Which Sex
Compensating Differentials for Sexual Harassment
Joni Hersch
American Economic Review, May 2011, Pages 630-634
Abstract:
Workplace sexual harassment is illegal, but many workers report that they have been sexually harassed. Exposure to the risk of sexual harassment may decrease productivity, which would reduce wages. Alternatively, workers may receive a compensating differential for exposure to sexual harassment, which would increase wages. Data on claims of sexual harassment filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission are used to calculate the first measures of sexual harassment risks by industry, age group, and sex. Female workers face far higher sexual harassment risks. On balance, workers receive a compensating wage differential for exposure to the risk of sexual harassment.
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Effects of Everyday Romantic Goal Pursuit on Women's Attitudes Toward Math and Science
Lora Park et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
The present research examined the impact of everyday romantic goal strivings on women's attitudes toward science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). It was hypothesized that women may distance themselves from STEM when the goal to be romantically desirable is activated because pursuing intelligence goals in masculine domains (i.e., STEM) conflicts with pursuing romantic goals associated with traditional romantic scripts and gender norms. Consistent with hypotheses, women, but not men, who viewed images (Study 1) or overheard conversations (Studies 2a-2b) related to romantic goals reported less positive attitudes toward STEM and less preference for majoring in math/science compared to other disciplines. On days when women pursued romantic goals, the more romantic activities they engaged in and the more desirable they felt, but the fewer math activities they engaged in. Furthermore, women's previous day romantic goal strivings predicted feeling more desirable but being less invested in math on the following day (Study 3).
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A War of One's Own: Understanding the Gender Gap in Support for War
Deborah Jordan Brooks & Benjamin Valentino
Public Opinion Quarterly, Summer 2011, Pages 270-286
Abstract:
The gender gap in support for war represents the largest and most consistent policy gender gap in public opinion polling. We know little about the causes of this gap, however, because scholars have not effectively isolated how or why the gender gap changes in response to the characteristics of different wars. We conducted two controlled experiments on demographically representative samples of U.S. adults to see if systematically varying the stakes of war (economic/strategic vs. humanitarian) or multilateral support for the action (U.N. approval vs. U.N. rejection) affects the size of the gender gap. We propose an interactive theoretical perspective that explicitly links these characteristics with key individual-level characteristics that might be driving the gender gap. Our findings indicate that the gender gap is strongly dependent on the specific context of the war. In fact, we find that the gender gap reverses when the war has U.N. approval or if the stakes of the war are humanitarian.
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Sex differences in g: An analysis of the US standardization sample of the WAIS-III
Paul Irwing
Personality and Individual Differences, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study employed both hierarchical and Bi-factor multi-group confirmatory factor analysis with mean structures (MGCFA) to investigate the question of whether sex differences are present in the US standardization sample of the WAIS-III. The data consisted of age scaled scores from 2450 individuals aged from 16 to 89 years. The findings were more or less uniform across both analyses, showing a sex difference favoring men in g (0.19-0.22d), Information (0.40d), Arithmetic (0.37-0.39d) and Symbol Search (0.40-0.30d), and a sex difference favoring women in Processing Speed (0.72-1.30d).
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Stereotype Threat and Female Communication Styles
Courtney von Hippel et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
A large body of research has documented the performance-debilitating effects of stereotype threat for individuals, but there is a paucity of research exploring interpersonal consequences of stereotype threat. Two experiments tested the hypothesis that stereotype threat would change the style in which women communicate. Results indicate that women who experience stereotype threat regarding leadership abilities react against the stereotype by adopting a more masculine communication style. Study 2 provides evidence that self-affirmation eliminates this effect of stereotype threat on women's communication styles. A third study demonstrates an ironic consequence of this effect of stereotype threat on women's communication - when women under stereotype threat adopt a more masculine communication style, they are rated as less warm and likeable, and evaluators indicate less willingness to comply with their requests. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.
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Sex differences in the relation between math performance, spatial skills, and attitudes
Colleen Ganley & Marina Vasilyeva
Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Sex differences have been previously found in cognitive and affective predictors of math achievement, including spatial skills and math attitudes. It is important to determine whether there are sex differences not only in the predictors themselves, but also in the nature of their relation to math achievement. The present paper examined spatial skills and math attitudes as predictors of curriculum-based measures of math performance in middle-school students, specifically comparing the patterns of these predictive relations for boys and girls. The results of the current study showed that, despite similar levels of math performance for boys and girls, the significance of particular predictors varied as a function of sex. Specifically, spatial skills predicted math performance in boys, but not in girls. We suggest that sex differences in spatial reasoning in conjunction with the differential involvement of spatial reasoning in math problem solving may lead to later sex differences in math outcomes.
