Men and Women of the Corporation

https://cws.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/cws/article/download/14795/13847

From surviving to thriving in the gig economy: A research agenda for individuals in the new world of work

Deceptive Distinctions: Sex, Gender, and the Social Order

This article presents an account of job discrimination according to which people redefine merit in a manner congenial to the idiosyncratic credentials of individual applicants from desired groups. In three studies, participants assigned male and female applicants to gender-stereotypical jobs. However, they did not view male and female applicants as having different strengths and weaknesses. Instead, they redefined the criteria for success at the job as requiring the specific credentials that a candidate of the desired gender happened to have. Commitment to hiring criteria prior to disclosure of the applicant's gender eliminated discrimination, suggesting that bias in the construction of hiring criteria plays a causal role in discrimination.

Constructed Criteria. Redefining Merit to Justify Discrimination

Companies have devoted significant resources to diversity programs, yet such programs are often largely ineffective. Cultivating an organizational commitment to diversity is critical, but scholars ...

Pathways toward Change: Ideologies and Gender Equality in a Silicon Valley Technology Company:

A 'chilly' environment limits women's advancement through the educational pipeline leading to jobs in science and technology. However, we know relatively little about the environment women encounter after making it through the educational pipeline. Do technology companies create environments that may dampen women's interest at the juncture when they are launching their careers? Using original observational data from 84 recruiting sessions hosted by technology companies at a prominent university on the US West Coast, we find that company representatives often engage in behaviors that are known to create a chilly environment for women. Through gender-imbalanced presenter roles, geek culture references, overt use of gender stereotypes, and other gendered speech and actions, representatives may puncture the pipeline, lessening the interest of women at the point of recruitment into technology careers.

Puncturing the pipeline: Do technology companies alienate women in recruiting sessions?:

Previous research documents how stereotypes discourage young women from choosing and attaining technology jobs. We build off this research and ask whether (and how) stereotypes continue to affect men and women once they enter the technology workforce. Using a novel survey of technical employees from seven Silicon Valley firms and new measures of what we call “cultural” and “skill” alignment, we show that men are more likely than women to believe they possess the stereotypical traits and skills of a successful tech employee. We find that cultural alignment is especially important: because women are less likely than men to believe they match the cultural image of successful tech workers, they are less likely to identify with the tech profession, less likely to report positive supervisor treatment, and more likely to consider switching career fields. This paper is the first to use unique and independent measures of cultural and skill alignment comparing employees’ perceptions of themselves to their perceptions of an ideal successful worker. By allowing cultural and skill alignment to operate separately, we are able to determine which work outcomes are most strongly related to each form of alignment. Our results imply that if we can broaden the cultural image of a successful tech worker, women may be more likely to feel like they belong in technology environments, ultimately increasing their retention in tech jobs.

https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/6/2/45/pdf

Gendered Perceptions of Cultural and Skill Alignment in Technology Companies

Organizations implement formalized procedures to eliminate the biasing effects of gender and other characteristics on evaluations. Prior work shows managers play a key role, but researchers have be...

Alison T. Wynn

Papers

Pathways toward Change: Ideologies and Gender Equality in a Silicon Valley Technology Company:

Puncturing the pipeline: Do technology companies alienate women in recruiting sessions?:

Gendered Perceptions of Cultural and Skill Alignment in Technology Companies

Inside the Black Box of Organizational Life: The Gendered Language of Performance Assessment:

Misery Has Company: The Shared Emotional Consequences of Everwork Among Women and Men