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Gender Bias/Discrimination (Gender Bias in Various Occupations)

Paper Session

Monday, Jan. 4, 2021 12:15 PM - 2:15 PM (EST)

Hosted By: American Economic Association & Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession
  • Chair: Petra Todd, University of Pennsylvania

Gender Stereotyping in Sports

Marina Morales
,
University of Zaragoza
Miriam Marcen
,
University of Zaragoza
Almudena Sevilla
,
University College London

Abstract

Gender gaps in academic achievement have dramatically reversed in the last decades (Goldin et al., 2006). Yet there still remain important gender differences that seem to be persistent over time. Girls continue to perform relatively worse than boys in math tests, particularly at the top of the ability distribution (Guiso et al., 2008; Fryer and Levitt, 2010; Pope and Sydnor, 2010). A much lesser understood phenomenon is how the practice of sports differs by gender. Following the passage of Title IX in 1972, which required schools to provide equal access to all sport activities by 1978, the number of high-school girls participating in sports as a percentage of female high-school enrollment increased ten-fold. However, the increase in female participation in sports was not homogeneous across sports (Stevenson, 2007). Using data from the 2002-2019 National Federation of State High School Association, we construct a Gender Stereotype Defier (GSD) sports index to capture the share of boys and girls practicing sports dominated by the opposite sex by state. The GSD sports index reveals a high degree of specialization in the choice of sport by sex. Athletes are 37 times more likely to play a sport dominated by their own sex than are athletes from the opposite sex. We also document large and persistent cross-state differences in the GSD sports index, which are hard to reconcile with a hypothesis based on comparative advantage in physical abilities. Using several measures on attitudes towards women, we document that states with more gender-equal norms and where the relative position of women is relatively better are also states where boys and girls tend to break stereotypes in sports. We also identify parental time investments as being an important cultural-transmission mechanism through which gender stereotypical patterns in the choice of sports across US states may be maintained.

Gender Attitudes in the Judiciary: Evidence from U.S. Circuit Courts

Arianna Ornaghi
,
University of Warwick
Daniel Chen
,
Toulouse School of Economics
Elliott Ash
,
ETH Zurich

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

Amanda Weinstein
,
University of Akron
Heather Stephens
,
West Virginia University
Carlianne Patrick
,
Georgia State University

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

Anne Fitzpatrick
,
University of Massachusetts-Boston
Sabrin Beg
,
University of Delaware
Adrienne Lucas
,
University of Delaware

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