Right for the job
Taking a Pass: How Proportional Prejudice and Decisions Not to Hire Reproduce Gender Segregation
Ming Leung & Sharon Koppman
American Journal of Sociology, November 2018, Pages 762-813
Abstract:
The authors propose and test a novel theory of how decisions not to hire reproduce gender segregation through what they term proportional prejudice. They hypothesize that employers are less likely to hire anyone from an applicant pool that contains a large proportion of gender-atypical applicants — that is, those whose gender does not match the occupation stereotype — as this leads employers to form negative impressions of all pool applicants, regardless of gender. Analyses of over 7 million applications for over 700,000 job postings by more than 200,000 freelancers in an online contract labor market support their argument. A supplemental survey experiment isolates the mechanism: applicant pools with a larger proportion of gender-atypical applicants were evaluated as less likely to contain people who “seemed skilled enough for the job.” The authors conclude by demonstrating how their theory reconciles the conflicting findings as to whether gender-atypical job seekers are disadvantaged in the hiring process.
Gender, Race, and Entrepreneurship: A Randomized Field Experiment on Venture Capitalists and Angels
Will Gornall & Ilya Strebulaev
Stanford Working Paper, December 2018
Abstract:
We study gender and race in high-impact entrepreneurship within a tightly controlled random field experiment. We sent out 80,000 pitch emails introducing promising but fictitious start-ups to 28,000 venture capitalists and business angels. Each email was sent by a fictitious entrepreneur with a randomly selected gender (male or female) and race (Asian or White). Female entrepreneurs received an 8% higher rate of interested replies than male entrepreneurs pitching identical projects. Asian entrepreneurs received a 6% higher rate than White entrepreneurs. Our results are not consistent with discrimination against females or Asians at the initial contact stage of the investment process. Our experimental design is unable to capture discrimination at subsequent stages. We show an overall high rate of interested replies to cold pitches, which should give hope to budding entrepreneurs without strong networks.
Gender and the evaluation of humor at work
Jonathan Evans et al.
Journal of Applied Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although research has added to our understanding of the positive and negative effects of the use of humor at work, scholars have paid little attention to characteristics of the humor source. We argue that this is an important oversight, particularly in terms of gender. Guided by parallel-constraint-satisfaction theory (PCST), we propose that gender plays an important role in understanding when using humor at work can have costs for the humor source. Humor has the potential to be interpreted as either a functional or disruptive work behavior. Based on PCST, we argue that gender stereotypes constrain the interpretation of observed humor such that humor expressed by males is likely to be interpreted as more functional and less disruptive compared with humor expressed by females. As a result, humorous males are ascribed higher status compared with nonhumorous males, while humorous females are ascribed lower status compared with nonhumorous females. These differences have implications for subsequent performance evaluations and assessments of leadership capability. Results from an experiment with 216 participants provides support for the moderated mediation model. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
Explaining the Persistence of Gender Inequality: The Work–family Narrative as a Social Defense against the 24/7 Work Culture
Irene Padavic, Robin Ely & Erin Reid
Administrative Science Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
It is widely accepted that the conflict between women’s family obligations and professional jobs’ long hours lies at the heart of their stalled advancement. Yet research suggests that this “work–family narrative” is incomplete: men also experience it and nevertheless advance; moreover, organizations’ effort to mitigate it through flexible work policies has not improved women’s advancement prospects and often hurts them. Hence this presumed remedy has the perverse effect of perpetuating the problem. Drawing on a case study of a professional service firm, we develop a multilevel theory to explain why organizations are caught in this conundrum. We present data suggesting that the work–family explanation has become a “hegemonic narrative” — a pervasive, status-quo-preserving story that prevails despite countervailing evidence. We then advance systems-psychodynamic theory to show how organizations use this narrative and attendant policies and practices as an unconscious “social defense” to help employees fend off anxieties raised by a 24/7 work culture and to protect organizationally powerful groups — in our case, men and the firm’s leaders — and in so doing, sustain workplace inequality. Due to the social defense, two orthodoxies remain unchallenged — the necessity of long work hours and the inescapability of women’s stalled advancement. The result is that women’s thin representation at senior levels remains in place. We conclude by highlighting contributions to work–family, workplace inequality, and systems-psychodynamic theory.
