Gender Typing Women in the Workplace

It's difficult to convince some people that markets tend to weed out discrimination, or at least penalize those who discriminate. For example, let's say that Ty and Amy, a male and female carpenter, respectively, can both produce four shelving units in a week. If Ty is the favored party and earns, say, $1,000 per week, while Amy, the disfavored party, earns only $800 per week, then why aren't more Amy's hired and fewer Ty's? The marginal cost for Amy to produce a bookshelf unit is $200, while for Ty it's $250, and if profit maximizing firms in a competitive market don't act on this cost differential, they're not likely to remain in business for long. Or at least they'll pay in the form or reduced profits.

But many people see discrimination in various forms in the workplace and chalk it up to problems with markets, which require workplace regulation to advance the interests of those discriminated against. The problem, however, is that when you impose such regulations firms work around them, much to the detriment of those such regulations profess to help. If someone can sue for discrimination, you can bet that fewer firms will be willing to hire them, thus driving down their wages. And mandating quotas simply alters whom I hire. Since lesser skilled people tend to not advance much in the workplace, and are consequently more likely to sue their employer for discrimination, firms respond by hiring fewer workers with standing to sue who also have lower skills.

The problem of workplace discrimination comes about for other reasons, one that I refer to as the Happy Meal effect. A year or so ago my kids got McDonald's Happy Meals. The meals came in boxes that had on two sides a game for boys and on the other two sides a game for girls. The boy's side contained such directives as (and I'm paraphrasing), "You found the secret hiding spot, move ahead two spaces." or "You discovered your opponents secret, move ahead one space." The girl's game had such gems as "OMG, you and another girl wore the same dress to a party, go back one space." and "Curling Iron burnout, go back two spaces."

Boys are problem solvers - they should be creative, adventurous, and inquisitive, all traits respected in a business setting. Girls on the other hand, are baubels - they should just sit on the side and look pretty, traits that are not necessarily respected in a business setting, at least not in positions of authority.

Consider the reaction most people have when a male superior berates an employee for making a mistake or  acting in some unacceptable manner. Traditionally, the superior is feared and respected. But if it's a female superior acting the same way, the reaction is often to refer to her as "a bitch."

Some good studies are exploring this problem, including this study.

Victoria Brescoll, a researcher at Yale, made headlines this August with her findings that while men gain stature and clout by expressing anger, women who express it are seen as being out of control, and lose stature. Study participants were shown videos of a job interview, after which they were asked to rate the applicant and choose their salary. The videos were identical but for two variables — in some the applicants were male and others female, and the applicant expressed either anger or sadness about having lost an account after a colleague arrived late to an important meeting.

The participants were most impressed with the angry man, followed by the sad woman, then the sad man, and finally, at the bottom of the list, the angry woman. The average salary assigned to the angry man was nearly $38,000 while the angry woman received an average of only $23,000.

When the scenario was tweaked and the applicant went on to expand upon his or her anger — explaining that the co-worker had lied and said he had directions to the meeting — participants were somewhat forgiving, giving women who explained their anger more money than those who had no excuse (but still less money than comparative men).

So the cause behind discrimination is not necessarily a market problem as much as it is a cultural problem. If women are perceived as lacking competitiveness (or actually do lack competitiveness due, in part, to having it instilled in their heads since childhood that to problem solve is for boys and girls should simply look pretty and not act aggressively) or the ability to effectively manage people, then they'll be overlooked for management positions. Regulating the labor market ain't gonna work. Changing the culture and people's perceptions of women will, but changing culture doesn't happen overnight.

Thanks to my beautiful and lovely wife for the story link.

Comments

[s.n.]

Would you make the same comments about the undesirability of combatting racial discrimination through laws? It seems that you want to go back to the days before civil rights legislation. We definitely need the EEOC. A worker's productivity is a combination of many things, one of which is how supported he or she feels in the work environment. A woman who is naturally skilled will not be a competitive advantage to her employer if the culture of the workplace devalues her gender in subtle or not-so-subtle ways. Thus, sexism in hiring perpetuates itself, and will not wither through the "rationality of the market." There have been successful sex discrimination lawsuits against major companies like Home Depot and Publix Supermarkets and many more in recent years. Women and minorities have the power of the law, thankfully. I would not want to live in another time in history when we didn't.

[Mark Steckbeck]

Intent and consequences often run in opposite directions. My explanation in this post is not normative in that I necessarily advocate a position, but instead to explain the unintended consequences of the laws to which s.n. describes.

As I've said before (and based on research of Gary Becker and others, markets tend to penalize discrimination by raising the discriminator's operating costs. What anti-discrimination laws due is make it more costly for firms to hire those with standing to sue, which tend to be lower skilled females and blacks. If it's more costly to hire them, then firms will refrain from hiring them.

With regards to the working environment to which s.n. discusses, that's exactly my point - that it's a cultural issue and not a market issue.

On that front we have made huge strides in this country. This did not come about due to anti-discrimination laws, but from the efforts of those who exposed the discrepancy in the way people were/are being treated differently. This is the intent of my post above: To explain how we treat females differently. This is a cultural issue that needs addressing by changing how we portray the role of females to younger girls. It's not a market problem that is solved through anti-discrimination laws.

[s.n.]

The point I was making is misogyny is indeed cultural, but that companies are part of the culture. Discrimination does not put a company at an economic disadvantage if the company is part of a society that values men over women. Look at WalMart, now faced with a class action suit brought by 2 million women. It's the largest retailer in the world, and hardly has done poorly through discriminating.

All firms receive some help from the public sector, even if it is just the presence of roads, or police protection or environmental pollution control. Women pay for these, too. The larger society has a right to make demands on the firm regarding issues of justice.

Anti-discrimination laws are like any laws that force people to do the right thing ... the presence of the law and the exercising of the law changes the culture. Then hiring women or minorities becomes less of a liability for a firm, as it might have been in a world without such laws and public awareness. This nation wasn't a good place for women and minorities before the 1964 Civil Rights Act.