Should She Lead? Why Colleagues of Women, and Women Themselves, Often Think the Answer is No with Alison Wood Brooks

Should women lead? We here at WAPPP strongly believe yes, but many people, including women themselves, often think the answer is no. This year’s first WAPPP seminar featured Alison Wood Brooks, Assistant Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Professor Brooks presented results from two published papers regarding perceptions of women in leadership roles and women’s experiences of those roles, as well as two earlier-stage projects.

We know women are underrepresented in leadership positions: less than 15% of executive officers are women, less than 11% of US firms with venture capital backing have been founded or led by women, and less than 5% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women. To understand why, Professor Brooks examines both demand-side factors (how people perceive and react to women in the workplace) and supply-side factors (how women themselves think and behave in the workplace, including individual differences in personality and preferences).

The Demand Side: How Gender and Attractiveness Affect Entrepreneurial Pitch Success

On the demand side, Professor Brooks presented a study demonstrating that investors prefer entrepreneurial ventures pitched by attractive men. An analysis of the pitches given at the three largest entrepreneurial pitch competitions across the US over three years revealed that male entrepreneurs were 60% more likely than female entrepreneurs to win the competition and earn investor funding. In their study, Professor Brooks and her colleagues asked 521 people to watch two entrepreneurial pitch videos and choose one to invest in, switching whether the video was narrated by a male or a female voice. Sixty-eight percent of participants chose a venture pitched by a male voice, at a very high level of statistical significance, controlling for the pitch itself, the order the pitches were presented, participant gender, and participant age.

However, field data reveals that this effect is not just about gender: attractive male entrepreneurs were statistically significantly more likely to win pitch competitions than less-attractive male entrepreneurs. Interestingly, in the field data, there was no statistically significant impact of attractiveness on female entrepreneurial success. In the next stage of the study, to understand whether attractive people might just be better at pitching, the researchers asked 194 people to watch one pitch video and rate it. The researchers varied whether participants heard a male or female voice, and whether the photo of the narrator they were shown was more or less attractive. Participants were asked how likely they were to invest in the venture and to what extent the pitch was persuasive, fact-based, and logical. Again, attractive male entrepreneurs were significantly more likely to secure investment than less-attractive men, while there was no statistically significant difference for women. However, male-narrated pitches were rated as more persuasive, fact-based, and logical. These findings indicate that male entrepreneurs – especially attractive ones—are more likely to receive investor funding than are female entrepreneurs based on their gender and physical attractiveness rather than the content of their ideas.

Extending the Analysis: Data from Kickstarter

Professor Brooks embarked on a new project to replicate and extend this study using big data from Kickstarter.com, a large crowdfunding platform. Professor Brooks and her colleagues took a sample of 1,249 projects from Kickstarter that included a picture of a single entrepreneur whose gender could easily be identified. Ten independent judges rated the age and attractiveness of the entrepreneurs in every photo. The researchers used the number of investors as a measure of pitch success and included other available information (including number of days left in the campaign) as control variables. Analysis of the Kickstarter data replicates Professor Brooks’ earlier findings. Male entrepreneurs had about twice as many investors compared to female investors, and for male investors (but not female investors) attractiveness garnered more investors.

Professor Brooks also included two follow-up experiments. The first was designed to test the relationship between entrepreneur gender, entrepreneur attractiveness, and investor gender. The results reveal that male investors are more likely to fund good-looking male and female entrepreneurs, but that female investors are more likely to fund attractive male entrepreneurs and less likely to fund attractive female entrepreneurs. The second experiment was to test to what extend these results are about threat. Are women threatened by attractive women? Are men threatened by successful men? The data bears out this initial hypothesis: women are less likely than men to invest in ventures run by attractive women, but are more likely than men to invest in ventures run by successful men.

The Supply Side: How Do Women Themselves View Professional Advancement?

On the supply side, Professor Brooks presented a study indicating that compared to men, women view professional advancement as equally attainable, but less desirable. When asked to list their core goals in life, female participants listed more goals than men overall, but a smaller proportion of women’s goals were related to achieving power at work. These findings hold when people make their own lists of goals, when they select goals from a pre-determined list, and when they reject goals from a pre-determined list. When asked to what extent they expect certain positive or negative outcomes resulting from a promotion to a higher-power position at work, men and women report equivalent levels of positive reactions to the promotion, but women report stronger negative reactions to the promotion. Men and women rate the promotion as equally attainable, but women rate the promotion as less desirable and, compared to men, are less likely to accept the position. These results are consistent across high-level executives, mid-level managers, recent MBA alumni, and undergraduate students.

