Women are underrepresented among technical degree holders and STEM workers, and the gender segregation in these occupations has remained fairly consistent over time. How can we design interventions that might help fix the gender gap in science? WAPPP Postdoctoral Fellow Clémantine Van Effenterre presented the results of her study on the effects of STEM role models in the classroom.
SETTING
This study focused on French high school students in year 10 and year 12. At the end of year 10, students choose to specialize in a science, social science, or humanities track, conditional on performance in these areas. At the end of year 12, students sit for their graduation exam, the Baccalauréat, which is the gateway to pursuing higher education. In order to gain entry to certain higher education tracks, year 12 students can opt to pursue highly selective prep classes (classes préparatoires aux grandes écoles), including in science.
Women are slightly overrepresented in year 10 science courses, but are underrepresented in science in year 11 and year 12, as well as in the selective science classes préparatoires.
DESIGN
This study was a large-scale randomized experiment, with control groups and treatment groups of year 10 and year 12 students. Students in treatment groups had a one-hour session with a female STEM role model, either a “professional” (private employees in a STEM field) or a “researcher” (PhD candidates or post-doctoral students in the sciences). The role models presented on career prospects and wage rates in the sciences versus the humanities, the diversity of jobs in the sciences, and the underrepresentation of women in STEM jobs.
In addition to sharing their own experiences, the role models showed two videos. The first emphasized that men and women have the same “science potential” and that there are no biologically-determined sex differences with respect to science aptitude. The second video focused on how much workers in STEM occupations enjoy their workplace culture and work/life balance, as well as the shorter-than-expected duration of many science degree programs.
Dr. Van Effenterre and her colleagues surveyed students on the intensity of their stereotypical views of STEM jobs and women in science and their choice of school tracks, and collected data on their grades and higher education admission outcomes.
RESULTS
Beliefs
Students in the treatment group, both male and female, changed their beliefs regarding careers in science and women in science. Female year 10 students were less likely to think that studying for a science degree takes a long time, that science jobs are dreary or solitary, or that it is hard to achieve work-life balance in STEM. With respect to women and science, the intervention emphasized underrepresentation and debunking biological essentialism. While students reduced their stereotypical beliefs in this area, they were more likely to think that “women like science less than men” and that “progress for women in science is slow.”
This is an interesting result: after the intervention, students are aware that men are disproportionately represented in science, but that the reason is not biologically determined. To make sense of this state of affairs, Dr. Van Effenterre and her colleagues hypothesize, students think that women must either not like science and not pursue it, or go into STEM fields and face discrimination or other obstacles to success in the field.
The effect sizes were larger for female students, but male students changed their beliefs too; the intervention may have been more salient for female students, but had an effect for all treated students.
School Tracks
This study revealed no change in track choices for year 10 students, but year 12 students in the treatment group significantly increased their likelihood of pursuing selective preparatory STEM programs: male students’ participation increased by 38% and female students’ by 20%, which are large increases over the low baseline for these selective programs.
Dr. Van Effenterre and her colleagues were initially puzzled by the lack of movement for year 10 students, but realized that student’s track choices are in some ways predetermined by past academic performance and other social factors, and are likely very hard to change with a small intervention.
MECHANISMS
The role models may have impacted students’ beliefs and choices in a variety of ways: students may have been inspired to increase their effort to gain access to science jobs or may have experienced a boost in self-confidence or sense of fit in STEM roles after interacting with role models.
Dr. Van Effenterre and her colleagues examined the impact of the treatment on the grades the students obtained on the Baccalauréat, compared to students’ grades on other standardized exams. On average, there was no significant response to the treatment in terms of grades on the Baccalauréat for male or female students, and so the “increased effort” mechanism does not necessarily explain the observed effect.
Role models in the “professionals” category had a greater impact on both the decision to choose a science track and admittance to it compared to “researchers” for both male and female students. One limitation of this study was that the role models were only quasi-randomized, but it appears that the “professionals” may have been more relevant and compelling to students than the “researchers,” which presents additional questions about how to tailor the best type of role model for students to achieve the intended effect.
CONCLUSION
Experiences with female STEM role models can be an effective policy tool to change beliefs and outcomes for male and female students, even in a limited, one-hour intervention. Dr. Van Effenterre emphasized that closing gender gaps today impacts the next generation: if they can see it, they can be it.
Showing posts with label gender gaps. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gender gaps. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 6, 2018
Friday, March 25, 2016
Achieving Meritocracy in the Workplace
Knowing what we do about the gender wage gap and implicit bias in the workplace, what sort of measures could we take to improve pay equity? Could a meritocratic system, with pay based strictly on performance, be the answer?
This week’s WAPPP seminar featured Emilio Castilla, NTU Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management (during his spring break, no less!). Professor Castilla’s work focuses on the social aspects of work and how social and organizational processes influence employment outcomes – with important managerial implications.
Performance-reward practices are now standard within most industries – 69% of organizations offer variable bonuses based on performance, and some type of merit pay exists in almost all companies. If these pay practices are truly meritocratic, demographics shouldn’t matter. However, the gender and racial implications of merit-based employer efforts are not well understood – do these company practices improve workplace equity and diversity?