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Gender Gap in Performance under Competitive Pressure: Admissions to Czech Universities
Štěpán Jurajda & Daniel Münich
American Economic Review, May 2011, Pages 514-518
Abstract:
Do women perform worse than equally able men in stressful competitive settings? We ask this question for competitions with a high payoff - admissions to tuition-free selective universities. With data on an entire cohort of Czech students graduating from secondary schools and applying to universities, we show that, compared to men of similar general skills and subject-of-study preferences, women perform similarly well when competition is less intense, but perform substantially worse (are less likely to be admitted) when applying to very selective universities.
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The Phantom Gender Difference in the College Wage Premium
William Hubbard
Journal of Human Resources, Summer 2011, Pages 568-586
Abstract:
A growing literature seeks to explain why so many more women than men now attend college. A commonly cited stylized fact is that the college wage premium is, and has been, higher for women than for men. After identifying and correcting a bias in estimates of college wage premiums, I find that there has been essentially no gender difference in the college wage premium for at least a decade. A similar pattern appears in quantile wage regressions and for advanced degree wage premiums.
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Gender Differences in Competitive Orientations: Empirical Evidence from Ultramarathon Running
Bernd Frick
Journal of Sports Economics, June 2011, Pages 317-340
Abstract:
A large body of literature documents the existence of a considerable and persistent gender gap in competitiveness. Using longitudinal data from ultramarathon running covering the period 2005-2009, I first confirm the findings of most previous studies by demonstrating that on average the women's races are indeed less competitive than the men's contests. Closer inspection of the data, however, reveals that the gender gap has considerably narrowed over the years. Moreover, for men as well as for women, an increase in the number of contestants is not only associated with a better average performance but also with a lower performance dispersion. These findings are not compatible with the hypothesis that gender differences in competitiveness reflect evolved biological differences and/or psychological predispositions. It is, however, compatible with two other (complementary rather than substitute) hypotheses: Due to changing sociocultural conditions boys and girls are today socialized similarly in many parts of the world and due to the increasing returns to success (i.e., identical prize money levels and distributions) women are nowadays motivated to train as hard as comparably talented men.
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Dawne Vogt et al.
Journal of Abnormal Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Though the broader literature suggests that women may be more vulnerable to the effects of trauma exposure, most available studies on combat trauma have relied on samples in which women's combat exposure is limited and analyses that do not directly address gender differences in associations between combat exposure and postdeployment mental health. Female service members' increased exposure to combat in Afghanistan and Iraq provides a unique opportunity to evaluate gender differences in different dimensions of combat-related stress and associated consequence for postdeployment mental health. The current study addressed these research questions in a representative sample of female and male U.S. veterans who had returned from deployment to Afghanistan or Iraq within the previous year. As expected, women reported slightly less exposure than men to most combat-related stressors, but higher exposure to other stressors (i.e., prior life stress, deployment sexual harassment). No gender differences were observed in reports of perceived threat in the war zone. Though it was hypothesized that combat-related stressors would demonstrate stronger negative associations with postdeployment mental health for women, only one of 16 stressor × gender interactions achieved statistical significance and an evaluation of the clinical significance of these interactions revealed that effects were trivial. Results suggest that female Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom service members may be as resilient to combat-related stress as men. Future research is needed to evaluate gender differences in the longer-term effects of combat exposure.
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Female Labor, Western Culture and Growth in the Gulf Cooperation Council Countries
Mark David Witte
Review of Middle East Economics and Finance, 2011
Abstract:
This paper examines the determinants of the female labor force and the impact of female labor on the growth rates of six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Using per capita spending on imported US books to approximate for western cultural sentiment, the paper finds a positive relationship between the female percentage of total labor and per capita U.S. book expenditures. The estimates suggest that an increase in western cultural sentiment equivalent to an additional $1 per person spent on U.S. books would raise the female percentage of total labor by 1.5 percent in a given GCC country. In fact, the female percentage of total labor can account for approximately 1.6 percent of the variation in growth rates between the GCC countries over time. Moreover, a 1 percent increase in the female percentage of total labor creates GDP growth equivalent to a 2 percent increase in the international price of oil.
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Are leader stereotypes masculine? A meta-analysis of three research paradigms
Anne Koenig et al.