Subtle Linguistic Cues Increase Girls’ Engagement in Science
Marjorie Rhodes et al.
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
The roots of gender disparities in science achievement take hold in early childhood. The present studies aimed to identify a modifiable feature of young children’s environments that could be targeted to reduce gender differences in science behavior among young children. Four experimental studies with children (N = 501) revealed that describing science in terms of actions (“Let’s do science! Doing science means exploring the world!”) instead of identities (“Let’s be scientists! Scientists explore the world!”) increased girls’ subsequent persistence in new science games designed to illustrate the scientific method. These studies thus identified subtle but powerful linguistic cues that could be targeted to help reduce gender disparities in science engagement in early childhood.
Born in the Family: Preferences for Boys and the Gender Gap in Math
Gaia Dossi et al.
NBER Working Paper, February 2019
Abstract:
We study the correlation between parental gender attitudes and the performance in mathematics of girls using two different approaches and data. First, we identify families with a preference for boys by using fertility stopping rules in a population of households whose children attend public schools in Florida. Girls growing up in a boy-biased family score 3 percentage points lower on math tests when compared to girls raised in other families. Second, we find similar strong effects when we study the correlations between girls’ performance in mathematics and maternal gender role attitudes, using evidence from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. We conclude that socialization at home can explain a non-trivial part of the observed gender disparities in mathematics performance and document that maternal gender attitudes correlate with those of their children, supporting the hypothesis that preferences transmitted through the family impact children behavior.
Income Returns in Early Career: Why Whites Have Less Need for Education
William Mangino
Race and Social Problems, March 2019, Pages 45–59
Abstract:
This paper tests an explanation of the “net black advantage,” a widespread but under-theorized finding that shows among people with similar socioeconomic status, black Americans achieve higher levels of education than whites. The proposed theory hypothesizes that blacks’ superior net investment is a response to disadvantage in the labor market; simply, whites have less need for education. The hypothesis is tested using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, when respondents were approximately 29 years old. Results show that among equally qualified individuals: (1) at equal levels of income, black workers have more education than whites (or equivalently, at equal levels of education, whites have higher income); (2) black Americans have a steeper rate of return to educational investment, thus at “some graduate school” or more, there is parity in wages; and (3) non-net rates show that 90% of black respondents have levels of education that are associated with white income advantage, even among equally qualified people.
Who Counts as a Notable Sociologist on Wikipedia? Gender, Race, and the “Professor Test”
Julia Adams, Hannah Brückner & Cambria Naslund
Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World, February 2019
Abstract:
This paper documents and estimates the extent of underrepresentation of women and people of color on the pages of Wikipedia devoted to contemporary American sociologists. In contrast to the demographic diversity of the discipline, sociologists represented on Wikipedia are largely white men. The gender and racial/ethnic gaps in likelihood of representation have exhibited little change over time. Using novel data, we estimate the “risk” of having a Wikipedia page for a sample of contemporary sociologists. We show that the observed differences (in academic rank, length of career, and notability measured with both H-index and departmental reputation) between men and women sociologists and whites and nonwhites, respectively, explain only about half of the differences in the likelihood of being represented on Wikipedia. The article also enumerates both supply- and demand-side mechanisms that may account for these continuing gaps in representation.
Gender Differences in Volunteer's Dilemma: Evidence from Teamwork among Graduate Students
Pinar Dogan
Harvard Working Paper, January 2019
Abstract:
Using data from room bookings at the Harvard Kennedy School, I find that female students volunteer significantly more than male students in booking rooms for team meetings. I also find that gender difference in undertaking this logistical task is statistically and quantitatively significant only when students have limited interaction prior to teamwork. Even though booking a room involves a relatively small (time) cost, such costs can add up, and also contribute to gender stereotyping in allocation of tasks in other team settings.
