IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2404.07750.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Broken Rung: Gender and the Leadership Gap

Author

Listed:
  • Ingrid Haegele

Abstract

Addressing female underrepresentation in leadership positions has become a key policy objective. However, little is known about the extent to which leadership appeals differently to women. Collecting new data from a large firm, I document that women are substantially less likely to apply for early-career promotions. Realized application patterns and large-scale surveys reveal the role of an understudied feature of promotions -- having to assume responsibility over a team -- which is less appealing to women. This gender difference is not accounted for by standard explanations, such as success likelihood or confidence, but is rather a product of common design features of leadership positions.

Suggested Citation

  • Ingrid Haegele, 2024. "The Broken Rung: Gender and the Leadership Gap," Papers 2404.07750, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2404.07750
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2404.07750
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bertrand, Marianne, 2011. "New Perspectives on Gender," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 17, pages 1543-1590, Elsevier.
    2. Thomas Buser & Muriel Niederle & Hessel Oosterbeek, 2020. "Can competitiveness predict education and labor market outcomes? Evidence from incentivized choice and survey measures," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 20-048/I, Tinbergen Institute.
    3. Michael Ransom & Ronald L. Oaxaca, 2005. "Intrafirm Mobility and Sex Differences in Pay," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 58(2), pages 219-237, January.
    4. Francine D. Blau & Lawrence M. Kahn, 2017. "The Gender Wage Gap: Extent, Trends, and Explanations," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 55(3), pages 789-865, September.
    5. Astrid Kunze & Amalia R. Miller, 2017. "Women Helping Women? Evidence from Private Sector Data on Workplace Hierarchies," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 99(5), pages 769-775, December.
    6. Sherwin Rosen, 1982. "Authority, Control, and the Distribution of Earnings," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 13(2), pages 311-323, Autumn.
    7. Thomas Buser, 2016. "The Impact of Losing in a Competition on the Willingness to Seek Further Challenges," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(12), pages 3439-3449, December.
    8. George Baker & Michael Gibbs & Bengt Holmstrom, 1994. "The Internal Economics of the Firm: Evidence from Personnel Data," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(4), pages 881-919.
    9. Priyanka Chakraborty & Danila Serra, 2021. "Gender and leadership in organizations: Promotions, demotions and angry workers," Working Papers 20210104-001, Texas A&M University, Department of Economics.
    10. Laura K. Gee, 2019. "The More You Know: Information Effects on Job Application Rates in a Large Field Experiment," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(5), pages 2077-2094, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ingrid Haegele, 2022. "Talent Hoarding in Organizations," Papers 2206.15098, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2024.
    2. Moritz Drechsel-Grau & Felix Holub, 2020. "Gender Gaps and the Role of Bosses," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2020_237, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.
    3. Das, Jishnu & Joubert, Clément, 2023. "Women in the pipeline: A dynamic decomposition of firm pay gaps," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    4. Boris Hirsch & Philipp Lentge, 2021. "Non-Base Compensation and the Gender Pay Gap," Working Paper Series in Economics 404, University of Lüneburg, Institute of Economics.
    5. Hirsch, Boris & Lentge, Philipp, 2021. "Non-Base Compensation and the Gender Pay Gap," IZA Discussion Papers 14551, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. Forth, John & Theodoropoulos, Nikolaos, 2022. "Earnings Discrimination in the Workplace," IZA Discussion Papers 15357, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Shelly Lundberg, 2023. "Gender Economics: Dead-Ends and New Opportunities," Research in Labor Economics, in: 50th Celebratory Volume, volume 50, pages 151-189, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    8. Lüthi, Samuel & Wolter, Stefan C., 2023. "Is being competitive always an advantage? Competitiveness, gender, and labour market success," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    9. Boris Hirsch & Philipp Lentge, 2022. "Non‐base compensation and the gender pay gap," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 36(3), pages 277-301, September.
    10. Christian Pfeifer & Gesine Stephan, 2019. "Why women do not ask: gender differences in fairness perceptions of own wages and subsequent wage growth," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 43(2), pages 295-310.
    11. Lorenzo Ductor & Sanjeev Goyal & Anja Prummer, 2018. "Gender & Collaboration," Working Papers 856, Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance.
    12. Benjamin Bennett & Isil Erel & Léa H. Stern & Zexi Wang, 2020. "Paid Leave Pays Off: The Effects of Paid Family Leave on Firm Performance," NBER Working Papers 27788, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Kessel, Dany & Mollerstrom, Johanna & van Veldhuizen, Roel, 2021. "Can simple advice eliminate the gender gap in willingness to compete?," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 138, pages 1-1.
    14. Cemal Eren Arbatlı & Quamrul H. Ashraf & Oded Galor & Marc Klemp, 2020. "Diversity and Conflict," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 88(2), pages 727-797, March.
    15. Dato, Simon & Grunewald, Andreas & Kräkel, Matthias & Müller, Daniel, 2016. "Asymmetric employer information, promotions, and the wage policy of firms," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 273-300.
    16. Oyer, Paul & Schaefer, Scott, 2011. "Personnel Economics: Hiring and Incentives," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 20, pages 1769-1823, Elsevier.
    17. Estefanía Galván, 2022. "Gender Identity and Quality of Employment," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 89(354), pages 409-436, April.
    18. Jaanika Meriküll & Maryna Tverdostup, 2020. "The Gap That Survived The Transition: The Gender Wage Gap Over Three Decades In Estonia," University of Tartu - Faculty of Economics and Business Administration Working Paper Series 127, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, University of Tartu (Estonia).
    19. Thomas Buser & Huaiping Yuan, 2023. "Public Speaking Aversion," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(5), pages 2746-2760, May.
    20. Da Ke, 2021. "Who Wears the Pants? Gender Identity Norms and Intrahousehold Financial Decision‐Making," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 76(3), pages 1389-1425, June.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2404.07750. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.