Looking like a nation
School Deferred: When Bias Affects School Leaders
Shoshana Jarvis & Jason Okonofua
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
In the classroom, Black students are disciplined more frequently and more severely for the same misbehaviors as White students. Though teachers have influence over disciplinary actions, the final decisions for exclusionary discipline (i.e., suspensions and expulsions) are principals’ responsibility. We test how principals make disciplinary decisions in a preregistered experiment. Principals endorsed more severe discipline for Black students compared with White students across two time points. Further, this discipline severity was explained through Black students being more likely to be labeled a troublemaker than White students. Future efforts should focus on principals in order to mitigate the negative impacts of the school-to-prison pipeline.
The pay premium for high‐potential women: A constructive replication and refinement
George Dreher, Nancy Carter & Terry Dworkin
Personnel Psychology, Winter 2019, Pages 495-511
Abstract:
In this constructive replication we revisit a provocative study by Leslie, Manchester, and Dahm (2017). They found that gender and being designated a high‐potential employee interacted in accounting for pay and that this resulted in a reversal in the commonly observed gender pay gap favoring men. Our primary aim was to examine important boundary conditions associated with their work by a) conducting a study using a sample that would better generalize across industries and to individuals who aspire to reach senior management, b) adding critical control variables to the statistical models used in the pay equation, and c) by introducing a different conceptualization of the high‐potential construct. Also, to better understand the consequences of their study we considered an additional dependent variable that addressed pay satisfaction. Even after making these model additions, the gender by high‐potential interaction term was significant – ruling out four plausible third‐variable explanations for the Leslie et al. (2017) finding. And these confirming results were observed using a sample that represented individuals employed in a wide range of industries, and who had the educational backgrounds, career histories, and motivational states typically required of candidates competing for senior‐executive roles. Furthermore, high‐potential women did not report higher levels of pay satisfaction, suggesting that high‐potential women did not perceive their pay premium to be an inequitable advantage and that there may be limited positive return associated with using a pay premium to retain high‐potential talent.
Women Don’t Mean Business? Gender Penalty in Board Composition
Isabelle Solal & Kaisa Snellman
Organization Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examine investor responses to board diversity and highlight a previously unexplored mechanism to explain negative market reactions to senior female appointments. Drawing on signaling theory, we propose that an increase in board diversity leads investors to update their beliefs about firm preferences. Specifically, we argue that a gender-diverse board is interpreted as revealing a preference for diversity and a weaker commitment to shareholder value. Consequently, firms with more female directors will be penalized. We test our argument using 14 years of panel data on U.S. public firms. We find that firms that increase board diversity suffer a decrease in market value and that this effect is amplified for firms that have received higher ratings for their diversity practices across the organization. These results suggest that observers respond to the presence of female leaders not simply on their own merit but as broader cues of firm preferences and that firms may counteract any potential signaling effect through careful framing.
How leader gender influences external audience response to organizational failures
Nicole Votolato Montgomery & Amanda Cowen
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Across 3 studies, we examine how leader gender affects external audiences’ reactions to organizational failures, and under what conditions such effects are likely to occur. We find that leader gender and failure type (ethical, competence) interact to affect individuals’ perceptions of, and propensity to support, an organization after a failure. People respond more negatively to ethical failures when an organization has a female versus a male leader. In contrast, competence failures generally elicit a less negative response for female-led versus male-led organizations. These effects are mediated by trust in the organization. We also show that these relationships are moderated by factors that influence evaluators’ communal perceptions of leaders (e.g., leader descriptions) or their expectations regarding organizational competence (e.g., gender congruence). Our findings contribute to the literatures on female leaders, organizational failures, and the influence of norms on evaluator judgments.
Last to Come and Last to Go? On the Complex Role of Gender and Ethnicity in the Reputational Penalties for Directors Linked to Corporate Fraud
Ivana Naumovska, Georg Wernicke & Edward Zajac
Academy of Management Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
Scholars have found consistent evidence that directors who served on boards of firms accused of misconduct face reputational penalties in the director labor market. While this is often interpreted in terms of an ex post settling-up process that penalizes directors for failing in their role as monitors of management, the fundamentally social basis of the director labor markets suggests that the ex post settling-up process may also incorporate a resource-provisioning role for directors as conferrers of legitimacy. We analyze how evolving social norms that aim to redress the longstanding underrepresentation of female and ethnic minority directors may lessen — for these sought-after directors — the penalties typically imposed by the labor market in the aftermath of corporate misconduct. Using a proprietary dataset on financial misconduct and directors’ demographic characteristics, we find strong support for our hypotheses regarding a possible “reputational immunity” effect. We also provide supplementary analyses demonstrating the specific mechanisms underlying our predictions, and establishing the robustness of our results to a variety of alternative explanations. We discuss the implications of our theoretical perspective and empirical findings for future research on corporate governance, corporate misconduct, and the possible duality of minority status as it relates to discriminatory outcomes in modern labor markets.