Importantly, these findings are descriptive, not prescriptive. It may be that men and women are correctly predicting the unique experiences they will each face in high-power positions; alternatively, women may be overestimating the negative consequences associated with power, men may be underestimating the negative consequences associated with power, or both.

New Areas for Research: Gender, Power, Laughter, and Happiness

In a new project, Professor Brooks is working to investigate the relationships between gender, power, laughter, and happiness. Two sources of data provide converging evidence that men and women might use laughter differently: the U.S. Gallup Poll 2013 and speed-dating conversations. In the Gallup poll, women report laughing and smiling more than men in their daily lives, but also report experiencing more negative emotions (worry, sadness, anger, stress). In the speed dating context, women are more likely to laugh during their dates, regardless of how funny they find their partner. However, female laughter is a worse indicator of interest in a second date compared to male laughter. Said differently, women laugh more often, irrespective of humor, but not in a way that is necessarily connected to interest. As there has been little research done on the supply-side dimension of women’s unique experiences, particularly in leadership roles, this is an area ripe for exploration.

For more on Professor Brooks’ research, check out our Gender Action Portal:

http://gap.hks.harvard.edu/investors-prefer-entrepreneurial-ventures-pitched-attractive-men

http://gap.hks.harvard.edu/compared-men-women-view-professional-advancement-equally-attainable-less-desirable

The Three E's to Reach Equality: Education, Employment and Entrepreneurship

At this week’s WAPPP seminar, Monika Queisser, the Head of the Social Policy Division at the OECD's Directorate of Employment, Labour and Social Affairs, made the economic case for gender equality. Her presentation "Progress and Policies to Achieve Gender Equality in Education, Employment and Entrepreneurship," was based off of the OECD 2012 report of a similar name. The report focuses on what Queisser calls “the three E’s” – Education, Employment and Entrepreneurship.

Education is a top focus of the report because it’s the pathway to employment across the world. The OECD reports that more girls are attending school than ever before. Every one-year increase in a population’s average education level accounts for a 9% increase in GDP per capita. But not all education is created equal. Women are severely underrepresented in STEM, where graduates have the most potential for future earnings and career development. Currently, 70% of engineering graduates are men. This contributes to the persistent global pay gap. Women earn an average of 16% less than men, and this gap rises to 21% among top wage earners.

Queisser argued that gender equality strengthens the labor force and boosts the economy for everyone in turn. The aging population and falling fertility rate in most OECD countries currently leads to a shrinking labor force. To remedy this, there is a need for more migration and/or for women to participate at higher rates. We must break down the economic barriers that are holding women back from full participation, Queisser argued. More women need to work, and those that want to should be able to work full-time.

The report found that when a couple has their first child, women tend to start reducing their paid work hours, while men start increasing them. Women make up for this loss in paid hours by increasing their unpaid work. Though policies could and should help change this, a cultural shift is also necessary. Even in countries with progressive maternity leave policies and strong social welfare, such as the Netherlands, there is still a cultural norm for women to work part-time.

In the report, the OECD laid out recommendations to achieve gender equality in these three areas. Gender equality in education attainment and choices should be promoted, though Queisser admitted that it's hard to alter the choices that children make because of deep-seated biases in our culture. Increasing the number of women in decision-making positions, instituting paid maternity leave, actively reduce the wage gap and implementing family friendly policies for women who are self-employed are all crucial for achieving gender equality in these areas. In addition, countries are encouraged to produce gender-specific data and monitor progress on this issue.

In closing, Queisser said her central question is always how the countries that are doing well got to where they are today. She used a popular example for how policy can dramatically change culture. Iceland, which created a positive tax credit for second earners who are women in the 1960s, consistently tops the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Index. Queisser, a self-described optimist, argued that a combination of improved policy and shifts in our cultural norms could bring us closer to gender equality in this century.

Photo Source: OECD

Making the Law Work for Working Women

When Sarah Iqbal, currently the Program Manager for Women, Business and the Law at the World Bank, first started working on development issues there in 2008, she says she often found herself explaining why the obstacles women faced when trying to start businesses and get jobs mattered on a global scale. Now, she says, there aren’t enough data to meet the demand for such information.

