oneself in terms of stereotypically masculine traits) and gender acknowledgment. In a laboratory study, 674 participants evaluated either a female or a male applicant applying for a traditionally masculine position in a traditionally masculine field (engineering manager). Results showed that verbalizing one’s agentic traits resulted in favorable fit evaluations for the female applicant but not the male applicant. Further, acknowledging one’s gender resulted in negative personal evaluations for both female and male applicants. Our findings suggest that applicants’ decisions concerning how to manage their gender presentation can influence how they are evaluated and that women seeking entry into traditionally masculine occupations may want to describe themselves in agentic terms and avoid acknowledging their gender.
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ChangHwan Kim & Arthur Sakamoto
Social Problems, May 2014, Pages 283-304
Abstract:
Asian Americans have long been popularly portrayed as a “model minority” that has achieved approximate labor market parity with whites. However, this characterization has been alternatively described as “a destructive myth,” especially for those who do not have high levels of education. Our analysis focuses on less educated Asian Americans who may be particularly neglected in the labor market because of their incongruence with the model minority image. Consistent with this focus, we specify quantile regression models that estimate net racial effects at both the lower and the higher ends of the distribution of earnings. The results indicate that Asian American men who drop out of high school earn substantially less than comparable whites at the low end of the earnings distribution. This pattern of racial differentials seems to be consistent with the “destructive myth” perspective and inconsistent with the alternative explanation of negative educational selectivity. In general, our findings illustrate the fruitfulness of Kevin Leicht’s (2008) proposed research agenda of studying racial disadvantage by disaggregated class-related groupings and across the entire distribution of earnings rather than focusing exclusively on one overall racial differential that is assessed as a conditional mean.
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Risky Spaces, Gendered Places: The Effect of Risky Contexts on Women and Men’s Performance
Susan Fisk
Stanford University Working Paper, August 2014
Abstract:
Power, money, status, and other important societal rewards are frequently earned in risky settings; therefore, performance in these contexts has broad implications for the distribution of resources in society. However, risk-taking itself is extremely masculinized, which may lead women to perform worse in risky contexts. This paper explores whether risky contexts depress the task performance of women using data from a laboratory experiment as well as data from a large undergraduate engineering course. I find that women have worse task performance than men in risky contexts, independent of the gendering of the task and even when baseline performance is controlled. This “risky contexts” phenomenon may perpetuate gender inequality due to the societal rewards that often accompany performance in risky settings and may even contribute to the dearth of women in positions of leadership and power. Possible interventions to counteract this “risky contexts” phenomenon are discussed.
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Zachary Brewster & Michael Lynn
Sociological Inquiry, forthcoming
Abstract:
There is a rich history of social science research centering on racial inequalities that continue to be observed across various markets (e.g., labor, housing, and credit markets) and social milieus. Existing research on racial discrimination in consumer markets is, however, relatively scarce and that which has been done has disproportionately focused on consumers as the victims of race-based mistreatment. As such, we know relatively little about how consumers contribute to inequalities in their roles as perpetrators of racial discrimination. In response, in this article, we elaborate on a line of research that is only in its infancy stages of development and yet is ripe with opportunities to advance the literature on consumer racial discrimination and racial earnings inequities among tip-dependent employees in the United States. Specifically, we analyze data derived from an exit survey of restaurant consumers (N = 394) in an attempt to replicate, extend, and further explore the recently documented effect of service providers’ race on restaurant consumers’ tipping decisions. Our results indicate that both white and black restaurant customers discriminate against black servers by tipping them less than their white co-workers. Importantly, we find no evidence that this black tip penalty is the result of inter-racial differences in service skills possessed by black and white servers. We conclude by delineating directions for future research in this neglected but salient area of study.
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Norma Riccucci & Karina Saldivar
Review of Public Personnel Administration, September 2014, Pages 263-288
Abstract:
Research indicates that women and people of color have made progress in gaining entry-level jobs in government, particularly at the federal level, but still lag behind in gaining positions at the upper levels. But, can the same be said for police and fire departments which have had perhaps the worst history of employment discrimination against women and people of color? This study seeks to answer this question by examining the extent to which race, gender or ethnic discrimination suits are being filed against city fire and police departments across the country, and at what level — entry or senior. The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Ricci v. DeStefano has renewed interest in this issue. Interestingly enough, while this study expected to find that lawsuits against police and fire departments are being filed by women and people of color in order to improve their representation in the uniformed services, it found just the opposite — the preponderance of the lawsuits filed against police and fire departments are “reverse discrimination” suits, filed by White men.
