It’s a Man’s World? Gender Spillover Effects on Performance in a Male-Dominated Industry

Abstract

Getting more women into male-dominated industries has become the nucleus of public debate in many industrialized countries. However, it is still not clear how growing female representation impacts the individual performance of workers in these sectors. The research setting of this study is the Norwegian oil industry as a typically male-dominated sector. Using a fixed-effects regression model, the present paper investigates two different constellations: 1) how growing female representation impacts the individual performance of workers at the same hierarchical level (within-ranks); 2) how growing female representation at the next highest rank impacts the performance of subordinated workers (downward-flowing). Consistent with prevailing theory, the within-ranks analysis reveals that the performance of men in relation to a higher share of female peers follows a cubic pattern. This shows that men’s performance is the highest in gender-balanced teams. For women, this relationship cannot be confirmed. In terms of downward-flowing effects, female supervisors in this particular industry are estimated to have a negative effect on the performance of both, men and women. This result on negative downward-flowing effects requires a deeper analysis on the corporate cultural background.

Correspondence Heuristic and Filter-Empowerment Heuristic: Investigating the Reversed Gender Achievement Gap in a Sample of Secondary School Students in Saudi Arabia within the Framework of Educational and Learning Capital

“…Gender gaps in education not only occur in many forms, but they have been found at all systemic levels. Using Bronfenbrenner's [13,14] terminology, systemic levels include the chronosystem (i.e., environmental changes that occur over the lifespan; see [15,16]), macrosystems (i.e., attitudes and ideologies of the culture; see [17,18]), exosystems (i.e., the extended family and neighborhood, see [19,20]), mesosystems, (i.e., interactions of an individual's micro systems; see [21,22]), and microsystems (i.e., an individual's parents, siblings, peers, and teachers; see [23,24]). Many authors assume that gender gaps at these systemic levels may cause gender gaps at the individual level in interaction with psycho-biological factors [20,25,26].…”