In this week’s WAPPP Seminar, “Women, Business and the Law: Removing Restrictions to Enhance Gender Equality,” Iqbal discussed the findings of the Women, Business and Law 2014 Report. The report scrutinizes the laws and regulations across the globe that affect men and women differently so as to limit women’s opportunities and incentives to work.

In a survey of 143 economies, 90% were found to have at least one legal difference restricting women’s economic opportunities. The restrictions came in a variety of forms, from property rights restrictions to long lists of jobs that women were prohibited from doing. 15 of these countries had laws allowing husbands to object to – and therefore restrict – their wives’ employment.

The study looked at seven indicators of gender economic equality to make these determinations: (1) ability to access institutions, (2) property use, (3) whether there were restrictions on type of employment, (4) whether incentives to work are provided, (5) ability to build credit, (6) court accessibility, and (7) the degree to which women are protected from violence.

The report found that there were three main obstacles for women’s advancement in business. The first is women’s lack of autonomy to interact with government institutions or conduct official transactions. Iqbal illustrated this by discussing “head of household” rights and responsibilities, such as paying taxes or sending children to school, which are usually delegated to men.

Second, Iqdal explained that marriage is often the trigger for such loss of rights. While single women have as many rights as single men in almost every country studied, women give up some of their autonomy upon marriage in many countries around the world. Lastly, limited property rights are a major factor contributing to women’s restricted economic opportunities, since property can be used as collateral for loans to start small businesses, for example.

Fortunately, there is hope that progress is being made on this issue. Within five years of the ratification of CEDAW, rates of reform in the countries studied had doubled. The report also found that having women legislators increased the likelihood of reform in that country. Over the two year period examined, Women, Business and the Law recorded 59 legal changes in 44 economies. Of these changes, 48 increased gender parity, 11 were neutral to gender parity. None reduced gender parity.

In addition to collecting this data, Women, Business and the Law are working with countries to make their laws less restrictive for women's economic opportunities. Iqbal closed by arguing that “what gets measured gets done,” and that despite the clear challenges ahead, a good first step is measuring the problem in order to tackle it.

Photo source: The World Bank

How Do Women “Start-Up” Differently?

The Woman: Lakshmi Balachandra, WAPPP Fellow; Visiting Assistant Professor, Entrepreneurship & Innovation, Northeastern University

The Talk: Entrepreneurial Women! Exploring the Role of Gender in Short-Term and Long-Term Entrepreneurship

The Question: Does gender matter when securing seed funding?

Most policy makers and academics agree entrepreneurship is a catalyst for economic growth and global competitiveness. It creates new jobs, stimulates wealth, and increases overall GDP and standards of living. Yet, while women account for 55 percent of start-ups, they receive less than 5 percent of seed funding -- why is this?

Introductory Statistics:

• According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, women started 104 million businesses in the world in 2011.
• Women start businesses more frequently than men, but many times these businesses are not documented because they are considered second jobs.
• Women view entrepreneurship as attractively as men - they want to become entrepreneurs.

What explains this 5 percent?

Many myths perpetuate this dismal statistic. They include: women have different networks than men; women come from different backgrounds and professional experiences; women don’t “think big enough”. The Diana Project countered many of these myths over a decade ago in Women Business Owners and Equity Capital: The Myths Dispelled. Thus, Balachandra’s current research looks to understand the differences at the early stages of entrepreneurship, or more specifically, the “pitch”.

Balachandra’s research analyzes three years of “pitches” from the MIT’s prestigious $100K Entrepreneurship Competition to determine what makes pitches successful when attracting early-stage capital investment. By coding separately for body language, verbal phrases, and style, Balachandra found the most successful pitches were ones in which the presenters were confident, calm, and optimistic. For women, being assertive, dominant, and ambitious were viewed more positively.

How did gender play out in the competition?

While women were less likely to initially pursue high growth entrepreneurship opportunities (26 of the 185 pitches were by women), Balachandra's research found that women were stronger presenters than men. Furthermore, women received more than 30 percent of the awards in the last three years, even though they were only 14 percent of the pitches.

Additionally, women were more likely to start a business after the competition than men (95 percent compared to 75 percent) even if it was not the business she initially pitched. Balachandra says that, “once women were introduced to entrepreneurship environment, they were more likely to pursue entrepreneurship, regardless of short term success.”

Melissa Sandgren is a MPP1 at the Harvard Kennedy School and a participant in WAPPP's From Harvard Square to the Oval Office program.