Psychological Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
This meta-analysis examined the extent to which stereotypes of leaders are culturally masculine. The primary studies fit into 1 of 3 paradigms: (a) In Schein's (1973) think manager-think male paradigm, 40 studies with 51 effect sizes compared the similarity of male and leader stereotypes and the similarity of female and leader stereotypes; (b) in Powell and Butterfield's (1979) agency-communion paradigm, 22 studies with 47 effect sizes compared stereotypes of leaders' agency and communion; and (c) in Shinar's (1975) masculinity-femininity paradigm, 7 studies with 101 effect sizes represented stereotypes of leadership-related occupations on a single masculinity-femininity dimension. Analyses implemented appropriate random and mixed effects models. All 3 paradigms demonstrated overall masculinity of leader stereotypes: (a) In the think manager-think male paradigm, intraclass correlation = .25 for the women-leaders similarity and intraclass correlation = .62 for the men-leaders similarity; (b) in the agency-communion paradigm, g = 1.55, indicating greater agency than communion; and (c) in the masculinity-femininity paradigm, g = 0.92, indicating greater masculinity than the androgynous scale midpoint. Subgroup and meta-regression analyses indicated that this masculine construal of leadership has decreased over time and was greater for male than female research participants. In addition, stereotypes portrayed leaders as less masculine in educational organizations than in other domains and in moderate- than in high-status leader roles. This article considers the relation of these findings to Eagly and Karau's (2002) role congruity theory, which proposed contextual influences on the incongruity between stereotypes of women and leaders. The implications for prejudice against women leaders are also considered.
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Customer Discrimination in Restaurants: Dining Frequency Matters
Matthew Parrett
Journal of Labor Research, June 2011, Pages 87-112
Abstract:
Using unique survey data collected outside of five Virginia restaurants, and controlling for subjective server productivity, as well as a variety of other factors, we compare the tip earnings of male and female servers. Evidence of customer discrimination is found, but only among those customers who frequent the restaurant the least, revealing that female servers earn comparable tips to male servers when the service quality they produce is about exceptional, but for any lower service quality their tips are smaller. This suggests that female servers are being held to a very high standard, and if this standard is not met, they are treated unfavorably in comparison to male servers who produce the same level of service quality. Additional evidence indicates that it is male customers driving these results.
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Monopsony, Mobility, and Sex Differences in Pay: Missouri School Teachers
Michael Ransom & Val Lambson
American Economic Review, May 2011, Pages 454-459
Abstract:
We examine the sex differences in the pay of school teachers in Missouri. In Missouri school districts, pay is determined by a salary schedule that maps teaching experience and education level of an individual to a salary level. In spite of this apparently mechanical rule for determining pay, female teachers earn less than male teachers, after controlling for experience and education. We explore how such a difference could arise from differential job mobility and find some evidence to support this idea. However, within district differences in pay are a more important source of differences in pay between men and women.
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Gender differences in reward-related decision processing under stress
Nichole Lighthall et al.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, forthcoming
Abstract:
Recent research indicates gender differences in the impact of stress on decision behavior, but little is known about the brain mechanisms involved in these gender-specific stress effects. The current study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to determine whether induced stress resulted in gender-specific patterns of brain activation during a decision task involving monetary reward. Specifically, we manipulated physiological stress levels using a cold pressor task, prior to a risky decision making task. Healthy men (n = 24, 12 stressed) and women (n = 23, 11 stressed) completed the decision task after either cold pressor stress or a control task during the period of cortisol response to the cold pressor. Gender differences in behavior were present in stressed participants but not controls, such that stress led to greater reward collection and faster decision speed in males but less reward collection and slower decision speed in females. A gender-by-stress interaction was observed for the dorsal striatum and anterior insula. With cold stress, activation in these regions was increased in males but decreased in females. The findings of this study indicate that the impact of stress on reward-related decision processing differs depending on gender.
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Strontium isotope evidence for landscape use by early hominins
Sandi Copeland et al.
Nature, 2 June 2011, Pages 76-78
Abstract:
Ranging and residence patterns among early hominins have been indirectly inferred from morphology, stone-tool sourcing, referential models and phylogenetic models. However, the highly uncertain nature of such reconstructions limits our understanding of early hominin ecology, biology, social structure and evolution. We investigated landscape use in Australopithecus africanus and Paranthropus robustus from the Sterkfontein and Swartkrans cave sites in South Africa using strontium isotope analysis, a method that can help to identify the geological substrate on which an animal lived during tooth mineralization. Here we show that a higher proportion of small hominins than large hominins had non-local strontium isotope compositions. Given the relatively high levels of sexual dimorphism in early hominins, the smaller teeth are likely to represent female individuals, thus indicating that females were more likely than males to disperse from their natal groups. This is similar to the dispersal pattern found in chimpanzees, bonobos and many human groups, but dissimilar from that of most gorillas and other primates. The small proportion of demonstrably non-local large hominin individuals could indicate that male australopiths had relatively small home ranges, or that they preferred dolomitic landscapes.