Angry Black Men, Aggessive White Women and Ursula Burns

What do 18 female CEO’s of Fortune 500 companies and President Obama have in common? They are examples of social hierarchy reversal – instances of members of low-status social groups ascending to high-status positions.

  

Dr. Robert W. Livingston, social psychologist at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, investigates the dynamics of social hierarchy reversal at the intersection of race and gender. He combined the results of five of his published papers in one captivating talk.

When do individuals defy social hierarchy? Here are top three findings from Dr. Livingston that fascinated me most.

The Teddy Bear Effect

Black men who attain high-power positions are most likely to display competence, credentials, diligence and…disarming mechanisms. Some of these are behaviors like smiling, displaying erudition and dressing conservatively. Other disarming mechanisms are physical attributes, like a lighter skin tone or babyfaceness. Yes, babyfaceness! Dr. Livingston found that the Black CEO’s were more babyfaced than their white counterparts. He also found that babyfaceness correlated with success in terms of salary and company revenue for Black male CEO’s, but not for their White counterparts.

Essentially, to succeed, Black men had to appear warmer, less threatening and less dominant in addition to being exceedingly competent, credentialed and diligent. This is not limited to the business world – Dr. Livingston investigated and found similar requirements in the political realm, and even in professional sports!

Agency Penalty

When women act tough and take control they are punished for it, while men are not. Alice Eagly and Steven Karau published the first study on this subject in the early 1990’s and since then the body of research has grown, all of it demonstrating a social ‘agency penalty’ for women who act assertive, angry or self-promoting, because doing so violates prescriptive stereotypes that a woman should be warm and docile. It is astounding and outrageous that all of this research only included White women! 

If White women and Black men are both punished for acting dominant and displaying agency… what about Black women? Do they face even tougher penalties or do the race and gender ‘cancel each other out’? Dr. Livingston ran a number of experiments to try and get at this question. One included a bio and picture of a senior executive with a scenario in which the executive dealt with an under-performing employee. The phrases the person used in dealing with the employee either demonstrated agency (i.e. “I demand”) or a communal orientation (i.e. “I encourage you ”). Respondents evaluated the executive as a leader along multiple dimensions. 

Lo and behold, tough White female bosses and tough Black male bosses were not well-received, but both White male and Black female bosses got away with the toughness.

The One Black Female CEO

The audience was skeptical on the last point. Really? Black women are not penalized for showing agency and toughness? Then why is the outspoken Ursula Burns of Xerox, the only Black female CEO of a Fortune 500 company?

Dr. Livingston had asked this question too, though most he could say is that the effects of race combined with gender are complex. His most recent work suggests that there is actually a higher penalty to Black women for failure. He suggested that both getting a ‘free pass’ on agentic behavior and experiencing ‘double jeopardy’ for mistakes is caused by being marginalized but not stigmatized. While stigmatized groups, like Black men or White women are marked, targeted and prominent, marginalized groups are invisible, ignored and irrelevant. Also a bleak picture.

It was clear from all the unanswered questions and the audience reactions that race is not being explored nearly enough in conversations about gender. Truly, it is time to stop saying “gender” and meaning White middle-class women. Today’s conversation was an enlightening beginning of a new WAPPP series focused on the intersection of race and gender, and while I would prefer being neither marginalized nor stigmatized, I look forward to learning more. 

Anya Malkov is an MPP2 at the Harvard Kennedy School, a WAPPP Cultural Bridge Fellow, and an alumna of From Harvard Square to the Oval Office.

Do Women Make Board Meetings More Effective? - WAPPP Seminar Series

The Woman: Miriam Schwartz-Ziv, Fellow, Program on Corporate Governance, Harvard Law School
The Talk: When All Are A-board: Does the Gender of Directors Matter? (paper pdf)
The Question: Do Women Make Firm Boards More Effective?

Imagine you're a man walking into a meeting of your firm for the first time and see this group of individuals discussing decisions in the company:

Seems like a pretty normal set-up. A majority-male board -- which remains the standard in most private-sector firms -- awaits you.

Your group of 7-10 people will meet, discuss, and make recommendations to the CEO in an environment that is off the record, behind closed doors.

Now, imagine you walk into the same board room and see this:

Does the gender change effect how productive a company is?

According to Miriam Schwartz-Ziv, mixed gender boards that have 3 or more female directors present at meetings perform better than all-male boards.

Researching over a year's worth of minutes from 11 firms in Israel, Schwartz-Ziv was able to calculate small but significant rises in the amount of initiative boards took relative to previous meetings, as well as how much information the board asks from the CEO (when controlling for 3+ women, she found that there was an 87% increase in asking for information).

According to Schwartz-Ziv, these two metrics imply that there is a "peer monitoring" effect that forces the genders to be more proactive. "Women may tend to not assume as much as men do, so they ask for more information," say Schwartz-Ziv. "And because someone besides men is in the room, there's a feeling of needing to take action'."

What exactly is at play is hard to tell. Since board meetings happen behind closed doors, it's often difficult to understand how content, interpersonal relations, and personality play into the decision-making process. Since the study was conducted in Israel, it's also difficult to know if the results would be replicable in countries where gender parity is far wider, or where women do not have strong leadership roles in the private sector.

Lastly, is the peer monitoring effect a question of gender and status, or just gender? Put another way, if a female secretary were in the room instead of a director, would men still feel pressed to be more productive at their meetings?

While these questions remain, Schwartz-Ziv's study has important policy implications for firms that are thinking about whether or not they should factor gender into their leadership decisions. At best, there is evidence to imply that it may be better to encourage more female leadership at the decision-making process in order to make firms more productive.

When Daddy is CEO - WAPPP Seminar Series

The Man: David Ross, Assistant Professor of Management, Columbia University
The Talk: Like Daughter, Like Father: How Employees’ Wages Change When CEOs Have Daughters
The Question: Do people get paid more if their CEOs have daughters?

Daddy's little girl may be a boost to his workforce -- in Denmark, at least. Recent research by David Ross of Columbia University in the country suggests that when male CEOs have daughters, they tend to on average pay their employees more than if they have boys.

Why?

It's a thorny issue. Some people (including some who attended the seminar) may balk at the idea that men think more like women once they have daughters. But these are exactly the assumptions the study uses to conduct its research. Ross's intuition based on his own experience having daughters got him thinking that:

• When anybody has a child, they tend to start thinking about the well-being of others.

• This proximity matters when it comes to leading a group of employees

• When men in particular have girls, they may be more conscious of having to protect/care for someone's well-being -- a "nurture" effect that women tend to exhibit more often.

The results of the research back up Ross's claim: On average, men pay their employees o.4% more when they have daughters. What's more:

• This only happens when have their first daughter. It doesn't happen with subsequent children.
• People who are closer in proximity to the CEO - ie, higher rank in the company - also tend to get paid more than people who know the CEO less or are a lower rank.
• The age and education of the CEO don't really matter - the effect is the same across all groups.

The limitations of the study are many, however. Chiefly, can the Danish example be extrapolated to other countries where gender parity is worse, or where parents do not share the same burden of raising a child? What if the effect is actually negative - that is, daughters don't have an effect at all, but having a son actually makes CEOs pay employees less? And since the data only analyzes numbers, we can't make a causal claim by observing behavior: our evidence is at best circumstantial.

At the very least, Ross's research backs up the idea that the wage gap persists, and that seemingly innocuous variables like the gender of a CEO's child can make a difference.


*Photo Courtesy Smithsonian Magazine


Effie-Michelle Metallidis is a guest student blogger for the Women and Public Policy Program and Master in Public Policy first-year student at Harvard Kennedy School.