IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/zewdip/280938.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Representation is not sufficient for selecting gender diversity

Author

Listed:
  • Baron, Justin
  • Ganglmair, Bernhard
  • Persico, Nicola
  • Simcoe, Timothy S.
  • Tarantino, Emanuele

Abstract

One strategy for promoting female leaders in STEM professions is to appoint more women to the committees that select leaders. Unfortunately, evidence from other settings, such as committees for selecting judges or professors, suggests this approach does not work. We use a natural experiment to test the idea that organizational norms supporting gender diversity are necessary for representation on 'selectorates' to promote gender diversity among STEM leaders. Our empirical setting is the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) - a standard-setting organization that develops key protocols for Internet hardware and software. We find that when more women are randomly selected for the committee that appoints IETF leaders, the committee appoints more female leaders, but only after a set of interventions meant to increase members' awareness of the benefits of gender diversity.

Suggested Citation

  • Baron, Justin & Ganglmair, Bernhard & Persico, Nicola & Simcoe, Timothy S. & Tarantino, Emanuele, 2023. "Representation is not sufficient for selecting gender diversity," ZEW Discussion Papers 23-056, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:zewdip:280938
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/280938/1/1876927143.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alejandro Corvalan & Pablo Querubín & Sergio Vicente, 2020. "The Political Class and Redistributive Policies," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 18(1), pages 1-48.
    2. Maria De Paola & Vincenzo Scoppa, 2015. "Gender Discrimination and Evaluators’ Gender: Evidence from Italian Academia," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 82(325), pages 162-188, January.
    3. Marianne Bertrand & Sandra E Black & Sissel Jensen & Adriana Lleras-Muney, 2019. "Breaking the Glass Ceiling? The Effect of Board Quotas on Female Labour Market Outcomes in Norway," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 86(1), pages 191-239.
    4. 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.
    5. Agata Maida & Andrea Weber, 2022. "Female Leadership and Gender Gap within Firms: Evidence from an Italian Board Reform," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 75(2), pages 488-515, March.
    6. Manuel F. Bagues & Berta Esteve-Volart, 2010. "Can Gender Parity Break the Glass Ceiling? Evidence from a Repeated Randomized Experiment," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 77(4), pages 1301-1328.
    7. Tim Loughran & Bill Mcdonald, 2011. "When Is a Liability Not a Liability? Textual Analysis, Dictionaries, and 10‐Ks," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 66(1), pages 35-65, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Baron, Justus & Kanevskaia, Olia, 2023. "Wearing multiple hats—The role of working group chairs’ affiliation in standards development," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(9).

    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. Manuel Bagues & Mauro Sylos-Labini & Natalia Zinovyeva, 2017. "Does the Gender Composition of Scientific Committees Matter?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(4), pages 1207-1238, April.
    2. Roberto Asmat & Karol J. Borowiecki & Marc T. Law, 2024. "Competing for Equality: Gender Bias Among Juries in International Piano Competitions, 1890-2023," ACEI Working Paper Series AWP-03-2024, Association for Cultural Economics International.
    3. 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.
    4. Nikolaos Theodoropoulos & John Forth & Alex Bryson, 2022. "Are Women Doing It for Themselves? Female Managers and the Gender Wage Gap," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 84(6), pages 1329-1355, December.
    5. Paul Heidhues & Botond KH{o}szegi & Philipp Strack, 2019. "Overconfidence and Prejudice," Papers 1909.08497, arXiv.org.
    6. Azmat, Ghazala & Petrongolo, Barbara, 2014. "Gender and the labor market: What have we learned from field and lab experiments?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 32-40.
    7. Pierre Deschamps, 2018. "Gender Quotas in Hiring Committees: a Boon or a Bane for Women?," Working Papers hal-03393117, HAL.
    8. Arceo-Gomez, Eva O. & Campos-Vazquez, Raymundo M., 2022. "Gender Bias in Evaluation Processes," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    9. Sule Alan & Gozde Corekcioglu & Mustafa Kaba & Matthias Sutter, 2023. "Female Leadership and Workplace Climate," ECONtribute Policy Brief Series 057, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.
    10. Stephan Klasen & Anna Minasyan, 2021. "Affirmative Action and Intersectionality at the Top: Evidence from South Africa," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(1), pages 3-35, January.
    11. José J. Domínguez, 2021. "The Effectiveness of Committee Quotas; The Role of Group Dynamics," ThE Papers 21/12, Department of Economic Theory and Economic History of the University of Granada..
    12. Pierre Deschamps, 2018. "Gender Quotas in Hiring Committees: a Boon or a Bane for Women?," Post-Print hal-03393117, HAL.
    13. Domínguez, José J., 2023. "Diversified committees in hiring processes: Lab evidence on group dynamics," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    14. Bao, Zhengyang & Huang, Difang, 2024. "Gender-specific favoritism in science," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 221(C), pages 94-109.
    15. Shen, Jianfei & Wang, Qiqi, 2023. "Do men and women discriminate against women for the same reason? Evidence from China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    16. Azmat, Ghazala & Petrongolo, Barbara, 2014. "Gender and the labor market: What have we learned from field and lab experiments?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 32-40.
    17. Joanna Tyrowicz & Hubert Drazkowski, 2024. "Implicit gender quota in European boardrooms," GRAPE Working Papers 96, GRAPE Group for Research in Applied Economics.
    18. Jonas Radbruch & Amelie Schiprowski, 2023. "Committee Deliberation and Gender Differences in Influences," Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series 398, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.
    19. Nikolaos Theodoropoulos & John Forth & Alex Bryson, 2019. "Are Women Doing It For Themselves? Gender Segregation and the Gender Wage Gap," DoQSS Working Papers 19-07, Quantitative Social Science - UCL Social Research Institute, University College London.
    20. Jose Garcia-Louzao & Ruben Perez-Sanz, 2024. "Women’s Voice at Work and Family-Friendly Firms," Bank of Lithuania Working Paper Series 120, Bank of Lithuania.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • L86 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Information and Internet Services; Computer Software
    • M14 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - Corporate Culture; Diversity; Social Responsibility
    • O32 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Management of Technological Innovation and R&D

    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:zbw:zewdip:280938. 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/zemande.html .

    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.