Betting on diversity: Occupational segregation and gender stereotypes

Urs Fischbacher, Dorothea Kübler and Robert Stüber

Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Market Behavior from WZB Berlin Social Science Center

Abstract: Many occupations and industries are highly segregated with respect to gender. This segregation could be due to perceived job-specific productivity differences between men and women. It could also result from the belief that single-gender teams perform better. We investigate the two explanations in a lab experiment with students and in an online experiment with personnel managers. The subjects bet on the productivity of teams of different gender compositions in tasks that differ with respect to gender stereotypes. We obtain similar results in both samples. Women are picked more often for the stereotypically female task and men more often for the stereotypically male task. Subjects do not believe that homogeneous teams perform better but bet more on diverse teams, especially in the task with complementarities. Elicited expectations about the bets of others reveal that subjects expect the effect of the gender stereotypes of tasks but underestimate others' bets on diversity.

Keywords: Gender segregation; hiring decisions; teams; discrimination; stereotypes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D9 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp and nep-lab
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https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/268273/1/1830796739.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Betting on Diversity – Occupational Segregation and Gender Stereotypes (2022)
Working Paper: Betting on Diversity – Occupational Segregation and Gender Stereotypes (2022)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:wzbmbh:spii2022207

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