The effect of gender and parenting daughters on judgments of morally controversial companies

Abstract

Earlier findings suggest that men with daughters make judgments and decisions somewhat in line with those made by women. In this paper, we attempt to extend those findings, by testing how gender and parenting daughters affect judgments of the appropriateness of investing in and working for morally controversial companies (“sin stocks”). To do so, in Study 1 (N = 634) we investigate whether women judge the prospect of investing in sin stocks more harshly than men do, and test the hypothesis that men with daughters judge such investments less favorably than other men. In Study 2 (N = 782), we investigate the willingness to work in morally controversial companies at a significant wage premium. Results show that – for men – parenting daughters yields harsher evaluations of sin stocks, but no evidence that it lowers the propensity to work in such companies. This contrasts to the effect of gender: women reliably judge both investment and employment in morally controversial companies more harshly than men do. We suggest that an aversion towards morally controversial companies might be a partial determinant of the gender gap in wages.

Parenting daughters does not increase monetary prosocial behavior: evidence from the Dictator game

“…Thus, our findings point to a boundary in the universe of "daughter effects". We should note that we are not the first to report a null daughter effect: null effects were also reported for the relationship between parenting daughters and political orientation (Lee & Conley, 2016), or the willingness to work for a morally controversial company (Niszczota & Białek, 2020). This highlights the need for a theory that would explain why parenting daughters affects some behaviors, such as voting on women's rights issues (Washington, 2008), engagement in corporate social responsibility by CEOs (Cronqvist & Yu, 2017), and the likelihood of hiring a female venture capital partner (Calder-Wang & Gompers, 2021), but does not extend to monetary prosocial behavior, as exemplified by charitable giving.…”

Lying (Non-)Parents Being a Parent Does Not Reduce Dishonesty

“…Pogrebna et al (2018) conduct a risk-taking experiment, and find that both mothers and fathers become significantly more risk-averse after finding out that they will have a daughter, whereas risk-aversion does not increase after finding out they will have a son. Niszczota and Białek (2020) find that having a daughter lowers the propensity to invest in socially controversial companies, but only for men. They find that having a daughter, however, does not reduce the propensity to work for such companies.…”