Gender, performance level, and competence standards in task groups

Foschi, Martha

doi:10.1016/j.ssresearch.2008.10.004

Cited by 33 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…As higher status group members, men tend to have their performances judged by a more lenient standard than women, who are lower status group members (Foschi 1996(Foschi , 2008Foschi, Lai, and Sigerson 1994). This is because when women perform well, their performances are inconsistent with status-based expectations; when men perform equally well, their performances are consistent with expectations, and are, as a result, less scrutinized.…”

Section: Gender and Self-assessments Of Entrepreneurial Ability 291mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Experimental research demonstrates that this phenomenon can occur when the assessor is a third, non-performing party (Foschi et al 1994) or one of two performers (Foschi 1996(Foschi , 2008. For example, when opposite sex partners performed a task that was defined as masculine and had received information that their scores were highly comparable to their partner's, women imposed a higher standard of ability on themselves and reported believing that they had less ability relative to their partner than men did (Foschi 1996).…”

Section: Gender and Self-assessments Of Entrepreneurial Ability 291mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Gender and Entrepreneurship as a Career Choice

Thébaud

2010

Soc Psychol Q

175

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The gender gap in entrepreneurship has typically been understood through women's structural disadvantages in acquiring the resources relevant for successful business ownership. This study builds on resource-based approaches to investigate how cultural beliefs about gender influence the process by which individuals initially come to identify entrepreneurship as a viable labor-market option. Drawing on status characteristics theory, this study evaluates (1) how cultural beliefs about gender and entrepreneurship influence self-assessments of entrepreneurial ability, and (2) the extent to which such assessments account for the gender gap in business start-ups. Results suggest that women are significantly less likely to perceive themselves as able to be an entrepreneur and they hold themselves to a stricter standard of competence when compared to similarly situated men. This gender difference in self-assessments accounts for a significant portion of the gender gap in entrepreneurship after controlling for relevant resources. Additional analyses reveal that significant gender differences in self-assessed ability persist among established business owners.

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Section: Gender and Self-assessments Of Entrepreneurial Ability 291mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Gender and Self-assessments Of Entrepreneurial Ability 291mentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender and Entrepreneurship as a Career Choice

Thébaud

2010

Soc Psychol Q

175

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“…A now voluminous body of experimental and survey research shows that men and women believe that men are generally more competent and capable than women and that this gender gap in expectations of others' competence is especially strong when the task is associated with stereotypically male traits and abilities such as math reasoning or higher-order cognitive thinking (Wagner and Berger 1997;Ridgeway 1997). Gender status beliefs can also inform individuals' self-assessments of competence at career-relevant tasks: women evaluate their own competence and abilities more negatively than men with the same measured ability, which in turn affects their career-relevant educational decisions (Correll 2001(Correll , 2004Foschi 2008). Consistent with this argument, gender differences in self-assessed math ability have been shown to affect gender differences in STEM (baccalaureate) major aspirations and choices and, at the aggregate level, field segregation (Correll 2001(Correll , 2004Mann and DiPrete 2016).…”

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confidence: 99%

Degrees of Difference: Gender Segregation of U.S. Doctorates by Field and Program Prestige