In theory, if merit pay was based solely on performance, we would see similar levels of pay for men and women at each performance rank. However, one of Professor Castilla’s studies showed that the benefits of a higher performance rank were much greater for men than for women. A man’s performance bonus was significantly larger than a woman’s at the same performance level, and the gender gap increased the higher the performance quintile.
Skeptics may argue that women may have less experience than men, may be less productive than men, or may not ask for bonuses. To test these assertions, Professor Castilla conducted a company field study of performance rewards over time. There was no evidence in the company that women or minorities received lower starting salaries than white men within a given job and work unit. However, there was evidence of performance-reward bias. Even with the same performance scores, women and minorities with the same job, work unit, supervisor, and human capital received lower salary increases than white men. This study provides some evidence that in trying to close the gender wage gap, we should really be looking at the processes and outcomes surrounding bonus pay.
The key question in thinking about organizational processes is whether the gender gap exists because of or despite employer meritocratic efforts. What is the alternative to performance-based pay? If we eliminated merit pay, would we see no bias? Or are these results better than what we had under traditional systems?
To answer these questions, Professor Castilla took to the lab. Participants were given a limited budget of $1,000 to distribute among employees in bonuses. In the meritocratic condition, participants were given performance evaluations of each employee and were told that this was the only criterion for distributing bonuses. In the non-meritocratic condition, participants still had access to performance evaluations, but were told that it was up to the manager’s discretion to distribute bonuses. In addition, researchers varied the gender of the employees to be evaluated, who each had equal performance ratings. In the non-meritocratic condition, participants awarded male and female employees about the same level of bonus, with no statistically significant difference (on average, women received about $399 and men received $401). Shockingly, in the meritocratic condition, there was an enormous gender gap in favor of men. Men received about $420 in bonus pay in the meritocratic condition, compared to $374 for women. Professor Castilla calls this the paradox of meritocracy—in an organization that emphasizes meritocracy in its culture, without specific structures or processes in place, bias is even greater.
Demographic inequality persists despite employer merit-based efforts. This finding is consistent with “moral credentialing” – in contexts where people are led to feel unbiased, fair, or objective, they are actually more likely to then behave in biased ways. By making employees feel like they’re working in a meritocracy that strictly evaluates performance, they are more likely to unleash bias. This is true for both male and female study participants distributing bonuses!
Organizational practices and processes matter, and there is unlikely to be only one solution to bias in the workplace. Still, it is critical to investigate which employer practices help to reduce workplace inequality and increase diversity. Professor Castilla undertook one large firm-level study designed to empirically test whether introducing organizational accountability and transparency policies reduced any pay gap based on employee demographics. Performance management at this company was a three-step process: supervisors met with employees once a year to discuss their performance and provide feedback, but were not responsible for setting compensation. This step is characterized by high accountability and transparency: the supervisor is responsible for providing feedback, and the employee has to acknowledge receiving the feedback and register their reaction to it. However, steps two and three are less visible. In step two, compensation is decided at the work unit level, and in step three HR rubber stamps the work unit’s decision. The key intervention here would be to increase accountability and transparency in steps two and three.
The company created a Performance-Reward Committee that Professor Castilla emphasized was a task force in the truest sense of the term: they had a defined task and the force to intervene if they found any evidence of pay discrepancy and bias. Once compensation-setters had to be accountable and visible in terms of their process and outcome, demographic variables played no significant role in bonus pay. Instead, performance ratings became even more statistically significant.
Professor Castilla’s work illustrates some of the critical challenges faced by employers. Meritocracy is harder than it looks! Merit-based efforts can activate implicit bias above and beyond traditional processes. However, Professor Castilla emphasizes, the key lesson here is not “we shouldn’t adopt practices to increase fairness and equity.” Instead, we should pay close attention to implementation, accountability, and transparency.
Authors: Emilio J. Castilla Stephan Benard
Organizations that emphasize merit-based cultures, while intending to increase opportunities, fairness, and equity, may inadvertently be disadvantaging women.
This week’s WAPPP seminar featured Emilio Castilla, NTU Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management (during his spring break, no less!). Professor Castilla’s work focuses on the social aspects of work and how social and organizational processes influence employment outcomes – with important managerial implications.
Performance-reward practices are now standard within most industries – 69% of organizations offer variable bonuses based on performance, and some type of merit pay exists in almost all companies. If these pay practices are truly meritocratic, demographics shouldn’t matter. However, the gender and racial implications of merit-based employer efforts are not well understood – do these company practices improve workplace equity and diversity?
In theory, if merit pay was based solely on performance, we would see similar levels of pay for men and women at each performance rank. However, one of Professor Castilla’s studies showed that the benefits of a higher performance rank were much greater for men than for women. A man’s performance bonus was significantly larger than a woman’s at the same performance level, and the gender gap increased the higher the performance quintile.