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Eric Kushins
Race and Social Problems, September 2014, Pages 237-248
Abstract:
Research has shown that listeners can identify black and white speakers with high accuracy rates from voice alone, but few studies have investigated whether individuals can identify Asian American native English speakers. In a three-part hypothetical employment process experiment, recordings of white, black, and US-born Asian American voices are used to test participants’ (N = 49) race identification of unseen speakers, evaluations of speakers’ employability, and accuracy of race identification with the introduction of headshots. Key findings show the following: judges demonstrate high accuracy rates of identifying white and black speakers based on voice alone, judges rated the black speaker at least eight times less likely to be hired than the white and Asian American speakers, and accuracy rates of race identification for the Asian American speaker rose dramatically with the introduction of headshots. The study contributes to research on Asian American English speech and extends work on stereotyping and employment discrimination.
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Gregory Walton et al.
Journal of Educational Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
A randomized-controlled trial tested two brief interventions designed to mitigate the effects of a “chilly climate” women may experience in engineering, especially in male-dominated fields. Participants were students entering a selective university engineering program. The social-belonging intervention aimed to protect students’ sense of belonging in engineering by providing a nonthreatening narrative with which to interpret instances of adversity. The affirmation-training intervention aimed to help students manage stress that can arise from social marginalization by incorporating diverse aspects of their self-identity in their daily academic lives. As expected, gender differences and intervention effects were concentrated in male-dominated majors (<20% women). In these majors, as compared to control conditions, both interventions raised women’s school-reported engineering grade-point-average (GPA) over the full academic year, eliminating gender differences. Both also led women to view daily adversities as more manageable and improved women’s academic attitudes. However, the two interventions had divergent effects on women’s social experiences. The social-belonging intervention helped women integrate into engineering, for instance increasing friendships with male engineers. Affirmation-training helped women develop external resources, deepening their identification with their gender group. The results highlight how social marginalization contributes to gender inequality in quantitative fields and two potential remedies.
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Danny Yagan
NBER Working Paper, July 2014
Abstract:
The consequences of banning affirmative action depend on schools' ability and willingness to avoid it. This paper uses rich application-level data to estimate the effect of the 1996 University of California affirmative action ban -- the first and largest ban -- on black admission advantages at UC law schools. Controlling for selective attrition from applicant pools, I find that the ban reduced the black admission rate from 61% to 31%. This implies that affirmative action ban avoidance is far from complete and suggests that affirmative action at law schools passes the constitutional test of not being easily replaced by non-racial alternatives. I further find that the affirmative action ban far from eliminated cross-sectional black admission advantages, which remained as high as 63 percentage points for applicants at the margin of being accepted or rejected. This suggests that UC schools were technologically able to sustain substantially higher black admission rates after the ban but were either unwilling or legally unable to do so.
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Jean Oggins
Sex Roles, forthcoming
Abstract:
Best American anthologies aim to publish the past-year’s best work from U.S. and Canadian magazines, journals, and newspapers. This study collected data on characteristics of pieces of writing (N = 4374) from Best American anthologies of short stories, poetry, essays, and nonfiction (on travel, science/nature and sports) published between 1978 and 2012 to see if selection of women’s pieces correlated with type of writing (genre), gender of the annual-issue editor, or original publication in 1 of the 6 most common (top-six) media sources in each genre. The study also asked if representation of women’s writing changed in 2011 after a women’s literary group reported women’s underrepresentation in the series. Findings showed better representation of women’s short stories and poetry than essays and especially nonfiction in the anthologies. Male editors — the majority of editors — tended to select more writing from men (especially essays and nonfiction) than from women, consistent with studies showing male scientists cite men’s work more than women’s. Men were also especially likely to have essays and science-writing selected from top-media. In 2011, 5 of 6 issue-editors chosen were women, and selected more women’s work than before. A multiple regression showed that selection of women’s writing correlated significantly and positively with (short-story) genre and publication in 2011 compared to before. Editor’s female gender was a marginally significant positive predictor. Publication in a top-science or essay journal correlated positively with selection of men’s work. The way genre and editor’s gender may compound bias towards publishing men’s writing is discussed.
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Melinda Weathers et al.
