Gender and Double Standards in the Assessment of Job Applicants

Foschi, Martha; Lai, Larissa; Sigerson, Kirsten

doi:10.2307/2787159

Cited by 157 publications

(96 citation statements)

References 12 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Our experimental findings do not support omnipresent societal messages regarding the current inhospitability of the STEM professoriate for women at the point of applying for assistant professorships (4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(26)(27)(28)(29). Efforts to combat formerly widespread sexism in hiring appear to have succeeded.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 41%

“…Our research suggests that the mechanism resulting in women's underrepresentation today may lie more on the supply side, in women's decisions not to apply, than on the demand side, in antifemale bias in hiring. The perception that STEM fields continue to be inhospitable male bastions can become self-reinforcing by discouraging female applicants (26)(27)(28)(29), thus contributing to continued underrepresentation, which in turn may obscure underlying attitudinal changes. Of course, faculty members may be eager to hire women, but they and their institutions may be inhospitable to women once hired.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

National hiring experiments reveal 2:1 faculty preference for women on STEM tenure track

Williams

Ceci

2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

347

282

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

National randomized experiments and validation studies were conducted on 873 tenure-track faculty (439 male, 434 female) from biology, engineering, economics, and psychology at 371 universities/colleges from 50 US states and the District of Columbia. In the main experiment, 363 faculty members evaluated narrative summaries describing hypothetical female and male applicants for tenure-track assistant professorships who shared the same lifestyle (e.g., single without children, married with children). Applicants' profiles were systematically varied to disguise identically rated scholarship; profiles were counterbalanced by gender across faculty to enable between-faculty comparisons of hiring preferences for identically qualified women versus men. Results revealed a 2:1 preference for women by faculty of both genders across both math-intensive and non-math-intensive fields, with the single exception of male economists, who showed no gender preference. Results were replicated using weighted analyses to control for national sample characteristics. In follow-up experiments, 144 faculty evaluated competing applicants with differing lifestyles (e.g., divorced mother vs. married father), and 204 faculty compared same-gender candidates with children, but differing in whether they took 1-y-parental leaves in graduate school. Women preferred divorced mothers to married fathers; men preferred mothers who took leaves to mothers who did not. In two validation studies, 35 engineering faculty provided rankings using full curricula vitae instead of narratives, and 127 faculty rated one applicant rather than choosing from a mixed-gender group; the same preference for women was shown by faculty of both genders. These results suggest it is a propitious time for women launching careers in academic science. Messages to the contrary may discourage women from applying for STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) tenure-track assistant professorships.gender bias | hiring bias | underrepresentation of women | faculty hiring | women in science W omen considering careers in academic science confront stark portrayals of the treacherous journey to becoming professors. Well-publicized research depicts a thicket of obstacles standing between female graduate students and tenure-track positions, including inadequate mentoring and networking (1); a chilly social climate (2); downgrading of work products such as manuscripts (3), grant proposals (4), and lectures (5); and gender bias in interviewing and hiring (6-9). Numerous blue ribbon panels and national reports have concluded that implicit, and sometimes explicit, attitudes pervade the hiring process and negatively influence evaluations of female candidates and their scholarship, contributing to women's underrepresentation within the academy (e.g., refs. 10-13).Women's underrepresentation in academic science is hardly trivial. In life and social sciences, women now earn the majority of doctorates, but they make up a minority of assistant professors. In 1993In -1995.4% of assistant pr...

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 41%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

National hiring experiments reveal 2:1 faculty preference for women on STEM tenure track

Williams

Ceci

2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

347

282

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In the context of status characteristics theory (see Berger, Webster, Ridgeway, & Rosenholtz, 1986), evidence that perceivers use different standards to evaluate male and female behavior has been produced in experiments that equated the behavior of the men and women with whom participants interacted (e.g., Foschi, 1996;Foschi, Lai, & Sigerson, 1994; see review by Foschi, 2000). In general in such demonstrations, participants perceived men as more competent and were more influenced by them.…”

Section: Studies Of Agentic Behavior By Men and Womenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Role congruity theory of prejudice toward female leaders.

Eagly¹,

Karau²

2002

Psychological Review

4,759

257

5,712

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A role congruity theory of prejudice toward female leaders proposes that perceived incongruity between the female gender role and leadership roles leads to 2 forms of prejudice: (a) perceiving women less favorably than men as potential occupants of leadership roles and (b) evaluating behavior that fulfills the prescriptions of a leader role less favorably when it is enacted by a woman. One consequence is that attitudes are less positive toward female than male leaders and potential leaders. Other consequences are that it is more difficult for women to become leaders and to achieve success in leadership roles. Evidence from varied research paradigms substantiates that these consequences occur, especially in situations that heighten perceptions of incongruity between the female gender role and leadership roles. Role Congruity Theory: How Gender Roles and LeaderRoles Produce Two Types of PrejudiceIn general, prejudice can arise from the relations that people perceive between the characteristics of members of a social group

show abstract

“…Thus, any situation that creates pressures for individuals to assess expectations in a relative manner allows status generalization processes to occur (Correll and Ridgeway 2003). These types of situations include the evaluation of job candidates who differ in terms of status but not qualifications (Foschi et al 1994), the standards individuals' employ to evaluate their own task ability in non-group settings (Correll 2001), tasks involving the presence of stereotype threat (Steele 1997), and settings where individuals take mental ability tests (Lovaglia et al 1998).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Status, emotional displays, and the relationally-based evaluation of criminals and their behavior

Dilks

McGrimmon

Thye

2015

Social Science Research

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This research uses status characteristics theory to expand our knowledge of the effects of status variables (e.g., race, education) and emotional displays on the antecedents of sentencingevaluations of offender dangerousness and offense seriousness. We present a theoretical formulation that combines three areas of status characteristics research -reward expectations, individual evaluative settings and valued personal characteristics. The result is a quantitative measure that aggregates relative differences in demographic and emotional characteristics between offenders and their victims. The significance of this expectation advantage measure (e) in predicting evaluations of offender dangerousness and offense severity is tested using data from a vignette study. We find empirical support that expectation advantage significantly predicts these sentencing antecedents but not sentencing outcomes directly. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for future status and criminological research.

show abstract

Gender and Double Standards in the Assessment of Job Applicants

Cited by 157 publications

References 12 publications

National hiring experiments reveal 2:1 faculty preference for women on STEM tenure track

National hiring experiments reveal 2:1 faculty preference for women on STEM tenure track

Role congruity theory of prejudice toward female leaders.

Status, emotional displays, and the relationally-based evaluation of criminals and their behavior

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About