Weeden¹,

Thèbaud²,

Gelbgiser³

2017

Preprint

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Women earn nearly half of doctoral degrees in research fields, yet doctoral education in the United States remains deeply segregated by gender. We argue that in addition to the oft-noted segregation of men and women by field of study, men and women may also be segregated across programs that differ in their prestige. Using data on all doctorates awarded in the United States from 2003 to 2014, field-specific program rankings, and field-level measures of math and verbal skills, we show that (1) "net" field segregation is very high and strongly associated with field-level math skills; (2) "net" prestige segregation is weaker than field segregation but still a nontrivial form of segregation in doctoral education; (3) women are underrepresented among graduates of the highest-and to a lesser extent, the lowest-prestige programs; and (4) the strength and pattern of prestige segregation varies substantially across fields, but little of this variation is associated with field skills.Keywords: gender segregation; prestige segregation; field segregation; gender inequality; higher education; women in STEM W OMEN earn 60 percent of baccalaureate degrees and 46 percent of doctoral degrees in research fields (National Science Foundation [NSF] 2015a), yet higher education in the United States remains deeply segregated by gender. To date, the literature on educational segregation has focused on the distribution of men and women across fields of study, how this distribution varies over time and space, and its consequences for gender inequality in career outcomes Bradley 2002, 2009;England and Li 2006;England et al. 2007;Barone 2011;Bobbitt-Zeher 2007; DiPrete 2013, 2016; NSF 2015b;Ransom 1990). We extend this line of research by offering a multidimensional analysis of segregation in doctoral education across fields of study and across PhD-granting programs that differ in their prestige.Our interest in prestige segregation stems from four sources. At the most basic level, prestige segregation, like field segregation, is an indicator of the extent to which men and women's educational outcomes are equal. However, the two types of segregation are conceptually and empirically distinct. Even in a hypothetical world in which every field graduates the same proportions of men and women, men may be overrepresented among degree recipients from the highest ranked programs and women among degree recipients from the lowest ranked programs. In this world, gender integration exists with respect to field, but not with respect to program prestige.Second, field and prestige segregation represent two qualitatively different forms of gender inequality in higher education. Prestige segregation is inherently vertical, meaning that segregation occurs across categories that are ordered from 123 Weeden, Thébaud, and Gelbgiser Degrees of Difference high to low. Field segregation, by contrast, is horizontal: the boundaries between fields define qualitatively different positions, but fields "represent distinctions more of kind than of grade" (Cha...

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“…Consistent with this idea, research has shown that implicit cultural stereotypes about gender in particular tend to be applied most frequently under conditions of high uncertainty (Foschi 1996;Gorman 2006;Kanter 1977;Ridgeway and Correll 2004). For instance, experimental studies suggest that when the quality of a performance is ambiguous, women job candidates are rated as less competent than their men counterparts (Foddy and Smithson 1999;Foschi 2008;Heilman et al 2004;Heilman, Block, and Stathatos 1997). Similarly, when the nature of work is more uncertain because selection criteria or standards are not clear, there tend to be larger gender differences in promotion and pay than when such practices are clearer and more systematic (Gorman 2006;Reskin 2001;Reskin and McBrier 2000;Ridgeway 1997;.…”

Section: Market Uncertainty and Stricter Lending Standards: Catalystsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unequal Hard Times: The Influence of the Great Recession on Gender Bias in Entrepreneurial Financing

Thébaud¹,

Sharkey²

2016

SocScience

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Prior work finds mixed evidence of gender bias in lenders' willingness to approve loans to entrepreneurs during normal macroeconomic conditions. However, various theories predict that gender bias is more likely to manifest when there is greater uncertainty or when decision-makers' choices are under greater scrutiny from others. Such conditions characterized the lending market in the recent economic downturn. This article draws on an analysis of panel data from the Kauffman Firm Survey to investigate how the Great Recession affected the gender gap in entrepreneurial access to financing, net of individual and firm-level characteristics. Consistent with predictions, we find that women-led firms were significantly more likely than men-led firms to encounter difficulty in acquiring funding when small-business lending contracted in 2009 and 2010. We assess the consistency of our results with two different theories of bias or discrimination. Our findings shed light on mechanisms that may contribute to disadvantages for women entrepreneurs and, more broadly, highlight how the effects of ascribed status characteristics (e.g., gender) on economic decision-making may vary systematically with macroeconomic conditions.

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Gender, performance level, and competence standards in task groups

Cited by 33 publications

References 22 publications

Gender and Entrepreneurship as a Career Choice

Gender and Entrepreneurship as a Career Choice

Degrees of Difference: Gender Segregation of U.S. Doctorates by Field and Program Prestige

Unequal Hard Times: The Influence of the Great Recession on Gender Bias in Entrepreneurial Financing

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