Women’s Underrepresentation in Corporate Power in Norway and US: Beyond In-group Favoritism

Despite increasing gender-equality in many areas, corporate power is still strongly male-dominated. Prevailing research often relies on the cognitive, demand-side mechanism of in-group favoritism based on single-country studies to produce generalized explanations of men’s dominance in top management and to recommend remedies, such as gender quotas on boards. However, existing research findings are mixed. We contribute to the research field by analyzing original data from 457 large companies in Norway and the US, examining associations of the gender-composition on boards and in the actual Executive Committees. The predictions of in-group favoritism are partly supported in the US, but largely not supported for Norwegian companies with gender-balanced boards due to quotas. We argue that in-group favoritism is an incomplete explanation. We call for research examining the organizational and societal processes curtailing the supply of qualified women for top-executive positions, across national and regulatory contexts and organizational levels.publishedVersio

Demands and Devotion: Cultural Meanings of Work and Overload Among Women Researchers and Professionals in Science and Technology Industries

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/136323/1/socf12315_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/136323/2/socf12315.pd

Gender in Engineering Departments: Are There Gender Differences in Interruptions of Academic Job Talks?

We use a case study of job talks in five engineering departments to analyze the under-studied area of gendered barriers to finalists for faculty positions. We focus on one segment of the interview day of short-listed candidates invited to campus: the “job talk”, when candidates present their original research to the academic department. We analyze video recordings of 119 job talks across five engineering departments at two Research 1 universities. Specifically, we analyze whether there are differences by gender or by years of post-Ph.D. experience in the number of interruptions, follow-up questions, and total questions that job candidates receive. We find that, compared to men, women receive more follow-up questions and more total questions. Moreover, a higher proportion of women’s talk time is taken up by the audience asking questions. Further, the number of questions is correlated with the job candidate’s statements and actions that reveal he or she is rushing to present their slides and complete the talk. We argue that women candidates face more interruptions and often have less time to bring their talk to a compelling conclusion, which is connected to the phenomenon of “stricter standards” of competence demanded by evaluators of short-listed women applying for a masculine-typed job. We conclude with policy recommendations

The Ups and Downs in Women's Employment: Shifting Composition or Behavior from 1970 to 2010?

This paper tracks factors contributing to the ups and downs in women’s employment from 1970 to 2010 using regression decompositions focusing on whether changes are due to shifts in the means (composition of women) or due to shifts in coefficients (inclinations of women to work for pay). Compositional shifts in education exerted a positive effect on women’s employment across all decades, while shifts in the composition of other family income, particularly at the highest deciles, depressed married women’s employment over the 1990s contributing to the slowdown in this decade. A positive coefficient effect of education was found in all decades, except the 1990s, when the effect was negative, depressing women’s employment. Further, positive coefficient results for other family income at the highest deciles bolstered married women’s employment over the 1990s. Models are run separately for married and single women demonstrating the varying results of other family income by marital status. This research was supported in part by an Upjohn Institute Early Career Research Award

Women’s Underrepresentation in Corporate Power in Norway and US: Beyond In-group Favoritism

Despite increasing gender-equality in many areas, corporate power is still strongly male-dominated. Prevailing research often relies on the cognitive, demand-side mechanism of in-group favoritism based on single-country studies to produce generalized explanations of men’s dominance in top management and to recommend remedies, such as gender quotas on boards. However, existing research findings are mixed. We contribute to the research field by analyzing original data from 457 large companies in Norway and the US, examining associations of the gender-composition on boards and in the actual Executive Committees. The predictions of in-group favoritism are partly supported in the US, but largely not supported for Norwegian companies with gender-balanced boards due to quotas. We argue that in-group favoritism is an incomplete explanation. We call for research examining the organizational and societal processes curtailing the supply of qualified women for top-executive positions, across national and regulatory contexts and organizational levels

Women’s Underrepresentation in Corporate Power in Norway and US: Beyond In-group Favoritism

Despite increasing gender-equality in many areas, corporate power is still strongly male-dominated. Prevailing research often relies on the cognitive, demand-side mechanism of in-group favoritism based on single-country studies to produce generalized explanations of men’s dominance in top management and to recommend remedies, such as gender quotas on boards. However, existing research findings are mixed. We contribute to the research field by analyzing original data from 457 large companies in Norway and the US, examining associations of the gender-composition on boards and in the actual Executive Committees. The predictions of in-group favoritism are partly supported in the US, but largely not supported for Norwegian companies with gender-balanced boards due to quotas. We argue that in-group favoritism is an incomplete explanation. We call for research examining the organizational and societal processes curtailing the supply of qualified women for top-executive positions, across national and regulatory contexts and organizational levels