Gender Bias/Discrimination (Gender Bias in Various Occupations)
Paper Session
Monday, Jan. 4, 2021 12:15 PM - 2:15 PM (EST)
- Chair: Petra Todd, University of Pennsylvania
Gender Attitudes in the Judiciary: Evidence from U.S. Circuit Courts
Abstract
Do gender attitudes influence interactions with female judges in U.S. Circuit Courts? In this paper, we propose a novel judge-specific measure of gender attitudes based on use of gender-stereotyped language in the judge's authored opinions. Exploiting quasi-random assignment of judges to cases and conditioning on judges' characteristics, we validate the measure showing that slanted judges vote more conservatively in gender-related cases. Slant influences interactions with female colleagues: slanted judges are more likely to reverse lower court decisions if the lower-court judge is a woman than a man, are less likely to assign opinions to female judges, and cite fewer female authored opinions.Born to Care (or Not Care): How Gender Role Attitudes Affect Occupation Choice
Abstract
Differential sorting into occupations explains a substantial portion of the gender wage gap in the US., and many female-dominated occupations and industries pay, on average, less than male-dominated ones. Yet, a person’s occupation is the outcome of many prior decisions including labor force participation, educational attainment, college major, etc. that are conditional on both individual and family characteristics and prevailing local social attitudes. Social norms and role models from childhood and adolescence may first shape girls’ views of their own innate talents and abilities, fundamentally altering the career paths that they view as attainable or acceptable. Yet, the precise mechanism through which gender role attitudes affect women’s wages is not understood.This paper fills that gap in the literature by empirically investigating how the local gender role attitudes to which women are exposed during childhood and adolescence affect their occupation choice. We combine detailed microdata (the geocoded NLSY79 and 97) that includes sociodemographic information, parental data, aptitude and ability scores, educational attainment, college and major, and a complete labor market history, with information on gender role attitudes from the geocoded General Social Survey and female LFP where they lived at birth and age 14. We then compare women who grew up in places with progressive gender role attitudes and more female role models in particular occupations to women with exposure to more traditional gender norms. While the two NLSY cohorts provide rich detail, sample sizes are small. Thus, we also use Census microdata that includes place of birth to generalize our results from the NLSY samples. Overall, our approach allows us to examine the impact of societal gender role attitudes on the occupation choice of women, a significant portion of the explained gender wage gap, highlighting the contribution of sexism and discrimination to the gender wage gap.
Gender Bias in Performance Assessments: Evidence from Teachers
Abstract
Professional advancement often depends on performance assessments in which managers rate employees on a single metric of “effectiveness.” Managers often lack objective measures and therefore rely on subjective measures that could conflate both true effectiveness and any biases managers might hold. Further, to seek promotion, employees themselves must rate their own effectiveness, again often with little objective basis. In this study, we focus on the education sector and compare two measures of subjective teacher effectiveness—a school principals’ assessment and a teacher’s own self-assessment—to an objective measure—teacher value added (TVA) based on student test score gains.Preliminary findings suggest that school principals, i.e. the managers of teachers, on average rate male and female teachers as similarly effective, both conditional and unconditional on TVA. Similarly, the average self-reported effectiveness of male and female teachers are equivalent.
In contrast, we find evidence of bias in the interaction between gender and TVA. Both self- reported and manager-based assessments are increasing in raw TVA but decreasing in the interaction between TVA and female. Therefore, higher objective effectiveness does not translate into higher perceived effectiveness equally for men and women. This is true for both manager- and self-assessments.
In Ghana, as elsewhere, school principals and own self-assessment play large roles in determining teachers’ future trajectory and persistence in education. This systematic underestimation of and by women likely contributes to under-representation of women in teaching—only 26 percent of all teachers are female—and the narrowing of female representation in
education management—women are only 19 percent of school principals and 8 percent of circuit supervisors (i.e. supervisors of school principals).
Discussant(s)
Betsey Stevenson
,
University of Michigan
Amanda Pallais
,
Harvard University
Judith Hellerstein
,
University of Maryland
Heather Sarsons
,
University of Chicago
JEL Classifications
- J1 - Demographic Economics
- J4 - Particular Labor Markets