The Long-Term Effects of California's 2004 Paid Family Leave Act on Women's Careers: Evidence from U.S. Tax Data
Martha Bailey et al.
NBER Working Paper, October 2019
Abstract:
This paper uses IRS tax data to evaluate the short- and long-term effects of California’s 2004 Paid Family Leave Act (PFLA) on women’s careers. Our research design exploits the increased availability of paid leave for women giving birth in the third quarter of 2004 (just after PFLA was implemented). These mothers were 18 percentage points more likely to use paid leave but otherwise identical to multiple comparison groups in pre-birth demographic, marital, and work characteristics. We find little evidence that PFLA increased women’s employment, wage earnings, or attachment to employers. For new mothers, taking up PFLA reduced employment by 7 percent and lowered annual wages by 8 percent six to ten years after giving birth. Overall, PFLA tended to reduce the number of children born and, by decreasing mothers’ time at work, increase time spent with children.
My Brother's Keeper? The Impact of Targeted Educational Supports
Thomas Dee & Emily Penner
NBER Working Paper, October 2019
Abstract:
The My Brother’s Keeper (MBK) Challenge developed by President Obama supports communities that promote civic initiatives designed to improve the educational and economic opportunities specifically for young men of color. In Oakland, California, the MBK educational initiative features the African American Male Achievement (AAMA) program. The AAMA focuses on regularly scheduled classes exclusively for Black, male students and taught by Black, male teachers who focus on social-emotional training, African-American history, culturally relevant pedagogy, and academic supports. In this study, we present quasi-experimental evidence on the dropout effects of the AAMA by leveraging its staggered scale-up across high schools in the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD). We find that AAMA availability led to a significant reduction in the number of Black males who dropped out as well as smaller reductions among Black females, particularly in 9th grade.
History backfires: Reminders of past injustices against women undermine support for workplace policies promoting women
Ivona Hideg & Anne Wilson
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, forthcoming
Abstract:
Public discourse on current inequalities often invokes past injustice endured by minorities. This rhetoric also sometimes underlies contemporary equality policies. Drawing on social identity theory and the employment equity literature, we suggest that reminding people about past injustice against a disadvantaged group (e.g., women) can invoke social identity threat among advantaged group members (e.g., men) and undermine support for employment equity (EE) policies by fostering the belief that inequality no longer exists. We find support for our hypotheses in four studies examining Canadian (three studies) and American (one study) EE policies. Overall, we found that reminders of past injustice toward women undermined men’s support for an EE policy promoting women by heightening their denial of current gender discrimination. Supporting a social identity account, men’s responses were mediated by collective self-esteem, and were attenuated when threat was mitigated. Reminders of past injustice did not influence women’s support for the EE policy.
Apologies in the #MeToo moment
Georgia Nigro et al.
Psychology of Popular Media Culture, forthcoming
Abstract:
In 2 studies, we examined apologies for sexual misconduct. In Study 1, we coded 37 public apologies offered for sexual misconduct between October 2017 and May 2018 by male members of the Arts & Entertainment and Media industries, using a scheme adapted from the study by Slocum, Allan, and Allan (2011). In Study 2, 2 samples of male and female participants judged 4 apologies crafted for a transgression involving multiple victims, based on the cases coded in Study 1. Study 1 revealed that the public apologies contained many more elements with a focus on the accused’s feelings and behavior (self-focus) than elements with a focus on the accuser’s needs and feelings (self-other focus). Study 2 showed that apologies with a focus on the accuser’s needs and feelings (self-other focus) were judged as more sincere, more acceptable, more likely to meet a victim’s needs, and more likely to lead to closure than apologies with elements that focused on the accused’s feelings and behavior. However, college-aged men did not follow this pattern, offering higher ratings for apologies with different emphases.
Does Corporate Culture Add Value? Evidence from the Harvey Weinstein Scandal and the #MeToo Movement
Karl Lins et al.
University of Utah Working Paper, September 2019
Abstract:
During the revelation of the Weinstein scandal and the emergence of the subsequent #MeToo movement, firms with a female-friendly corporate culture, as proxied by having more women among the firm’s five highest paid executives, earned excess returns of close to 1.5% per highly-paid female executive. These findings also hold when we relate the stock returns to corporate culture measured more broadly based on employee ratings. Our findings are stronger for industries with fewer women in executive positions. However, we find no evidence that having more women on the board is related to returns around these events. Overall, our results illustrate that having women in significant senior leadership positions can increase shareholder wealth.
