Disadvantages of Female Leadership
W hy do men tend to fare better in competitive environments than women do? It is a question researchers have long pondered. More than a decade ago, two economists
—Claudia Goldin of Harvard and Cecilia Rouse of
Princeton—found sex-based discrimination in the hiring of orchestra musicians.
Beginning in the 1970s, many orchestras in the
United States, hoping to remedy a dearth of women in their ranks, began conducting blind auditions.
Musicians performed behind a screen so the selection committee could not see them. Goldin and Rouse compared several orchestras before and after the change—and found that women were selected 30 percent more often when auditions were blind. For Paola Sapienza, a professor of finance at the
Kellogg School of
Management, the finding was fascinating—yet it did not explain the reason for the bias to begin with. Was the gender bias a result of
“belief-based
discrimination,” in which the judges assumed that women are less competent; of
“taste-based
discrimination,” in which the judges simply preferred men for reasons other than competence, such as a belief that the audience prefers male musicians; or of “statistical discrimination,” in which gender confers some other valuable information (e.g., men are preferable because they presumably do not take as much time off)?
“The data in the paper were able to establish a bias,” says Sapienza, “but they could not distinguish between the three of them.” Distinguishing Between
Types of Discrimination
So Sapienza, along with
Ernesto Reuben, an assistant professor at
Columbia University; Pedro
Rey-Biel, an associate professor at the
Universitat Autònoma de
Barcelona; and Luigi
Zingales, a professor at the
University of Chicago, set out to look more closely at gender bias in competitive settings. They wanted to know why organizations might fail to select high- performing women for jobs at which the women would excel. They
—Claudia Goldin of Harvard and Cecilia Rouse of
Princeton—found sex-based discrimination in the hiring of orchestra musicians.
Beginning in the 1970s, many orchestras in the
United States, hoping to remedy a dearth of women in their ranks, began conducting blind auditions.
Musicians performed behind a screen so the selection committee could not see them. Goldin and Rouse compared several orchestras before and after the change—and found that women were selected 30 percent more often when auditions were blind. For Paola Sapienza, a professor of finance at the
Kellogg School of
Management, the finding was fascinating—yet it did not explain the reason for the bias to begin with. Was the gender bias a result of
“belief-based
discrimination,” in which the judges assumed that women are less competent; of
“taste-based
discrimination,” in which the judges simply preferred men for reasons other than competence, such as a belief that the audience prefers male musicians; or of “statistical discrimination,” in which gender confers some other valuable information (e.g., men are preferable because they presumably do not take as much time off)?
“The data in the paper were able to establish a bias,” says Sapienza, “but they could not distinguish between the three of them.” Distinguishing Between
Types of Discrimination
So Sapienza, along with
Ernesto Reuben, an assistant professor at
Columbia University; Pedro
Rey-Biel, an associate professor at the
Universitat Autònoma de
Barcelona; and Luigi
Zingales, a professor at the
University of Chicago, set out to look more closely at gender bias in competitive settings. They wanted to know why organizations might fail to select high- performing women for jobs at which the women would excel. They