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The Old Boys' Club: Schmoozing and the Gender Gap

  • Zoë Cullen
  • Ricardo Perez-Truglia
American Economic Review
vol. 113, no. 7, July 2023
(pp. 1703-40)
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Abstract

Offices are social places. Employees and managers take breaks together and talk about family and hobbies. In this study, we show that employees' social interactions with their managers can be advantageous for their careers, and that this phenomenon contributes to the gender pay gap. We use administrative and survey data from a large financial institution and exploit quasi-random variation induced by the rotation of managers. We provide evidence that when employees have more face-to-face interactions with their managers, they are promoted at a higher rate. This mechanism could explain a third of the gender gap in promotions at this firm.

Citation

Cullen, Zoë, and Ricardo Perez-Truglia. 2023. "The Old Boys' Club: Schmoozing and the Gender Gap." American Economic Review, 113 (7): 1703-40. DOI: 10.1257/aer.20210863

Additional Materials

JEL Classification

  • G21 Banks; Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages
  • J16 Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
  • J31 Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
  • J71 Labor Discrimination
  • M12 Personnel Management; Executives; Executive Compensation
  • M51 Personnel Economics: Firm Employment Decisions; Promotions
  • Z13 Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification