Her Success
On the trajectory of discrimination: A meta-analysis and forecasting survey capturing 44 years of field experiments on gender and hiring decisions
Michael Schaerer et al.
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, November 2023
Abstract:
A preregistered meta-analysis, including 244 effect sizes from 85 field audits and 361,645 individual job applications, tested for gender bias in hiring practices in female-stereotypical and gender-balanced as well as male-stereotypical jobs from 1976 to 2020. A “red team” of independent experts was recruited to increase the rigor and robustness of our meta-analytic approach. A forecasting survey further examined whether laypeople (n = 499 nationally representative adults) and scientists (n = 312) could predict the results. Forecasters correctly anticipated reductions in discrimination against female candidates over time. However, both scientists and laypeople overestimated the continuation of bias against female candidates. Instead, selection bias in favor of male over female candidates was eliminated and, if anything, slightly reversed in sign starting in 2009 for mixed-gender and male-stereotypical jobs in our sample. Forecasters further failed to anticipate that discrimination against male candidates for stereotypically female jobs would remain stable across the decades.
Taste-Based Gender Favouritism in High Stakes Decisions: Evidence from The Price Is Right
Pavel Atanasov, Jason Dana & Bouke Klein Teeselink
Economic Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
Gender discrimination is present across various fields, but identifying the underlying mechanism is challenging. We demonstrate own-gender favouritism in a field setting that allows for clean identification of tastes versus beliefs: the One Bid game on the TV show The Price Is Right. Players must guess an item’s value without exceeding it, leaving the last bidder with a dominant ‘cutoff’ strategy of overbidding another player by $1. We show that last bidders are significantly more likely to cut off opposite-gender opponents. This behaviour is explained by own-gender favouritism rather than beliefs that cutting off opposite-gender opponents is more profitable.
Physical attractiveness and intergenerational social mobility
Alexi Gugushvili & Grzegorz Bulczak
Social Science Quarterly, forthcoming
Methods: Using data about 11,583 individuals from the United States National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we contribute to the existing scholarship by investigating if physical attractiveness, assessed when individuals are around 15 years old, is an important predictor of intergenerational social mobility measured after 20 years.
Results: We find that physical attractiveness matters both for males’ and females’ intergenerational social mobility outcomes, but it is more important for males, even when childhood characteristics, such as various aspects of parental socioeconomic position, individuals’ health, a proxy for IQ, neighborhood conditions, and interviewers’ fixed effects, are accounted for using imputed data for observations with missing information. Across three measures of social mobility -- education, occupation, and income -- physically attractive males are more likely to be socially mobile than males of average attractiveness.
Sexualize one, objectify all? The sexualization spillover effect on female job candidates
Laura Guillén, Maria Kakarika & Nathan Heflick
Journal of Organizational Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examined whether sexualizing a businesswoman impacts attitudes toward subsequently evaluated, nonsexualized females applying for a corporate managerial position. Research shows that sexualized women are perceived as less warm and competent (i.e., objectified). Integrating this work with research on social cognition, we hypothesized that the negative effect of sexualization “spills over” onto other nonsexualized women, reducing their hireability. Across two experiments, initially sexualized women were perceived as less warm and competent, as were subsequently evaluated nonsexualized female job candidates. In turn, these negative perceptions reduced the applicants' probability of being hired. Sexualization of women also increased intentions to hire a subsequently evaluated male candidate. The results were robust when we controlled for evaluators' gender and age. Our findings demonstrate that female job applicants can experience detrimental effects from sexually based objectification, even when they are not the individuals initially sexualized. We discuss implications for women's careers.
College major choice and beliefs about relative performance: An experimental intervention to understand gender gaps in STEM
Stephanie Owen
Economics of Education Review, December 2023
Abstract:
Beliefs about relative academic performance may shape college major choice and explain gender gaps in STEM, but little causal evidence exists. To test whether these beliefs are malleable and salient enough to change behavior, I run a randomized experiment with 5,700 undergraduates across seven introductory STEM courses. Providing relative performance information shrinks gender gaps in biased beliefs substantially. However, students’ course-taking and major choice are largely unchanged. If anything, initially overconfident men and women were discouraged by the intervention. Increasing female STEM participation may require more intensive or targeted intervention.
Heterogeneous peer effects in competitive environments: The case of high-school harriers
Nathan Ashby
Applied Economics Letters, forthcoming
Abstract:
Using exogenous enrolment-based assignments to high school athletic associations, I analyse peer effects in single-sex cross-country running competitions. I find evidence of improvements after promotion to more competitive classifications for boys and the combined sample while detecting evidence of improvement for girls after relegation. Boys in the top quartile and girls in the second lowest quartile demonstrate the largest improvements after being promoted to a higher classification. Two-stage least-squares estimates provide some confirmation of the mechanism through which classification changes impact performance, but identification is complicated by the heterogeneous responses by quartile. Rather than attributing findings to heterogeneous behaviour, the disparity can plausibly be explained by rational responses to heterogeneity in the payoff structure as determined by larger college scholarship opportunities for girls.
The Company She Seeks: How the Prismatic Effects of Ties to High-Status Network Contacts Can Reduce Status for Women in Groups
Siyu Yu & Catherine Shea
Organization Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Women experience chronically inferior returns in organizations. One common recommendation is to form instrumental network ties with high-status others in groups. We integrate research on social status, social perceptions, and gender issues in social networks to suggest that, despite the theoretical and empirical appeal of this approach, instrumental ties to high-status network contacts (versus ties to lower-status network contacts) in groups may incur hidden social status costs for women in intragroup status-conferral processes. Instrumental ties to high-status network contacts may be perceived as a sign of agency of the focal person, which violates feminine gender norms. Women with these high-status network contacts in groups may therefore be perceived as less communal, thus subsequently lowering their status in the eyes of other group members compared with women with lower-status network contacts. Studies 1–4, across cross-sectional, longitudinal, and experimental designs, support our model. Study 5 suggests that signaling a group-oriented goal may mitigate the interpersonal, social perceptual costs of instrumental ties to high-status network contacts for women. The effect of ties with high-status network contacts for men is relatively inconsistent. This research reveals a potential social-network dilemma for women: Instrumental ties to high-status network contacts in groups and organizations are necessary for success and should be encouraged, yet they may also create an extra social perceptual hurdle for women. Organizations need to investigate social and structural solutions that harness the benefits of high-status network contacts for women, while minimizing any potential social perceptual costs.
Gender equity and the gender gap in STEM: Is there really a paradox?
William Jergins
Journal of Population Economics, October 2023, Pages 3029–3056
Abstract:
This study uses an epidemiological approach to consider how culturally-inherited beliefs about appropriate gender roles may affect women’s relative representation in STEM. Prior literature has generally documented an inverse relationship between gender equity and women’s relative representation in STEM, known as the gender-equity paradox. When limiting to the sample of home countries to those considered in prior literature, I obtain robust evidence of a gender-equity paradox on both first and second-generation immigrants living in the USA. However, when I consider the full sample of home countries available, women’s relative representation in STEM no longer appears to decrease as equity increases. These results cast doubt on the existence of a gender-equity paradox between culturally-inherited beliefs about gender equality and women’s representation in STEM and have important implications for policy design.
An Experiment on Gender Representation in Majoritarian Bargaining
Andrzej Baranski et al.
Management Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Women are underrepresented in business, academic, and political decision-making bodies across the world. To investigate the causal effect of gender representation on multilateral negotiations, we experimentally manipulate the composition of triads in a majoritarian, divide-the-dollar game. We document a robust gender gap in earnings driven largely by the exclusion of women from alliances rather than differential shares within alliances. Experiments with different subject pools show that distinct bargaining dynamics can underlie the same inequitable outcomes; gender-biased outcomes can be caused by outright discrimination, but they can also be driven by more complex dynamics related to differences in bargaining strategies. Although replacing the male with a female majority all but eliminates the gap in one pool, it has minimal effect in the other. These findings show that there is no “one-size-fits-all” solution to the gender gap we uncovered and highlight the importance of studying bargaining dynamics in detail.
What makes a role model motivating for young girls? The effects of the role model’s growth versus fixed mindsets about ability and interest
Jessica Gladstone et al.
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, February 2024
Abstract:
Successful women role models can be -- but are not always -- effective in increasing pursuit of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers among girls. What makes a woman role model motivating for young girls? An experimental study (N = 205 girls aged 5–8 years; 42.0% girls of color) investigated the effects of a role model’s messages about her own ability and interest. The model portrayed her ability and interest as quantities that developed over time (a growth mindset) or that had always been present (a fixed mindset). The role model’s growth (vs. fixed) mindset messages about ability -- but not interest -- increased girls’ interest and self-efficacy in the scientist’s field, but these effects were observed only among girls of color (ds = 0.56 and 0.65 for interest and self-efficacy, respectively). The findings contribute to theory on role models and growth mindsets, and they also have implications for the design of effective role model interventions.