Skeptics may argue that women may have less experience than men, may be less productive than men, or may not ask for bonuses. To test these assertions, Professor Castilla conducted a company field study of performance rewards over time. There was no evidence in the company that women or minorities received lower starting salaries than white men within a given job and work unit. However, there was evidence of performance-reward bias. Even with the same performance scores, women and minorities with the same job, work unit, supervisor, and human capital received lower salary increases than white men. This study provides some evidence that in trying to close the gender wage gap, we should really be looking at the processes and outcomes surrounding bonus pay.
The key question in thinking about organizational processes is whether the gender gap exists because of or despite employer meritocratic efforts. What is the alternative to performance-based pay? If we eliminated merit pay, would we see no bias? Or are these results better than what we had under traditional systems?
To answer these questions, Professor Castilla took to the lab. Participants were given a limited budget of $1,000 to distribute among employees in bonuses. In the meritocratic condition, participants were given performance evaluations of each employee and were told that this was the only criterion for distributing bonuses. In the non-meritocratic condition, participants still had access to performance evaluations, but were told that it was up to the manager’s discretion to distribute bonuses. In addition, researchers varied the gender of the employees to be evaluated, who each had equal performance ratings. In the non-meritocratic condition, participants awarded male and female employees about the same level of bonus, with no statistically significant difference (on average, women received about $399 and men received $401). Shockingly, in the meritocratic condition, there was an enormous gender gap in favor of men. Men received about $420 in bonus pay in the meritocratic condition, compared to $374 for women. Professor Castilla calls this the paradox of meritocracy—in an organization that emphasizes meritocracy in its culture, without specific structures or processes in place, bias is even greater.
Demographic inequality persists despite employer merit-based efforts. This finding is consistent with “moral credentialing” – in contexts where people are led to feel unbiased, fair, or objective, they are actually more likely to then behave in biased ways. By making employees feel like they’re working in a meritocracy that strictly evaluates performance, they are more likely to unleash bias. This is true for both male and female study participants distributing bonuses!
Organizational practices and processes matter, and there is unlikely to be only one solution to bias in the workplace. Still, it is critical to investigate which employer practices help to reduce workplace inequality and increase diversity. Professor Castilla undertook one large firm-level study designed to empirically test whether introducing organizational accountability and transparency policies reduced any pay gap based on employee demographics. Performance management at this company was a three-step process: supervisors met with employees once a year to discuss their performance and provide feedback, but were not responsible for setting compensation. This step is characterized by high accountability and transparency: the supervisor is responsible for providing feedback, and the employee has to acknowledge receiving the feedback and register their reaction to it. However, steps two and three are less visible. In step two, compensation is decided at the work unit level, and in step three HR rubber stamps the work unit’s decision. The key intervention here would be to increase accountability and transparency in steps two and three.
The company created a Performance-Reward Committee that Professor Castilla emphasized was a task force in the truest sense of the term: they had a defined task and the force to intervene if they found any evidence of pay discrepancy and bias. Once compensation-setters had to be accountable and visible in terms of their process and outcome, demographic variables played no significant role in bonus pay. Instead, performance ratings became even more statistically significant.
Professor Castilla’s work illustrates some of the critical challenges faced by employers. Meritocracy is harder than it looks! Merit-based efforts can activate implicit bias above and beyond traditional processes. However, Professor Castilla emphasizes, the key lesson here is not “we shouldn’t adopt practices to increase fairness and equity.” Instead, we should pay close attention to implementation, accountability, and transparency.
Read the paper:
The Paradox of Meritocracy in OrganizationsAuthors: Emilio J. Castilla Stephan Benard
Organizations that emphasize merit-based cultures, while intending to increase opportunities, fairness, and equity, may inadvertently be disadvantaging women.
Monday, November 18, 2013
Make the Road by Running: Why don’t women want to run for office?
Needless to say, women are severely underrepresented in elected office in the United States. Only 17% of the federal House of Representatives, 20% of the US Senate, 10% of state governors, 26% of state legislators, and 12% of big-city City Halls are women. Ninety-five countries surpass the US in women’s representation in national legislatures---and America’s actually been slipping further in the last few years.
This is definitely due to some of the common culprits, like media bias against women, the fact that women have less experience in feeder professions like corporate leadership and government---though this is changing slowly---and voter preference for those incumbents (men) who have already been in office, to say nothing of pure sexism.
But, according to Jennifer Lawless, Professor of Government at American University and one of the country’s leading experts on women’s political participation, the main reason for the underrepresentation of women in politics is a lack of political ambition.
In this week’s WAPPP seminar on “Uncovering the Origins of the Gender Gap in Political Ambition,” Professor Lawless discussed how early socialization affects people’s political views: if girls are raised in a very politically active family that discusses politics and exposes them to those ideas, they’re more likely to be interested in getting involved. But in a national sample of young people, political ambition begins to stratify just as early, with women saying they would rather be business owners or teachers before they would even consider running for local office.
This stratification, however, gets even worse in college: by then, men are not only more competitive, self-confident, and perceived to be culturally “appropriate” for political leadership, but they get more involved in political activities by that age.