Gender Pay Gaps in U.S. Federal Science Agencies: An Organizational Approach
Laurel Smith-Doerr et al.
American Journal of Sociology, September 2019, Pages 534-576
Abstract:
This study advances understanding of gender pay gaps by examining organizational variation. The gender pay gap literature supplies mechanisms but does not attend to organizational variation; the gender and science literature provides insights on the role of masculinist culture in disciplines but misses pay gap mechanisms. A data set of federal workers allows comparison of men and women in the same jobs and workplaces. Agencies associated with traditionally masculine (engineering, physical sciences) and gender-neutral (biological, interdisciplinary sciences) fields differ. Pay-gap mechanisms vary: human capital differences explain a larger share in gender-neutral agencies, while at male-typed agencies men are frequently paid more than women within the same job. Although beyond the federal workers’ standardized pay scale, some interdisciplinary agencies more often pay men off grade, leading to higher earnings for men. Our theory of organizational variation helps explain local agency variation and how pay practices matter in specific organizational contexts.
The Tall and the Short of the Returns to Height
Michael Baker & Kirsten Cornelson
NBER Working Paper, September 2019
Abstract:
We present new evidence of the correlation of height with important socioeconomic outcomes, finding the height profile is significantly non linear at mean height, especially for males. We trace this non linearity back to the adult height profiles of cognitive scores from the teenage and childhood years. Measures of birthweight and parental height have independent, mediating impacts on the adult height profiles of age 7 cognitive scores. However, the majority of the significant variation of male scores at heights below the average remains within birthweight/parental height cells.
Us versus Them: The Responses of Managers to the Feminization of High-Status Occupations
Tamar Kricheli-Katz
Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World, October 2019
Abstract:
What happens when more and more women enter high-status occupations that were previously male-dominated occupations? This article explores how the processes by which the entrance of women into high-status occupations has affected the hiring, income, and perceived competence of women. I present the results of a general population experiment conducted on a large, random sample of the U.S. population. The experiment was designed to explore the hiring, income, and perceived competence of all women when high-status occupations become predominantly female. I show that when male managers are exposed to information about high-status occupations’ becoming predominantly female, they evaluate women who work in other high-status occupations as less competent, tend to hire them less frequently, and offer them lower salaries. Female managers, however, tend to respond to such changes in the labor force by valuing women more highly.
Abstract Thinking Increases Support for Affirmative Action
Alexandra Fleischmann & Pascal Burgmer
Sex Roles, forthcoming
Abstract:
Affirmative action is the proactive process of using resources to ensure that people are not discriminated against based on their group membership, such as gender or ethnicity. It is an effective way to reduce discrimination, but attitudes toward affirmative action are often negative, especially in groups implementing affirmative action. Previous research identified different influences on attitudes toward affirmative action, but mainly unchangeable ones. We focus on the influence of abstract thinking on support for affirmative action because abstract thinking is a changeable characteristic that can direct attention to the purpose of affirmative action policies. Across five studies with U.S. MTurk workers — focusing on women as the target group, but including other target groups as well — we show that thinking abstractly improves attitudes toward affirmative action. We observe this effect using correlational (Study 1, n = 251) and experimental (Studies 2–5, ns = 201–515) designs. Additionally, we test whether perceived discrimination increases the impact of abstract thinking on attitudes toward affirmation action (Studies 2–5). We report a meta-analysis across our studies. Overall, thinking abstractly about affirmative action clearly leads to more favorable attitudes toward it, and this effect is somewhat stronger when discrimination is perceived to be high. Consequently, companies and policymakers that would like to increase support for affirmative action policies could use abstract thinking to do so, for example by encouraging employees to think about and discuss why (vs. how) affirmative action policies are implemented.
Stereotype Threat in Virtual Learning Environments: Effects of Avatar Gender and Sexist Behavior on Women's Math Learning Outcomes
Felix Chang et al.
Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, October 2019, Pages 634-640
Abstract:
Women in math, science, and engineering (MSE) often face stereotype threat: they fear that their performance in MSE will confirm an existing negative stereotype — that women are bad at math — which in turn may impair their learning and performance in math. This research investigated if sexist nonverbal behavior of a male instructor could activate stereotype threat among women in a virtual classroom. In addition, the research examined if learners' avatar representation in virtual reality altered this nonverbal process. Specifically, a 2 (avatar gender: female vs. male) × 2 (instructor behavior: dominant sexist vs. nondominant or nonsexist) between-subjects experiment was used. Data from 76 female college students demonstrated that participants learned less and performed worse when interacting with a sexist male instructor compared with a nonsexist instructor in a virtual classroom. Participants learned and performed equally well when represented by female and male avatars. Our findings extend previous research in physical learning settings, suggesting that dominant-sexist behaviors may give rise to stereotype threat and undermine women's learning outcomes in virtual classrooms. Implications for gender achievement gaps and stereotype threat are discussed.
