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Gender, beauty and support networks in academia: evidence from a field experiment
Magdalena Smyk, Michał Krawczyk
The Choice Lab, Bergen
March 17, 2016
GendEqU project is sponsored by EEA/Norway Grants
Group for Research in Applied Economics
2
Broad motivation
Huge gender gap at higher academic positions…
This is partly due to gender differences in academic productivity…
…which tends to be difficult to explain in terms of abilities or preferences
3
Support networks in the academia
Participation in social networks increase probability of receiving job offer (McDonald, 2011) and scientific productivity (Reagans and Zuckerman, 2001).
Colussi (2015): editor’s former PhD students and faculty colleagues improve their publication outcomes
Balliet et al. (2001) meta analysis: more cooperation in male-male interactions
Differences in experience between women and men:
Mentoring (Chandler, 1996)
Possibly collaboration (Gersick et al. 2000) (although Long (1992) Van Rijnsoever et al. (2008) found no differences and McDowell et al. (2006) only in historical data. ). Note: Ynalvez and Schrumb (2011) claim that networks matter NOT via formal collaborative projects.
4
Can we blame the ``old-boys network”?
Are (male) scholars more willing to ``lend a hand’’
to a male researcher than a female?
Study 1 (data request)
• 247 papers (recent EE, JEBO, GEB papers reporting experiments that meet certain criteria)
• Ask for raw data from their experiments
• E-mails from two accounts: – Female student
– Male student
• Randomly chosen samples of subjects: – equal distribution of male and female subjects
– three geographical regions (Europe, Australia and Asia, Americas).
• A reminder after three weeks
5
6
Study 1 – measures of success
Response rate = number of responses we received/
number of e-mails sent (successfully)
Compliance rate = number of datasets we
received/number of e-mails sent
7
Study 1 (data request): RESULTS
Female Student Male Student
No. of requests 100 105
Response rate 75% 74.3%
MWW test (p-value) 0.91
Marginal effects* -0.01 (insignificant)
Compliance rate 34% 35.2%
MWW test (p-value) 0.85
Marginal effects* -0.02 (insignificant)
Notes: *probit regression; gender, university region, fixed effects of journal, date of sending the request and number of datasets we asked for.
8
Study 2
Extension:
10 fields of study: psychology, sociology, economics, mathematics, law, computer science, philosophy, medicine, physics and chemistry
two types of request (much smaller):
Article treatment – we ask for full text of subject’s paper
Meeting treatment – we ask for a meeting during office hours or Skype/phone call to discuss possible mentoring for graduate studies
additional dimension: physical attractiveness
9
Physical attractiveness
Pre-study: Pictures with the highest and the lowest average rank were chosen.
Gmail picture + website link
10
Sampling for Study 2
One hundred top faculties from QS World University Rankings
Four (randomly chosen) scholars from each faculty
Faculties without websites or without list of employees – excluded
Article Treatment – 1287 scholars (discarding those with no known papers in English)
Meeting Treatment – 1488 scholars
No gender balance in the sample (male majority)
11
Study 2: dependant variables
Response rate = number of responses we received/
number of e-mails sent (successfully)
Article Treatment:
Compliance rate = number of full texts we
received/ number of e-mails sent
Meeting Treatment:
Compliance rate = number of meetings
scheduled or offered/ number of e-mails sent
12
Study 2: results (Article Treatment)
Attractive
Female
Less
Attractive
Female
Attractive
Male
Less
Attractive
Male
No. of requests 343 307 337 300
Response rate 56.6% 67.1% 63.2% 62.4%
MWW test p-value
(vs. attractive female) 0.006 0.08 0.08
(vs. less attractive female) 0.3 0.33
(vs. attractive male) 0.97
Compliance rate 49% 60% 56.7% 54.8%
MWW test p-value
(vs. attractive female) 0.005 0.04 0.2
(vs. unattractive female) 0.4 0.14
(vs. attractive male) 0.5
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Study 2: results (Meeting Treatment)
Attractive
Female
Less
Attractive
Female
Attractive
Male
Less
Attractive
Male
No. of requests 370 378 374 366
Response rate 45.7% 47.6% 43.9% 44.3%
MWW test p-value
(vs. attractive female) 0.59 0.62 0.7
(vs. less attractive female) 0.3 0.36
(vs. attractive male) 0.91
Compliance rate 29.2% 34.4% 27% 27.6%
MWW test p-value
(vs. attractive female) 0.13 0.51 0.63
(vs. unattractive female) 0.03 0.05
(vs. attractive male) 0.86
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Study 2: results (probit)
Article
treatment
(1)
Article
treatment
(2)
Meeting
treatment
(1)
Meeting
treatment
(2)
response compliance response compliance
attractive female -0.08* -0.11*** 0.02 0.02
less attractive female 0.03 0.18 0.05 0.09***
less attractive male -0.02 -0.06 -0.005 0.001
female scholar -0.05 -0.07** -0.09*** -0.09***
Observations 1287 1287 1488 1488
Notes: Marginal effects from probit regressions; reference category is attractive male; regressions include subjects’ characteristics (gender, university region, university ranking position, field of study), date of sending the request and year of the paper publication (in Article treatment); *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1.
15
Robustness check and additional dimensions
No interaction of genders
Stronger results (higher marginal effect) in the subsample of subjects who has G-Talk option available
Lack of field-specific effects
Nr of unique vistors on websites = 44% of the nr of subjects
Attractive senders websites more popular by 10 pp on average
Refusals in the Meeting Treatment:
55/124 (males) to 34/111 (females) negative e-mail with explanation why someone cannot meet the reqeustor
16
Conclusions
GOOD NEWS!
No gender bias in responding to or fullfilling requests
This result seems robust across fields and treatments
BUT…
Attractivness can play a role – but only in the case of female students
There seems to be an interaction with treatment
Cautios interpretation: female students considered less competent but more likable
Thank you for your attention! Authors: Magdalena Smyk, Michał Krawczyk e-mail: [email protected]
More about our research on
http://grape.uw.edu.pl
Twitter: @GrapeUW