Girl Power
Stephen Choi, Mitu Gulati, Mirya Holman & Eric Posner
Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, September 2011, Pages 504-532
Abstract:
Justice Sonia Sotomayor's assertion that female judges might be better than male judges has generated accusations of sexism and potential bias. An equally controversial claim is that male judges are better than female judges because the latter have benefited from affirmative action. These claims are susceptible to empirical analysis. Using a data set of all the state high court judges in 1998-2000, we estimate three measures of judicial output: opinion production, outside state citations, and co-partisan disagreements. For many of our tests, we fail to find significant gender effects on judicial performance. Where we do find significant gender effects for our state high court judges, female judges perform better than male judges. An analysis of data from the U.S. Court of Appeals and the federal district courts produces roughly similar findings.
---------------------
The Language of Performance Evaluations: Gender-Based Shifts in Content and Consistency of Judgment
Monica Biernat, M.J. Tocci & Joan Williams
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Performance evaluations of male and female junior attorneys in a Wall Street law firm were analyzed. Male supervisors judged male attorneys more favorably than female attorneys on numerical ratings that mattered for promotion but offered narrative comments that showed either no sex effects or greater favorability toward women. Judgments of male attorneys were more consistent overall than they were for female attorneys, and predictors of numerical ratings differed by sex: Narrative ratings of technical competence mattered more for men than women, and narrative ratings of interpersonal warmth mattered more for women than men. Open-ended use of positive performance words - the only outcome that favored women - did not translate into positive numerical ratings for women. The data suggest subtle patterns of gender bias, in which women were harmed by not meeting gendered expectations of interpersonal warmth but were less benefited than men by meeting masculine standards of high technical competence.
---------------------
Strong Evidence for Gender Differences in Experimental Investment
Gary Charness & Uri Gneezy
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
Are men more willing to take financial risks than women? The answer to this question has immediate relevance for many economic issues. We assemble the data from 10 sets of experiments with one simple underlying investment game. Most of these experiments were not designed to investigate gender differences and were conducted by different researchers in different countries, with different instructions, durations, payments, subject pools, etc. The fact that all data come from the same basic investment game allows us to test the robustness of the findings. We find a very consistent result that women invest less, and thus appear to be more financially risk averse than men.
---------------------
Michelle Bligh et al.
Journal of Applied Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Though research has demonstrated that media coverage of men and women politicians differ, fewer studies have examined the dual influence of gender stereotypes and types of media coverage in influencing public perceptions of women politicians. Study 1 (N = 329) examined how pre-existing attitudes toward women leaders and valence of media message impacted perceptions of a woman senator and evaluations of the media source. Study 2 (N = 246) explored how media focus on a woman politician's personality or ability impacted perceptions of her warmth/likability and competence. Results suggest the media has particular influence on judgments of women politicians' likability (the "competent but cold" effect), providing evidence that women politicians need to be vigilant in monitoring their media depictions.
---------------------
State Effects and the Emergence and Success of Female Gubernatorial Candidates
Jason Harold Windett
State Politics & Policy Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article examines the role of society and culture in shaping the opportunity structure and ambition formation of female gubernatorial candidates in all 50 states over a 40-year period. Using a new data set consisting of every woman who entered a gubernatorial primary from 1978 to 2008, the author analyzes how cultural factors and historical legacies-including the percentage of women in the workforce, higher education, and statewide elective offices-influence the opportunity structure and ambition formation of female candidates. The author argues that the female sociopolitical subculture within individual states heavily influences whether or not female candidates will enter and win their respective primaries and general elections. Rather than assuming that individual characteristics are the primary determinants of ambition formation, this research implies that it is necessary to analyze the political behavior within cultural contexts.
---------------------
When Should I Quit? Gender Differences in Exiting Competitions
Robin Hogarth, Natalia Karelaia & Carlos Andrés Trujillo
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
We study gender differences in exiting competitive environments by exploiting the "naturalistic experiment" of a TV game show where participants were self-selected and there were no gender-specific constraints or discrimination. In multiple rounds, contestants answer general knowledge questions privately. One participant is eliminated or leaves voluntarily at the end of each round. Women earn 40% less than men and exit the game prematurely at a faster rate, but especially when in a minority. This latter result highlights the importance of structural arrangements in organizations that interact with behavior to maintain "glass ceilings" and explains the differential gender-related risk attitudes observed.
