Gender Promotion Gaps: Career Aspirations and Workplace Discrimination

Abstract : Using a representative survey of U.S. lawyers, we document a sizeable gender gap in early partnership aspirations, which explains half of the later gender promotion gap. We propose a model to understand aspirations and then empirically test it. We show that aspirations induce greater effort and increase regret if a promotion is not obtained. Furthermore, aspirations are linked to fertility choices and workplace experiences (mentoring and discrimination). Facing harassment or demeaning comments at an early career stage affects later promotion, mediated via a change in aspirations. We highlight that measuring aspirations, and understanding how they are formed, is key to explaining gender career gaps.

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Gender Pay Differences in Senior Management of Charities

Abstract : In this paper, we investigate the market for CEO and top managers in the non-profit and charities sector. Using data from charitynavigator.org, we document two new stylized facts not documented before in the literature. First, we find that female CEOs are more likely to receive compensation than their male counterparts. Second, conditional on receiving compensation, female CEOs receive 6% to 8% lower total compensation than male CEOs do. These findings are robust to the inclusion of charity classification fixed effects (between estimator) and charity and title fixed effects (within estimator). Further in-depth exploration of the results shows that interestingly enough, the gender pay gap is only present in the largest charities (top quintiles in the expense and revenue distribution). Our investigation of potential mechanisms suggests perceived differentiation of male and female CEOs as well as CEO impact on charity performance as potential channels explaining the observed gender gap in CEO pay.

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Potential and the Gender Promotion Gap

Abstract : We show that the increasingly popular use of subjective assessments of employee "potential" contributes to gender gaps in promotion and pay. Using data on management-track employees from a large retail chain, we find that women receive substantially lower potential ratings despite receiving higher job performance ratings. Differences in potential ratings account for 30-50% of the gender promotion gap. Women's lower potential ratings do not appear to be based on accurate forecasts of future performance: women outperform male colleagues with the same potential ratings, both on average and conditional on promotion. Yet, even in these cases, women's subsequent potential ratings remain low, suggesting that firms persistently underestimate the potential of female employees.

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Knowledge Teams, Careers and Gender

Abstract : We investigate the determinants of promotions in a financial institution to uncover the micro mechanisms that lead to promotion gaps in knowledge work. Bankers are highly educated; at entry in the internal labor market, more than 50% are women. The promotion rate of women is lower than the one of men, in particular, at the beginning of careers. Bankers work in project teams together with lawyers and economists. Analyzing almost 10,000 investment projects, we find a substantial promotion gap for women. Crucial for careers are assignments to the job of operation leader, which provide visibility to the upper echelons of the organization. Assignments to these jobs which is carried out by supervisors, however, favors men.

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