When Women are Too Smart to be Hired
Natasha Quadlin, “The Mark of a Woman’s Record: Gender and Academic Performance in Hiring.,” American Sociological Review, 2018 Although female students as a whole perform better than their male counterparts in both high school and college, the labor market assesses their academic achievements very differently. New research by Natasha Quadlin looked at how grades matter for […]
High GPA, Low Likability for Women in STEM
Having a high college GPA should strengthen the appeal of a job candidate’s resume. However, for women who majored in STEM fields, this is not necessarily the case. An article in Science Daily features Natasha Quadlin’s recent study, which found disparities in callback rates between men and women who majored in math. In the study, Quadlin created 2,106 resumes […]
Best of 2017: Gendering Gender-Neutral Occupations
Originally posted Sept. 11, 2017 Even in 2017, when more and more women enter historically male-dominated fields, archaic notions of what counts as “men’s work” or “women’s work” continue to persist in many workplace environments. A recent article in The Globe and Mail covers a study that shows how gender stereotypes hurt both men and […]
How Grown-Up Careers are Like Middle School Dances
From sexual harassment to salary gaps, stories about gender inequality at work are all over the news. How does this happen? Social science research finds that people often place into different jobs by gender, race, and class, and this sorting has consequences for inequality in earnings and career prestige. Just like a middle school dance […]
Women in Male-Dominated Fields
It’s no secret that the U.S. lags behind many other countries in terms of the number of women in politics. In Congress and state legislatures, women occupy less than a quarter of available positions. Hillary Clinton enters this arena, hoping to be the first female president in the US (but not first in the world: see Mindy Fried’s […]
Gender and Changes in the U.S. Occupational Profile
NPR’s Planet Money asks an interesting question. If there are more women in the workforce now than there were forty years ago (and there are), where did all the additional jobs come from? The pie charts below tell some of the story. On the left are charts representing the percentage of women in various occupations [...]
Gendering and Racializing Occupations
Jake C. sent in a good example of the racialization and gendering of jobs within the service industry. This photo shows two notices for openings at a restaurant, one in English, one in (misspelled) Spanish: The notice in Spanish isn’t a translation of the one about the hostess job; rather, it announces that two people [...]
Kids’ Luggage Normalizes Gendered Occupations
Emily H. sent in a great example of gendering kids’ products. She looked at kids’ luggage on the Target website and noticed a significant difference in the boys’ and girls’ version of one brand. The boys’ version, in the standard blue, is called “Embark Boy Pattern Pilot”: The girls’ version is identical in size and [...]
The Gender Pay Gap from the Washington Post explains the dynamics that lead to unequal pay for women.