How Organizational Minorities Form and Use Social Ties: Evidence from Teachers in Majority-White and Majority-Black Schools
Jennifer Nelson
American Journal of Sociology, September 2019, Pages 382-430
Abstract:
This article draws on 11 months of multisite ethnographic fieldwork and 103 interviews to investigate how teachers in school faculty of varying racial compositions form and use their social ties to secure professional, political, and emotional resources at work. Findings show that, in general, white teachers in the numerical minority in their schools secured all resource types through their same-race ties, while black teachers in the numerical minority secured primarily emotional resources from their same-race ties. Given these observed differences, the author shows how the form and use of the two minority groups’ social ties stem in large part from distinctive organizational practices. In turn, the tie differences can account for differences in social integration and resource access in the organization. The data allow for comparisons to patterns among majority groups.
The Importance of Gender Congruence in Corporate Social Responsibility: Field Experimental Evidence of Applicant Interest
Mabel Abraham & Vanessa Burbano
MIT Working Paper, June 2019
Abstract:
Labor market scholars have made recent calls for moving beyond demand-side explanations for observed labor market outcomes and for uncovering supply-side processes and the interaction between these. One organizational characteristic that has been posited to influence job seeker preferences is corporate social responsibility (CSR). Mixed empirical results of the effects of CSR on firm performance more broadly, as well as increased inquiry into the contingencies of when CSR may benefit firms through stakeholders such as employees, point to the importance of examining how CSR interacts with other organizational characteristics. In this study, we examine how the gender composition of company leadership making CSR claims contributes to shaping the applicant pool. Specifically, since social responsibility is perceived to be female-typed, we examine whether congruence between an organization’s claims and the gender composition of leadership affect whether prospective employees apply for jobs. Addressing this research question poses a key empirical challenge: it is necessary to observe not only those who do apply to a job, but also the risk pool of those would could have applied. We address this challenge using a unique field experimental design and find that congruence between firm leadership gender composition and social responsibility is a key predictor of whether prospective applicants apply for an otherwise identical job vacancy.
Gender, risk preferences and willingness to compete in a random sample of the Swedish population
Anne Boschini et al.
Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Experimental results from student and other non-representative convenience samples often suggest that men, on average, are more risk taking and competitive than women. We explore whether these gender preference gaps also exist in incentivized tasks in a simple random sample of the Swedish adult population. Our design comprises four different conditions to systematically explore how the experimental context may impact gender gaps; a baseline condition, a condition where participants are primed with their own gender, and two conditions where the participants know the gender of their counterpart (man or woman). We further look at competitiveness in two domains: a math task and a verbal task. We find no gender gap in risk taking or competitiveness in the verbal task in this random sample. There is some support for men being more competitive than women in the math task in the pooled sample, but the effect size is small. We further find no consistent impact of the respective conditions on (the absence of) the gender gap in preferences.
Can stereotype threat increase women’s performance? The case of a fatiguing task
Maxime Deshayes et al.
Sport, Exercise, and Performance Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
In the sports field, most studies evaluating the effect of inducing a negative stereotype on performance observed a performance decrease of the targeted group (e.g., women). This effect was explained by the explicit monitoring hypothesis and consequently the type of tasks (i.e., technical). The main aim of the present research was to observe the effect of a negative stereotype toward women on men’s and women’s performance during a nontechnical task that required a high energy expenditure (i.e., fatiguing task). A secondary goal was to investigate the psychophysiological mechanisms involved. During a fatiguing task, the modification of performance may result from central adaptations (i.e., residing within the central nervous system and assessed through voluntary activation and mean power frequency) and/or peripheral adaptations (i.e., within the contractile muscle, characterized by a modification of the resting potentiated twitch amplitude). Finally, rate of perceived exertion was also recorded. A total of 40 participants (20 women and 20 men; Mage = 20.19, SDage = 1.29) were assigned to a negative stereotype toward women condition and to a nullified-stereotype condition. They performed 30 maximal voluntary contractions with an assessment of neuromuscular function (i.e., quantifying central and peripheral adaptations). Both men and women increased their performance after the induction of a negative stereotype toward women, as compared with when they were assigned to the nullified-stereotype condition, accompanied by a lesser decrease of mean power frequency. This study demonstrated that negative stereotypes could affect performance differently according to the characteristics of the task.