Are Men More Influential?
Evidence from Germany
Is the West still sexist? In employment, we can explore different dimensions of bias:
As job candidates, do women face discrimination? In socially valued domains, are they presumed to be less competent?
Within firms, are women less influential - either due to women being less confident, or less domineering, or because men are granted greater reverence?
Do male colleagues tend to support each other, in groups, building fraternal capital and mutual authority?
This analytical distinction is important, for the absence of (1) is often cited as evidence that patriarchy is over. Alas…
Who gets hired?
Audit studies are a popular way of investigating (1) recruitment bias. Researchers submit thousands of fake applications (which are similar in every respect except gender) and then track employer discrimination.
A new meta-analysis by Michael Schaerer and colleagues finds that discrimination against female applicants for historically male-dominated jobs has significantly declined and is no longer observable.
Progress!! Western firms now see women as equally capable. However, let me add two caveats:
We cannot generalise more broadly, for their sample is overwhelmingly Western.
Even if women are just as likely to be recruited, this does not prove that they are equally influential, or that they receive equal fraternal support.
Who is more influential?
Economists Jonas Radbruch and Amelie Schiprowski examine men and women’s respective influence in hiring committees in the German branch a large consultancy firm. They find that committee decisions systematically align more with the initial recommendations made by men.
How big is this difference? Well, a one standard deviation increase in experience leads to a 3% higher alignment probability (getting your way). The gender gap in alignment probability between men and women is comparable to having 3 years less experience (2 standard deviations).
Methodology
Radbruch and Schiprowski use data from the hiring process of a large consulting company in Germany. Each committee comprises six to eight members who interview candidates and then deliberate to reach a collective decision. Their data include 8,117 recommendations made by 359 committee members on 2,913 candidates over 429 interview days.
Exploiting quasi-random variation in the assignment of candidates to committee members, Radbruch and Schiprowski estimate how the alignment between individual recommendations and committee decisions differs by gender, while controlling for candidate and committee member characteristics, evaluation behaviour, and the level of initial disagreement among members.
The median woman is less influential than almost all men
It’s not that women are worse evaluators. Recommendations by men and women have the same correlation with predicted offer probabilities based on just candidate characteristics and their paper-based evaluation.This holds even after controlling for experience.
Bias persists despite men and women’s similar qualifications, experience and evaluation behaviour.
The gender gap in influence is large - comparable to the gap between the 25th and 75th percentile of men.
The gender gap does not reflect private evaluations, it emerges during deliberation.
The gender gap in influence is largest when there is disagreement among committee members and when women are in the minority.
When women are in a 2:1 majority, there is no gap.
Women are more likely to favour women candidates.
Women had much less influence when they were numerical minorities.
Radbruch and Schiprowski 2024 When women are minorities, their preferences are not reflected in hiring outcomes. The female candidate hiring gap - in these extremely prestigious and high-paid jobs - only closes when there is a female majority on the committee. Since this is uncommon, female candidates are on average 8 percentage points less likely to receive job offer recommendations.
Perhaps men are just more confident?
Other studies suggest that men tend to be more self-confident and self-aggrandising. So perhaps female committee members are less influential because they are more timid and unsure? Actually, in this specific case, men and women express similar levels of confidence in the quality of their recommendations.
Aren’t minorities always less assertive?
No, it’s only women who are less influential when minorities.
Should we generalise from Germany?
Germany’s labour market is rather distinctive. 47% of German women workers are part-time. The average man’s lifetime earnings are then double that of mothers.
Management remains 73% male. Women only comprise 14% of senior roles in German business. 59% of German firms have no female leaders.
Since German workers are typically interacting with male bosses, this may reinforce their gender status beliefs. Since employers are generally interacting with male bosses, this may 1 in 3 German employers say that poor quality housework may justify violence.
Compared to other Western countries, Germans are more likely to say that mothers with school age children should stay at home. Across countries, this normative belief is correlated with a larger child penalty in earnings.
At home, German wives are less influential. Experimental research in Germany finds that when husbands receive new information, their wives listen. But husbands typically ignore their wives
In short, since almost half of German women workers work part-time, they’re less likely to make it to management, which then remains male-dominated. As a result, men may benefit from fraternal networks and command greater authority.
That said, a wider body of literature affirms that lone women often lack influence.
Male-majorities tend to augment each other’s authority
In male-majority US undergraduate classes, men speak for longer, interrupt frequently and are much more assertive. Another US study finds that male-majority undergraduate teams accord grant men more influence and are more likely to choose men as external representatives. Even when women achieve top grades in physical sciences, the male majority rarely rate them as equally knowledgeable or want to study together.
Wherever men predominate (like San Francisco's tech firms), women face a gauntlet of hostile scrutiny. In entirely male municipal Italian councils, female mayors are less likely to survive their term. Anticipating low support, women are often reluctant to put themselves forward as leaders of male majority teams.
When scientists at US universities are publicly accused of sexual misconduct, their prior work typically receives about 5.25% fewer citations. This decline is most pronounced among close collaborators, especially among men. The effect appears to be less strong in male-dominated fields. Going beyond the study, I speculate that as women gain representation in academic fields, they may be more inclined to publicly criticise sexual predation, potentially creating negative penalties. In gender-mixed fields, men might then feel pressure to disassociate themselves from accused colleagues to preserve their own reputations. Male-dominated fields, by contrast, may be more likely to downplay or overlook sexual misconduct allegations, allowing aggressors and their associates to maintain their status.
Fraternal affinity, camaraderie and loyalty are major drivers of patriarchy. To break out of that trap, women need to be in a 2:1 majority. That may take some time! 😊
Congratulations to Jonas Radbruch and Amelie Schiprowski (2024) ‘Committee Deliberation and Gender Differences in Influence’
How does one reconcile "It’s not that women are worse evaluators" and "women favour women candidates"? If they unfairly favour women, then they are, in fact, worse evaluators. (Conversely, if there's a global bias against women and women are less biased, then they're better evaluators. Not sure if that would be compatible with the article's data?)
I remember previous studies about job referrals, that claimed women favour women, while men don't particularly discriminate:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2019.102209
https://doi.org/10.1086/497257
(I haven't checked these studies carefully, fwiw)
"discrimination against female applicants for historically male-dominated jobs has significantly declined and is no longer observable."
Not only that, both male-dominated *and* female dominated jobs now see discrimination against male applicants. This has been the case for over 20 years: https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0749597823000560-gr7.jpg