Journal of Sports Media, Fall 2014, Pages 1-24
Abstract:
Social media have been embraced by the sports world at an extraordinary pace and, as such, have become a viable avenue for sports broadcasters to redefine their roles as celebrities. However, given the differences in the ways females and males are utilized in sports broadcasts, it is plausible that differences also exist in how they present themselves. This study employed content analyses, guided by Goffman’s (1959) seminal theory of self-presentation to compare Erin Andrews and Kirk Herbstreit’s tweets during the 2012–2013 college football season. Findings indicate that both broadcasters’ self-presentation fell along traditional gender lines, as Andrews primarily discussed personal items, whereas Herbstreit largely provided sports-related commentary and analysis. The results suggest that although Twitter provides an avenue for female sports broadcasters to break down gender barriers, it currently serves to reify their subordinate sports-media roles.
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Age, Gender, and Compensation: A Study of Hollywood Movie Stars
Irene De Pater, Timothy Judge & Brent Scott
Journal of Management Inquiry, October 2014, Pages 407-420
Abstract:
Research on the gender-wage gap shows equivocal evidence regarding its magnitude, which likely stems from the different wage-related variables researchers include in their calculations. To examine whether pay differentials solely based on gender exist, we focused on the earnings of top performing professionals within a specific occupation to rule out productivity-related explanations for the gender-wage gap. Specifically, we investigated the interaction of gender and age on the earnings of Hollywood top movie stars. The results reveal that the average earnings per film of female movie stars increase until the age of 34 but decrease rapidly thereafter. Male movie stars’ average earnings per film reach the maximum at age 51 and remain stable after that.
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On the blurring of the color line: Wages and employment for Black males of different skin tones
Daniel Kreisman & Marcos Rangel
Review of Economics and Statistics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We evaluate the role skin color plays in earnings and employment for Black males in the NLSY97. By applying a novel, scaled measure of skin tone to a nationally representative sample, and by estimating the evolution of labor market differentials over time, we bridge a burgeoning literature on skin color with more established literatures on wage differentials and labor market discrimination. We find that while intra-racial wage gaps widen with experience, gaps between the lightest skinned Black workers and Whites remain constant, suggesting that a “blurring of the color line“ elicits subtle yet meaningful variation in earnings differentials over time.
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Discrimination and Employment Protection
Steinar Holden & Åsa Rosén
Journal of the European Economic Association, forthcoming
Abstract:
We study a search model with employment protection legislation. We show that if the output from the match is uncertain at the hiring stage, a discriminatory equilibrium may exist in which workers with the same productive characteristics are subject to different hiring standards. If a bad match takes place, discriminated workers will take longer to find another job, prolonging the costly period for the firm. This makes it less profitable for firms to hire discriminated workers, thus sustaining the discrimination. In contrast to Becker's model, the existence of employers with a taste for discrimination may make it more profitable to discriminate, even for firms without discriminatory preferences.
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Charles Becker, Cecilia Elena Rouse & Mingyu Chen
NBER Working Paper, August 2014
Abstract:
In the 1970s, the American Economic Association (AEA) was one of several professional associations to launch a summer program with the goal of increasing racial and ethnic diversity in its profession. In this paper we estimate the effectiveness of the AEA’s program which, to the best of our knowledge, is the first to rigorously study such a summer program. Using a comparison group consisting of those who applied to, but did not attend, the program and controlling for an array of background characteristics, we find that program participants were over 40 percentage points more likely to apply to and attend a PhD program in economics, 26 percentage points more likely to complete a PhD, and about 15 percentage points more likely to ever work in an economics-related academic job. Using our estimates, we calculate that the program may directly account for 17-21 percent of the PhDs awarded to minorities in economics over the past 20 years.
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Academic Performance and Single-Sex Schooling: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Switzerland
Gerald Eisenkopf et al.
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
We study the effects of random assignment to coeducational and single-sex classes on the academic performance of female high school students who all face the same curriculum. The students’ academic performance is observed over a time period of up to four years. Our estimation results show that single-sex schooling improves the performance of female students in mathematics. This positive effect is particularly large for female students with high ex-ante ability. An accompanying survey reveals that single-sex schooling also strengthens female students’ self-confidence and renders the self-assessment of their mathematics skills more level-headed.