First Impressions in the Classroom: How do class characteristics affect student grades and majors?
Amanda Griffith & Joyce Main
Economics of Education Review, April 2019, Pages 125-137
Abstract:
Understanding how peers and instructors can impact students’ outcomes and choice of major after taking the first class in the field is important for promoting persistence in STEM fields. This paper uses data on first-year engineering students at a large, selective engineering school to investigate how peer gender, race, and ability, as well as instructor gender, can impact grades and persistence in engineering. Our findings indicate that gender diversity in the classroom improves all students’ propensity to continue in engineering, and an increase in underrepresented minorities improves grades for minority students. Peer ability also has a strong impact, with an increase in lower-ability students pulling down achievement and persistence in engineering of the bottom of the ability distribution, and an increase in high-ability students improving achievement for all. Finally, our results suggest students benefit from a more diverse ability grouping of their peers in the classroom. We find some evidence that male students are more sensitive to peer ability than are female students.
The Reverse Gender Gap in Adolescents’ Expectation of Higher Education: Analysis of 50 Education Systems
Jon Lauglo & Fengshu Liu
Comparative Education Review, February 2019, Pages 28-57
Abstract:
Adolescent girls more often than boys expect higher education in nearly all 50 education systems in TIMSS 2011, before and after controls for effects of educational achievement, education-conducive family resources, and “liking school.” At a macrolevel, this gender disparity is moderately correlated with the gender disparity in “years of schooling” projected by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) for children of school-entry age, but weakly with gender inequality in the adult population, and not at all with UNDP’s Human Development Index. A possible explanation for the robust prevalence of a reverse gender gap is that formal education is more influenced than the labor market and family life by “World Society”-mediated gender equity.
Inequality and inequity in the emergence of conventions
Calvin Cochran & Cailin O’Connor
Politics, Philosophy & Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Many societies have norms of equity – that those who make symmetric social contributions deserve symmetric rewards. Despite this, there are widespread patterns of social inequity, especially along gender and racial lines. It is often the case that members of certain social groups receive greater rewards per contribution than others. In this article, we draw on evolutionary game theory to show that the emergence of this sort of convention is far from surprising. In simple cultural evolutionary models, inequity is much more likely to emerge than equity, despite the presence of stable, equitable outcomes that groups might instead learn. As we outline, social groups provide a way to break symmetry between actors in determining both contribution and reward in joint projects.
How Much Does Physical Attractiveness Matter for Blacks? Linking Skin Color, Physical Attractiveness, and Black Status Attainment
Igor Ryabov
Race and Social Problems, March 2019, Pages 68–79
Abstract:
The accumulated evidence suggests that lighter-complected blacks are more successful in our society than their darker-complected counterparts. Prior research also documents a correlation between physical attractiveness and socio-economic status attainment. The current study bridges the literatures on colorism and physical attraction and examines the complex relationship between skin color, physical attractiveness, gender, on the one hand, and three indicators of status attainment (educational attainment, hourly wage and job quality), on the other, for black young adults. Controls include family SES, family structure, parent–child relationships, and other covariates. Analysis was conducted in STATA and via structural equation modeling using MPlus software. The analysis shows that lighter-skinned young blacks attain a higher educational level, receive higher wages and enjoy better-quality jobs than their darker skinned co-ethnics. Moreover, the results show that more physically attractive young blacks, especially women, are advantaged in terms of educational attainment, wages, and job quality than their less physically attractive counterparts. These findings suggest that, among blacks, the skin color stratification coincides with that based on physical attractiveness to a large degree, with the implication being that the skin tone is a predictor of both physical attractiveness and social status for black men and women.