Why don’t women? Is it because of the specific responsibilities in elected office, or all the painful political mudslinging people have to suffer in order to get there?
According to those same surveys, women are equally likely to want to improve their communities. They’re just not sure if public office is the right way to do it.
But having more women in elected office is not just equitable, but produces better policy and political outcomes. In the recent US Federal government shutdown, as one Huffington Post article put it, “Men Got Us Into The Shutdown, Women Got Us Out”--referring to a bipartisan group of female Senators who broke the impasse by committing to negotiation.
So how do we encourage greater female political ambition? The Democratic National Committee’s quota of reserving 50% of their delegations for women hasn’t produced the outcomes we’ve sought.
Professor Lawless offered some excellent advice from her own unsuccessful campaign for US Congress in Rhode Island. She confessed that, though her candidacy was made much easier by the fact that she didn’t have to juggle a regular career, family, and a public political life simultaneously (as many other women do), the path was nonetheless fraught with discrimination and emotional frustration. But the experience of running is itself empowering; gender stereotyping is a self-fulfilling prophecy that can only be undone when more and more women realize that it gets better. Having women set their own ambitions higher and working towards them paves a smoother path for others.
Women can only make the road by running.
Photo source.
This is definitely due to some of the common culprits, like media bias against women, the fact that women have less experience in feeder professions like corporate leadership and government---though this is changing slowly---and voter preference for those incumbents (men) who have already been in office, to say nothing of pure sexism.
 |
| Women of the US Senate |
But, according to Jennifer Lawless, Professor of Government at American University and one of the country’s leading experts on women’s political participation, the main reason for the underrepresentation of women in politics is a lack of political ambition.
In this week’s WAPPP seminar on “Uncovering the Origins of the Gender Gap in Political Ambition,” Professor Lawless discussed how early socialization affects people’s political views: if girls are raised in a very politically active family that discusses politics and exposes them to those ideas, they’re more likely to be interested in getting involved. But in a national sample of young people, political ambition begins to stratify just as early, with women saying they would rather be business owners or teachers before they would even consider running for local office.
This stratification, however, gets even worse in college: by then, men are not only more competitive, self-confident, and perceived to be culturally “appropriate” for political leadership, but they get more involved in political activities by that age.
Why don’t women? Is it because of the specific responsibilities in elected office, or all the painful political mudslinging people have to suffer in order to get there?
According to those same surveys, women are equally likely to want to improve their communities. They’re just not sure if public office is the right way to do it.
But having more women in elected office is not just equitable, but produces better policy and political outcomes. In the recent US Federal government shutdown, as one Huffington Post article put it, “Men Got Us Into The Shutdown, Women Got Us Out”--referring to a bipartisan group of female Senators who broke the impasse by committing to negotiation.
So how do we encourage greater female political ambition? The Democratic National Committee’s quota of reserving 50% of their delegations for women hasn’t produced the outcomes we’ve sought.
Professor Lawless offered some excellent advice from her own unsuccessful campaign for US Congress in Rhode Island. She confessed that, though her candidacy was made much easier by the fact that she didn’t have to juggle a regular career, family, and a public political life simultaneously (as many other women do), the path was nonetheless fraught with discrimination and emotional frustration. But the experience of running is itself empowering; gender stereotyping is a self-fulfilling prophecy that can only be undone when more and more women realize that it gets better. Having women set their own ambitions higher and working towards them paves a smoother path for others.
Women can only make the road by running.
Photo source.
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
Gender and Groupthink: Why Don't Smart People Share Their Ideas?
As the cliche goes, we are social animals. We eat in groups; we learn in groups; some of us hunt in groups. And very often, we make lots of big decisions in groups---from corporate boards to faculty committees and elected bodies.
But in those groups, do the best ideas always get adopted? Do they even get contributed to the mix?
What's particularly tough is when good ideas from half of the people in all groups are immediately ruled out. As research by Katherine Phillips and Melissa Thomas-Hunt explored back in 2004, groups across cultures have difficulty recognizing, let alone encouraging female expertise. This is often due to their group dynamics---whether the effects of social networks, group think, or even plain sexism.
But in last week’s WAPPP seminar on “Gender and Group Decisions: Eliciting and Acting Upon Expertise,” Katie Baldiga Coffman, Assistant Professor at Ohio State University, showed how, even in the absence of explicit group dynamics, women are less likely to put their own--often better--ideas forward.
In a controlled experiment at Ohio State, women and men offered their answers in a trivia game--first as individuals, later in blind groups, and finally in groups in which they saw their partners’ faces.
The results? Men contributed their answers more often than women, across categories; women under-contributed even in the subjects in which they were more comfortable about their expertise; and interestingly, even being provided feedback about their strengths did not improve efficiencies in information sharing.
So, even without competition, and with encouragement, talented women were less likely to contribute their better ideas to a group.
