Gender, Self-Beliefs, and Closing the Initial Salary Gap in Quantitative Field

Adina Sterling, Shannon Gilmartin and Sheri Sheppard
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Adina Sterling: Stanford U
Shannon Gilmartin: ?
Sheri Sheppard: ?

Research Papers from Stanford University, Graduate School of Business

Abstract: Scholars suggest more women should enter lucrative jobs like those in engineering and computer science to reduce the existing gender gap in pay, but also point out women's self-beliefs in their abilities in these domains lack men's in ways that may reduce women’s pay. We develop theory that suggests even if women's self-beliefs lag men's, self-beliefs need not be the pathway by which the gender pay gap closes: this might be achieved by influencing employers' beliefs regardless of women's self-beliefs. Using an original three-wave NSF-funded longitudinal survey of 559 engineering and computer science students that graduated from over two dozen institutions in the U.S. between 2015-2017, we find support for our theory. While women make less than men, the gender wage gap closes when women receive offers after a period of time when employers themselves have been able to verify a woman's abilities--i.e. in internships--and this has a larger effect than self-beliefs on the salaries of women, while the opposite is the case for men. We close with a discussion of our theory and how recognizing 'remediation fallacies' in the way equitable outcomes are achieved advances theory on gender, labor markets, and organizations.

Date: 2021
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ecl:stabus:3940

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