Journal article
Gender differences in accepting and receiving requests for tasks with low promotability
L Babcock, MP Recalde, L Vesterlund, L Weingart
American Economic Review | AMER ECONOMIC ASSOC | Published : 2017
DOI: 10.1257/aer.20141734
Abstract
Gender differences in task allocations may sustain vertical gender segregation in labor markets. We examine the allocation of a task that everyone prefers be completed by someone else (writing a report, serving on a committee, etc.) and find evidence that women, more than men, volunteer, are asked to volunteer, and accept requests to volunteer for such tasks. Beliefs that women, more than men, say yes to tasks with low promotability appear as an important driver of these differences. If women hold tasks that are less promotable than those held by men, then women will progress more slowly in organizations. (JEL I23, J16, J44, J71, M12, M51).
Grants
Awarded by NSF
Funding Acknowledgements
Babcock: Heinz College and Department of Social and Decision Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Avenue, BP 319, Pittsburgh, PA 15213 (e-mail: lb2k@andrew.cmu.edu); Recalde: International Food Policy Research Institute, Markets, Trade, and Institutions Division, 2033 K Street NW, Washington, DC 20006 (e-mail: m.recalde@cgiar.org); Vesterlund: Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, 4928 WW Posvar Hall, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, and NBER (e-mail: vester@pitt.edu); Weingart: Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213 (e-mail: weingart@cmu.edu). The first three authors contributed equally to this project. We thank David Tannenbaum, Craig Fox, Noah Goldstein, and Jason Doctor for giving us permission to use their data. We thank David Klinowski, Rachel Landsman, Conor Lennon, and Amanda Weirup for superb research assistance. Participants at seminars and conferences at the University of Zurich, Stanford, Harvard, UCSB, UCSD, UCLA, CMU, Monash University, University of Adelaide, University of Bonn, University of Pittsburgh, University of Pennsylvania, and Stockholm School of Economics are thanked for their helpful comments. We thank the Carnegie Bosch Institute and the NSF (SES-1330470) for generous financial support. Finally, we are forever grateful to MJ Tocci and Brenda Peyser for inspiring our research on low-promotability tasks. The authors declare that they have no relevant or material financial interests that relate to the research described in this paper.