How can we fix this to improve efficiencies and make sure that (i) women are more comfortable with contributing their ideas, and that (ii) smart people contribute their good ideas more often? Can we design mechanisms or shape environments that “nudge” people to share and decide according to merit?
Taking a tip from the nudging process from last week's seminar, what would happen if we change the role models that women see--rather than just provide personal feedback--so people get more used to seeing women being successful, and start to associate women with success too? When people start getting used to seeing things a certain way, will they start getting used to doing them--including sharing and adopting the best ideas?
What are some other ways of nudging a system towards the best answers---towards social equity and social efficiency?
Photo Source
But in those groups, do the best ideas always get adopted? Do they even get contributed to the mix?
What's particularly tough is when good ideas from half of the people in all groups are immediately ruled out. As research by Katherine Phillips and Melissa Thomas-Hunt explored back in 2004, groups across cultures have difficulty recognizing, let alone encouraging female expertise. This is often due to their group dynamics---whether the effects of social networks, group think, or even plain sexism.
But in last week’s WAPPP seminar on “Gender and Group Decisions: Eliciting and Acting Upon Expertise,” Katie Baldiga Coffman, Assistant Professor at Ohio State University, showed how, even in the absence of explicit group dynamics, women are less likely to put their own--often better--ideas forward.
In a controlled experiment at Ohio State, women and men offered their answers in a trivia game--first as individuals, later in blind groups, and finally in groups in which they saw their partners’ faces.
The results? Men contributed their answers more often than women, across categories; women under-contributed even in the subjects in which they were more comfortable about their expertise; and interestingly, even being provided feedback about their strengths did not improve efficiencies in information sharing.
So, even without competition, and with encouragement, talented women were less likely to contribute their better ideas to a group.
How can we fix this to improve efficiencies and make sure that (i) women are more comfortable with contributing their ideas, and that (ii) smart people contribute their good ideas more often? Can we design mechanisms or shape environments that “nudge” people to share and decide according to merit?
Taking a tip from the nudging process from last week's seminar, what would happen if we change the role models that women see--rather than just provide personal feedback--so people get more used to seeing women being successful, and start to associate women with success too? When people start getting used to seeing things a certain way, will they start getting used to doing them--including sharing and adopting the best ideas?
What are some other ways of nudging a system towards the best answers---towards social equity and social efficiency?
Photo Source
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
Are Women Less Competitive Than Men?
A recent New York Times article asks, “Why are there still so few women in science?” Focusing on American society, the article explores some of our cultural biases related to women in science. The TV show “The Big Bang Theory,” for example, features a crew of geeky men with physics PhDs with a few token women (the “hip” ones are all math duds), while in the movie “Mean Girls,” the female lead hides her mathematical talent to impress a boy and fit in.
But does it start even earlier? In Thursday’s WAPPP Seminar, “Gender,Competitiveness, and Career Choices,” Stanford University’s Muriel Niederle, presented some of her research on whether there are some non-cognitive reasons: do women simply shy away from competition? Do men compete too much?
In her experiments of simple math competitions, Professor Niederle found that even the lowest performing (i.e. “stupidest”) men were much more willing to join a competitive game with rewards than even the smartest women. In fact, 73% of all men chose to enter the competition while only 35% of all women did. (There was pretty much an even distribution in peoples’ actual results and intelligence, by the way).
What adds to this are a few
factors: women tend to be more risk-averse generally; and despite their
objective talent, women also tend to rate themselves as lower than they are.
And though these tests were done on college students, apparently similar trends
on willingness to compete are visible by age three!
Though proclivity to compete with other people per se ought not determine aptitude and success, the reality is that it does. In the classroom, this has path-dependent effects: how young women perceive themselves to be at math influences which course of study, and later career, they pursue. And years later, we see the effect of that in the paucity of women in math and science---but not in subjects like literature.
Some fields have had lower and harder glass ceilings than others. The reason for that may certainly be structural, in terms of decision-makers denying career mobility. But those structures start to oscillate based on the stories we tell ourselves and each other. Eileen Pollack, the author of that Times piece, writes that “the most powerful determinant of whether a woman goes on in science might be whether anyone encourages her to go on.”
Photo 1 link
 |
But does it start even earlier? In Thursday’s WAPPP Seminar, “Gender,Competitiveness, and Career Choices,” Stanford University’s Muriel Niederle, presented some of her research on whether there are some non-cognitive reasons: do women simply shy away from competition? Do men compete too much?
In her experiments of simple math competitions, Professor Niederle found that even the lowest performing (i.e. “stupidest”) men were much more willing to join a competitive game with rewards than even the smartest women. In fact, 73% of all men chose to enter the competition while only 35% of all women did. (There was pretty much an even distribution in peoples’ actual results and intelligence, by the way).
 |
| Muriel Niederle, “Gender, Competitiveness, and Career Choices” |
Though proclivity to compete with other people per se ought not determine aptitude and success, the reality is that it does. In the classroom, this has path-dependent effects: how young women perceive themselves to be at math influences which course of study, and later career, they pursue. And years later, we see the effect of that in the paucity of women in math and science---but not in subjects like literature.
