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Do Workers Discriminate against Female Bosses?

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  • Abel, Martin

    (Bowdoin College)

Abstract

I hire 2,700 workers for a transcription job, randomly assigning the gender of their (fictitious) manager and provision of performance feedback. While praise from a manager has no effect, criticism negatively impacts workers' job satisfaction and perception of the task's importance. When female managers, rather than male, deliver this feedback, the negative effects double in magnitude. Having a critical female manager does not affect effort provision but it does lower workers' interest in working for the firm in the future. These findings hold for both female and male workers. I show that results are consistent with gendered expectations of feedback among workers. By contrast, I find no evidence for the role of either attention discrimination or implicit gender bias.

Suggested Citation

  • Abel, Martin, 2019. "Do Workers Discriminate against Female Bosses?," IZA Discussion Papers 12611, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
  • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12611
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    Cited by:

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    2. Abel, Martin & Buchman, Daniel, 2020. "The Effect of Manager Gender and Performance Feedback: Experimental Evidence from India," IZA Discussion Papers 13871, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Woodruff, Christopher & Macchiavello, Rocco & Menzel, Andreas & Rabbani, Atonu, 2020. "Challenges of Change: An Experiment Promoting Women to Managerial Roles in the Bangladeshi Garment Sector," CEPR Discussion Papers 15085, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Shanthi Manian & Ketki Sheth, 2021. "Follow My Lead: Assertive Cheap Talk and the Gender Gap," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(11), pages 6880-6896, November.
    5. 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.
    6. Michael Rivera & Liangfei Qiu & Subodha Kumar & Tony Petrucci, 2021. "Are Traditional Performance Reviews Outdated? An Empirical Analysis on Continuous, Real-Time Feedback in the Workplace," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 32(2), pages 517-540, June.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    female leadership; gender discrimination; gig economy;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J50 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining - - - General
    • J70 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - General

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