---------------------
A World of Difference: International Trends in Women's Economic Status
Maria Charles
Annual Review of Sociology, 2011, Pages 355-371
Abstract:
Around the globe and starting in the affluent West, women have made major, even revolutionary, strides toward equality with men. However, while access to major social institutions has equalized dramatically, expanded participation in labor markets and educational systems often comes in the form of gender-differentiated roles within these institutions. This article reviews international trends on different indicators of women's economic status and considers explanations for observed patterns. The forms of equality that tend to persist in advanced industrial societies are those that are readily interpreted as outcomes of free choices by formally equal but innately different men and women.
---------------------
Adriene Beltz, Jane Swanson & Sheri Berenbaum
Hormones and Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
There is considerable interest in understanding women's underrepresentation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics careers. Career choices have been shown to be driven in part by interests, and gender differences in those interests have generally been considered to result from socialization. We explored the contribution of sex hormones to career-related interests, in particular studying whether prenatal androgens affect interests through psychological orientation to Things versus People. We examined this question in individuals with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), who have atypical exposure to androgens early in development, and their unaffected siblings (total N = 125 aged 9 to 26 years). Females with CAH had more interest in Things versus People than did unaffected females, and variations among females with CAH reflected variations in their degree of androgen exposure. Results provide strong support for hormonal influences on interest in occupations characterized by working with Things versus People.
---------------------
Ira Trofimova
Cognitive Systems Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
There is a controversy about the factors underlying male predominance in mathematics, natural and engineering sciences. Our study of meaning attribution, conducted in Canada, China and Russia showed that men had a consistent tendency to estimate natural phenomena (even time-related) as more fixed and limited, less real (even "Reality") and less complex (even "Complexity") than women. Concepts related to classical mechanics received significantly more positive estimations by men than by women, but phenomena related to development and reality were assessed more positively by women than by men. We argue that the methods and language of science, which historically were developed by men, were affected by a tendency of men to reduce natural phenomena to structures with Lego-like components, and to mechanical aspects of their interaction.
---------------------
The Importance of Being Confident: Gender, Career Choice, and Willingness to Compete
Linda Kamas & Anne Preston
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study investigates the extent to which gender differences in choosing to enter competitive tournaments are due to women's lower taste for competition or differences in confidence. We examine three types of confidence and find that confidence measured by expected ranking is the most important determinant of decisions to enter tournaments. Conditional on ability, this measure eliminates gender differences in winner-take-all tournaments and, when entered with risk measures, eliminates differences in ranked compensation tournaments. When the sample is split by career choice, there are no gender differences for students in STEM fields, and in the humanities and the social sciences differences can be explained by confidence. However, for business school students, gender differences in willingness to compete in winner-take-all tournaments persist even after accounting for risk aversion and confidence. Men in business set themselves apart from the rest of the population (men and women alike) with the highest levels of tournament entry and the most positive performance responses to competition.
---------------------
Gender, Competition, and Managerial Decisions
Curtis Price
Management Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
The purpose of this study is to investigate the use of competitive compensation between a manager and a worker in the laboratory. To this end, we impose a simple agency relationship between two groups of subjects termed managers and workers. The manager chooses a compensation scheme for the worker from either a piece rate or a tournament payment scheme and is paid based on the workers performance in the task. The results indicate that when given information about worker ability, male managers choose the tournament significantly less often for a female worker. On the other hand, when no information about worker ability is given to the manager, there is no difference in compensation choice for the worker, although male and female managers differ significantly in their own preferences for compensation scheme. We conjecture that these results are tied to the fact that there is a measurable stereotype that females are worse at the task relative to males, although further research is needed in this regard.
---------------------
Deciding to Decide: Gender, Leadership and Risk-Taking in Groups
Seda Ertac & Mehmet Gurdal
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
Being the leader in a group often involves making risky decisions that affect the payoffs of all members, and the decision to take this responsibility in a group is endogenous in many contexts. In this paper, we experimentally study: (1) the willingness of men and women to make risky decisions on behalf of a group, (2) the amount of risk men and women take for the group, in comparison to their individual decisions. We observe a striking difference between males and females, with a much lower fraction of women being willing to make the group decision than men. The amount of risk taken for the group is generally lower than in the case where subjects decide for themselves only, indicating a cautious shift. The women that would like to make the group decision and the women that do not are no different in terms of how much risk they take for themselves, nor for their group. For men, on the other hand, we find that the ones who would like to lead tend to take more risk on behalf of the group.