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Understanding Differences in College Enrollment: Race, Class and Cultural Capital
David Merolla & Omari Jackson
Race and Social Problems, September 2014, Pages 280-292
Abstract:
Scholarship on race and class differences in educational outcomes has identified cultural capital, or cultural resources that can be utilized to increase educational success, as important mechanisms of educational inequality. However, despite substantial interest, the role of cultural capital in producing inequalities among American students remains unclear. In this research, we use nationally representative data from the Educational Longitudinal Study to clarify the relationships among race, social class, cultural capital and 4-year college enrollment. Using a theoretically based approach to operationalizing social class and measures of both cultural capital possession and activation, this research finds that while black students tend to possess fewer resources than their white counterparts at any class level, they activate cultural capital to a greater degree than white students. Results also show that while cultural capital can explain differences between low-income and middle-income students, a persistent middle-class advantage remains for both black and white students. Additionally, results indicate that at any class level, black students are more likely than their white counterparts to attend a 4-year university. Finally, results show that measures of cultural capital possession and activation have generally independent effects on college enrollment.
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Women Helping Women? Evidence from Private Sector Data on Workplace Hierarchies
Astrid Kunze & Amalia Miller
University of Virginia Working Paper, July 2014
Abstract:
This paper studies gender spillovers in career advancement using 11 years of employer-employee matched data on the population of white-collar workers at over 4,000 private-sector establishments in Norway. Our data include unusually detailed job information for each worker, which enables us to define seven hierarchical ranks that are consistent across establishments and over time in order to measure promotions (defined as year-to-year rank increases) even for individuals who change employers. We first find that women have significantly lower promotion rates than men across all ranks of the corporate hierarchy, even after controlling for a range of individual characteristics (age, education, tenure, experience) and including fixed effects for current rank, year, industry, and even work establishment. In measuring the effects of female coworkers, we find positive gender spillovers across ranks (flowing from higher-ranking to lower-ranking women) but negative spillovers within ranks. The finding that greater female representation at higher ranks narrows the gender gap in promotion rates at lower ranks suggests that policies that increase female representation in corporate leadership can have spillover benefits to women in lowers ranks.
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The face says it all: CEOs, gender, and predicting corporate performance
Julianna Pillemer, Elizabeth Graham & Deborah Burke
Leadership Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study examined relationships among CEOs' facial appearance, gender-linked traits, and the financial performance of their company as indicated by Fortune 1000 rank and company profits. Naïve college students rated traits based solely on the facial appearance of male and female CEOs whose companies were matched by Fortune 1000 rank. Female CEOs were rated higher than male CEOs on communal traits (supportiveness, compassion, warmth), whereas male CEOs were rated higher than female CEOs on agentic traits (dominance, leadership, powerfulness), consistent with social role theory. Correlations with company rank and/or profits were found for powerfulness for male CEOs, and for supportiveness, warmth and compassion for female CEOs. For female CEOs, a communal composite predicted company rank and profits, and an agentic composite marginally predicted company rank. The findings do not indicate why these variables are related, but implications for the association of gender-linked traits with top corporate leaders are discussed.
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Gendered Employment Trends and the Female College Boom
Vedant Koppera & Aashish Mehta
University of California Working Paper, July 2014
Abstract:
We ask whether shifting male and female employment patterns can help to explain why the US college boom between 1981 and 2005 was dominated by women. We make three contributions. First, we show that while a massive feminization of high-wage, high-skill occupations plausibly contributed to the female college boom, general, structural movements of labor (undifferentiated by gender) from industrial work into education-intensive services should have encouraged male rather than female college attendance. Previous work has suggested that both types of employment shifts would have contributed to the female college boom. Second, we show that women’s occupational upgrading was too large and ubiquitous to be explained by their growing educational advantage. This is consistent with a causal connection running from gendered employment trends to a female college boom. Third, we show that gender specializations in many occupations deepened, with college educated women gravitating towards jobs offering institutionally protected wages.
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Fabian Ochsenfeld
European Sociological Review, August 2014, Pages 536-548
Abstract:
As men are overrepresented in lucrative fields and women disproportionately graduate from disciplines that yield low wages in the labour market, horizontal sex segregation in higher education contributes significantly to economic gender inequality. However, what underlies the association between sex composition and wages in fields of study? We draw on data from the German HIS Graduate Panel Study 1997 (N = 4,092) and use hierarchical linear models to adjudicate between devaluation theory and explanations based on differential sorting processes: human capital and gender role theory. The resulting evidence for both human capital and devaluation theory is scant. Consistent with gender role theory, differences in the attractiveness of fields to students with a careerist approach to higher education and the labour market in turn explain most of the association between field of studies’ sex composition and wage levels. We therefore conclude that gendered patterns of self-selection that derive from men’s socialization into the breadwinner role rather than valuative discrimination or rational anticipation of career interruptions underlie the association between fields’ sex composition and wage levels.