Some fields have had lower and harder glass ceilings than others. The reason for that may certainly be structural, in terms of decision-makers denying career mobility. But those structures start to oscillate based on the stories we tell ourselves and each other. Eileen Pollack, the author of that Times piece, writes that “the most powerful determinant of whether a woman goes on in science might be whether anyone encourages her to go on.”
Photo 1 link
Friday, September 27, 2013
Breaking Through the Corporate Glass Ceiling
Over the last generation, women have made huge strides in
the professional world. By many
accounts, they account for over 60%
of US college graduates. And while the economic recession harmed everyone, women
have had a lower
rate of unemployment than men, particularly in white collar industries,
where their presence has been increasing.
But somehow, there seems to be a limit to how far they can rise---that proverbial “Glass Ceiling”. Though women are a majority in professional occupations, they’re just 4.2% of CEOs in America! Corporate boards are a whole other story.
Today’s WAPPP Seminar featured Cathy Tinsley of Georgetown University, presenting some preliminary findings from her research on Progress on Gender Diversity for Corporate Boards: Are We Running in Place?
Using a number of different laboratory experiments and statistical analyses, she and her colleagues explore the conditions under which more women might be added to corporate boards. While the research is still ongoing, some early results suggest a tendency to maintain the board's existing gender composition when members need to be replaced. Interestingly, she also saw an increase in selecting a woman for an open board seat when there were predominantly women in the candidate pool.
Of course, some of the reasons for women's representation on boards are important to note too. A Credit Suisse report issued last year found that companies with women on their board performed better than comparable companies that did not. In another report, Catalyst found that Fortune 500 companies with more women on their boards outperformed their peers on average across a series of financial indicators.
Women may be more represented on the boards of social organizations and non-profits than on of financial firms, for example. But should this be the case? Should women be represented equally simply because it’s fair and they are capable of providing the (exact) same service as men? Or because they bring something special and complementary---but essentially different---than men do?
But somehow, there seems to be a limit to how far they can rise---that proverbial “Glass Ceiling”. Though women are a majority in professional occupations, they’re just 4.2% of CEOs in America! Corporate boards are a whole other story.
 |
| "Progress on Gender Diversity for Corporate Boards: Are We Running in Place?" |
Today’s WAPPP Seminar featured Cathy Tinsley of Georgetown University, presenting some preliminary findings from her research on Progress on Gender Diversity for Corporate Boards: Are We Running in Place?
Using a number of different laboratory experiments and statistical analyses, she and her colleagues explore the conditions under which more women might be added to corporate boards. While the research is still ongoing, some early results suggest a tendency to maintain the board's existing gender composition when members need to be replaced. Interestingly, she also saw an increase in selecting a woman for an open board seat when there were predominantly women in the candidate pool.
Of course, some of the reasons for women's representation on boards are important to note too. A Credit Suisse report issued last year found that companies with women on their board performed better than comparable companies that did not. In another report, Catalyst found that Fortune 500 companies with more women on their boards outperformed their peers on average across a series of financial indicators.
Women may be more represented on the boards of social organizations and non-profits than on of financial firms, for example. But should this be the case? Should women be represented equally simply because it’s fair and they are capable of providing the (exact) same service as men? Or because they bring something special and complementary---but essentially different---than men do?
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
Beyond the Glass Ceiling
Today my friend sent me a link to Boys Clubs Tumblr – a visual
collection of “the corners of the world where women have yet to tread.” It
is mind-boggling how much progress we still have to make in closing gender gaps.
At WAPPP Seminars this year we discussed some of these “corners
of the world.” There are the overwhelmingly male corporate boards,
the merely 18 female CEO’s of Fortune 500 companies, and the female stock brokers earning less than their male peers.
But we also heard about female leaders helping their countries address inter-group conflict, female professors inspiring young women to pursue STEM careers, and the women mobilizing their communities for land rights.
In the final seminar of the academic year, Professor Matt Huffman, of the UC Irvine Sociology Department and the Paul Merage School of Business, brought research to bear on another question – do women managers change the workplace
itself?
There is some evidence that female managers do close gender
gaps among their employees. One study found that wage gaps were smaller inlocal U.S. industries with many high-status females. Two other studies explored
gender segregation and found that female managers increased female hiring and
gender integration in the California savings and loan industry and in
California’s state agencies.
Huffman set out to study these phenomena on a much larger scale,
using Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s data. EEO-1 reports, which are
filed by all “medium and large” firms under the 1964 Civil Rights Act, amount
to a set of longitudinal workplace data spanning decades. Each report breaks
out the managerial and non-managerial occupations at a specific work site and
reports on the number of women and racial minorities in each category. Because
the work sites are identified by name and address, the individual files are
confidential and only available to a handful of researchers. For Huffman, this
presents a goldmine for empirical analysis, complete with information on
industry types, organization sizes, and other potential control variables.
Since the data did not include wages, instead of focusing on
wage gaps, Huffman decided to study organizational segregation – a measure of
how evenly men and women were distributed across the non-managerial categories
in the organization. Using regression analysis on 1975, 1986, 1995 and 2005
data, he demonstrated that organizations with a higher percentage of women in
management positions were less gender-segregated in the non-managerial ranks.
Though the most recent work places were generally far less
gender-segregated than the older cohorts, even without female managers, the
pattern across all four points in time was similar – higher percentage of
female managers meant more integrated subordinates. In other words, breaking up the boys' club at the top, helped break the barriers among departments and functional areas below.
Huffman ran a series of other analyses to pinpoint aspects
of the workplace context that amplified or diminished the gender-integrating
effect of female managers on their organizations. He found that managerial
formalization and company growth were both conducive to the gender integrating effect of female managers.
Perhaps it is because formal structures can give women more access to power
than a loose work environment might. It may also be because a female manager in
a growing organization has more opportunities to hire people, altering the
gender balance of her workforce.
Why does gender diversity and gender integration matter? First,
women bring unique lived experiences to the workplace, and given that women are
also half of the consumers, it is prudent to include their perspectives
in developing and selling products and services. (Maybe if the Apple Inc. team added some women,
someone would have thought that iPad could be a bit of an awkward name...). Second, companies with more female leaders make more money and women executives make venture-backed companies more successful, despite the fact that the venture capital world is still decidedly a boys club.
Finally, gender equality is the just and the smart thing to do, which is why WAPPP's work closing gender gaps in economic opportunity, political participation, health and education is so important.
Anya Malkov is an MPP candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School, a WAPPP Cultural Bridge Fellow, and an alumna of From Harvard Square to the Oval Office.
Thursday, January 3, 2013
Let's Talk About Gender
Today the
113th Congress is getting sworn in. There is more gender diversity this time than ever before – 20 out of 100 Senators and 81 out of 435 Representatives are
women. Still, the gender gap is evident.
There is
also a gender diversity issue among people who like to learn about gender gaps.
Among attendees of weekly WAPPP seminars last semester, the percentage of men in
the room never got above 30 percent. And when 60 people crowded into the room for a particularly
well-attended session on “Race, Gender and Dynamics of Social Hierarchy Reversal”, only 7 of them were men – 12 percent.
This is
disappointing to me. I want to discuss gender with women and men, because
social and political implications of gender affect all of us. Instead I face
the situation that Debora Spar described best:
“All too often, women are scared of raising the topic of gender with men, thinking it will brand them as radicals or troublemakers, while men are terrified of saying or doing anything that might classify them as politically incorrect. The result, of course, is that no one says anything productive at all.”
This observation stood out to me as a rarely-acknowledged truth, even though it was not the focus of her article.
In an
attempt to spark dialogue, I asked a few of my male
colleagues at the Harvard Kennedy School to share some thoughts on gender in the
context of their personal and professional experiences. I will feature their
posts over the next couple of weeks.
If you are a male reader interested in
contributing to these guest-blogger series, please contact me at anya_malkov@hks13.harvard.edu,
and let’s talk about gender!
Anya Malkov is an MPP candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School, a WAPPP Cultural Bridge Fellow, and an alumna of From Harvard Square to the Oval Office.
Friday, September 14, 2012
What's Culture Got to Do with Fertility?
I had no idea what to expect from a talk titled “Lowest-Low
Fertility: A theory of normative rigidity and economic context” but judging by
the packed room, a number of people were interested in hearing Mary C. Brinton,
the chair of Harvard’s sociology department, discuss this topic.
What is “lowest-low” fertility? A country’s total fertility rate
of 1.3 or fewer births per woman is considered lowest-low. Of course, low
fertility is not a problem for the planet overall, but for individual countries
fertility far below replacement rate has serious implications – a rapidly aging
population and a shrinking labor force among them.
So why are some developed, post-industrial countries experiencing
lowest-low fertility and others are not? For instance, the United States does
not have “lowest-low” fertility, but Japan does, even though Japan has better
child care options and ostensibly more family-friendly policies. Low fertility
doesn’t even correlate with female labor force participation. In fact, it
appears that countries with high percentage of women working actually have
normal fertility rates.
If it’s not working women and it’s not government policies,
what is driving down fertility in some well-to-do nations? Perhaps it is
culture.
Professor Brinton and her team set out to test this
hypothesis. Utilizing data from the global attitudes survey, they isolated the
gender-role perceptions through answers to questions like “A woman needs
children to be fulfilled” and “Men have more rights to jobs when jobs are
scarce.” They discerned three broad clusters among 24 post-industrial countries
– those with predominantly “conservative” attitudes, reflecting the male
breadwinner-female caregiver model, and then “egalitarian” or “caregiver
egalitarian” countries.
Professor Brinton’s analysis demonstrates that predominance
of male breadwinner-female caregiver attitudes correlates significantly with
low fertility rates. The quantitative model controls for the economic
well-being of the countries and includes other potential factors that affect
fertility, such as unemployment among young males.