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Do single-sex schools make girls more competitive?
Soohyung Lee, Muriel Niederle & Namwook Kang
Economics Letters, September 2014, Pages 474–477
Abstract:
We examine the effect of single-sex schooling on students’ competitiveness by studying middle school students in Seoul who were randomly assigned to either single-sex or coeducational schools within their school districts. Contrary to popular belief and existing studies, our results suggest that single-sex schooling does not reduce the gender gap in competitiveness conditional on student and parental characteristics.
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Wages, Employment, and Statistical Discrimination: Evidence from the Laboratory
David Dickinson & Ronald Oaxaca
Economic Inquiry, October 2014, Pages 1380–1391
Abstract:
We report results from laboratory experiments designed to examine statistical discrimination. Our design expands upon existing research by generating data both on wage contracts and unemployment rates of directly competing worker groups. We find some evidence for statistical wage discrimination against workers having an identical expected productivity but a higher productivity variance. However, those same subjects are less likely to be unemployed, suggesting that our employer-subjects view hiring choice and wage contracts as substitutable. A clear implication is that field data discrimination estimates based on wages alone may overestimate the true impact of such discrimination.
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Are Asian American Women Advantaged? Labor Market Performance of College Educated Female Workers
ChangHwan Kim & Yang Zhao
Social Forces, forthcoming
Abstract:
Prior research reveals that the labor-market performance of Asian American women exceeds that of white women. Using the 2003 National Survey of College Graduates, this study investigates the aspects of the labor market in which the Asian advantage may occur — unemployment, annual earnings, and the number of people supervised. Our results show that when controlling for field of study, college type, region of residence, and other demographic variables, none of the Asian American female groups are advantaged on any of the three aspects. Contrary to the popular perception, even native-born Asian American women are not advantaged. Instead, they are more likely than white women to be unemployed, and once employed they are less likely to attain positions that involve supervising a large number of people. Asian American women who immigrated after high school are disadvantaged in all three respects, even if they earn their highest degree at a US institution. Those who immigrated before high school fare better than other Asian American groups, but they are still disadvantaged in terms of the number of people supervised. The implications of these findings are discussed.
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Peter McHenry & Melissa McInerney
Journal of Human Resources, Summer 2014, Pages 695-722
Abstract:
While evidence about discrimination in U.S. labor markets typically implies preferential treatment for whites, recent studies document a substantial wage premium for black women (for example, Fryer 2011). Although differential selection of black and white women into the labor market has been a suggested explanation, we demonstrate that accounting for selection does not eliminate the estimated premium. We then incorporate two additional omitted variables recently documented in the literature: (1) local cost of living and (2) years of education attained, conditional on AFQT score. After controlling for these variables, we find no evidence of a wage premium for black women.
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The Influence of Labor Market Changes on First-Time Medical School Applicant Pools
David Cort & Emory Morrison
Academic Medicine, forthcoming
Purpose: To explore whether the number and composition of first-time applicants to U.S. MD-granting medical schools, which have fluctuated over the past 30 years, are related to changes in labor market strength, specifically the unemployment rate and wages.
Method: The authors merged time series data from 1980 through 2010 (inclusive) from five sources and used multivariate time series models to determine whether changes in labor market strength (and several other macro-level factors) were related to the number of the medical school applicants as reported by the American Medical College Application Service. Analyses were replicated across specific sex and race/ethnicity applicant pools.
Results: Two results surfaced in the analyses. First, the strength of the labor market was not influential in explaining changes in applicant pool sizes for all applicants, but was strongly influential in explaining changes for black and Hispanic males. Increases of $1,000 in prevailing median wages produced a 1.6% decrease in the white male applicant pool, while 1% increases in the unemployment rate were associated with 4.5% and 3.1% increases in, respectively, the black and Hispanic male applicant pools. Second, labor market strength was a more important determinant in applications from males than in applications from females.
Conclusions: Although stakeholders cannot directly influence the overall economic market, they can plan and prepare for fewer applications from males, especially those who are black and Hispanic, when the labor market is strong.