This means changing a culture of gender inequality and breaking down attitudes that perpetuate rigid gender norms is in the best interest of any post-industrial country concerned about its rapidly shrinking and aging population. If only changing culture were easy...
Sunday, September 9, 2012
Gender Equality in Elected Office: Applying the Six Step Action Plan to the Egyptian Case
“A genuine academic with a real impact on practice” is how
Hannah Riley-Bowles introduced Pippa Norris, the McGuire Lecturer in
Comparative Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School. Professor Norris certainly lived
up to this introduction, presenting the audience with a research-based
framework and then making us to dig into the practice of applying it to the Egyptian
case.
The research question behind the framework is “What promotes
gender equality in elected office?” The country-level data clearly shows that
it is not gender-related development
and not democratization, and that culture change is too slow to measure or to
be an effective tool. It is institutional
reforms that have impact. The “Six Step Action Plan” hones in on the institutions and leverage points in question:
- Constitutions
- Electoral systems
- Legal quotas
- Party selection rules and procedures
- Capacity development
- Gender-sensitive procedures in elected office
In a purely theoretical world it would be easy to insert
women at each of these levels, to make all the rules women-friendly – guarantee
constitutional protections, mandate quotas, provide trainings, etc. But the
reality is messy and much more interesting.
The Egyptian case study presented us with the historic,
political and cultural context of a country in the midst of a constitutional debate.
It forced us to think strategically and to get specific about the types of
interventions (if any) we would pursue at each of the six steps.
 |
| Egyptian Women MP's Photo by Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters |
Lively discussion sprung forth from all corners of the room.
An Egyptian student insisted that it matters more that the right women are in office, not just more women, explaining how
highly conservative women can set back the cause. Groups argued about the best
level on which to focus the advocacy. Debate ensued over the timing of
intervention and the key actors to engage, and there was no agreement on quotas
versus reserved seats as the optimal legal structure. We ran out of time.
“So what is the solution?” I asked half kidding and half
frustrated. Of course, there is no solution that we can simply think up here in
Cambridge. Still, the exercise demonstrated that the Six Step Action Plan – a
conceptual framework grounded in research – can be a powerful tool for advocates
shaping the debate on gender equality. And with requests pouring in from all
corners of the world to translate and to adapt this framework, it is no wonder
that Pippa Norris is an academic with a real impact on practice.
Monday, November 14, 2011
When Daddy is CEO - WAPPP Seminar Series
The Man: David Ross, Assistant Professor of Management, Columbia UniversityThe 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.
- 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.
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.
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Education or Marriage? In Mexico, Gender Often Decides - WAPPP Seminar Series
The Woman: Katja Kaufmann, WAPPP Fellow, Assistant Professor, Department of Economics and IGIER, Bocconi University, Italy
The Talk: Educational Choices and Subjective Expectations of Returns: Evidence on Intra-Household Decisions and Gender Differences
The Question: Why do teenagers in developing countries decide to go to scho
ol, and is your decision based on whether you're a girl or a boy?
Policymakers interested in closing the gender gap in schools, pay attention. A new paper on why students in Mexico decide to pursue higher education may hold key answers to how men and women invest in their futures - and why marriage doesn't seem to be the answer anymore.
A paper penned by Katja Kaufmann and the economist Orazio Attanasio last year studied the decision-making process of families in Mexico deciding
to send their children to high school and college. The team was curious to see if expectations of making more money by getting a better job with a higher level of education mattered more for young men or women, and if education had begun to replace marriage for females seeking a stable future.
The Results: When it comes to boys attending high school, their decision -- as well as that of their parents, matters. Boys are more likely to enter their senior year of high school if the family supports their decision. Attending college, on the other hand, depends on the boys themselves: hopes for a good job and higher pay drives many to pursue higher degree.
Girls, however, seem ruled by a maternal hand. Whether girls enter high school or college largely depends on a mother's opinion, and whether potential marriage prospects outweigh the benefits of earning an extra
degree. (The influence of fathers, meanwhile, was not directly studied. One-fourth of the participants came from mother-only families, making it hard to control for the role that paternal decision-making plays.)
Twist: While girls may forego college opportunities for marriage, they are also more likely to go to college if they live in a region where there aren't many educated men. Greater potential for an educated mate, or the safety of attaining better working opportunities as a single woman, drive many to attend college.
Take away: Ms Kaufmann was surprised by her findings; education has improved tremendously in Mexico over the past few decades, and opportunities are equally available for boys and girls. She wasn't expecting such a strong influence from mothers on their daughter's education, nor the gender imbalance when it came to making decisions. It would be interesting, she said, to run the same study in a different context, such as the United States.
For policymakers, such findings may have an impact on the design of programs aimed at increasing school enrollment by awarding cash or fellowship grants to students.
Oportunidades, for instance, a social assistance program in Mexico for the poor, is considering the possibility of issuing schooling grants directly to students. This paper could inform how such grants are awarded if it is indeed true that teenagers play a constructive, decisive role
in enrolling and attending school.
*Photos courtesy of poster.4teachers.org and http://www.oportunidades.gob.mx/Portal/
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)