Women’s political empowerment: Influence of women in legislative versus executive branches in the fight against corruption

This research adds to the literature on gender and corruption, with the main contributions lying in the comparison of the relative influence of women in the legislative versus the executive branches of the government on cross-country corruption. Placing the empirical analysis within the context of the determinants of corruption, results, using data over a large sample of nations covering the years 2018–2020, show that it is women in the legislative branch (via membership in parliaments) that exert a downward pressure on corruption. On the other hand, women in the executive branch (captured via female heads of state and female cabinet ministers) did not exert a statistically significant influence on corruption. Such insignificance also held when an overall index of women’s political empowerment was used and with respect to the longevity of women’s suffrage in a nation. Interestingly, nations with quotas for women’s political participation experienced greater corruption. Our quantile regression results uniquely show the sensitivity of the prevalence of corruption to the factors driving it. These findings provide additional insights into the role of women in government - women across the board in government will not necessarily lead to a “cleaner” government, and that, the institution of quotas to bolster women’s participation in the political process is not advisable, at least when corruption reduction is a goal.     

Leadership selection: Can changing the default break the glass ceiling?

Leadership selection often requires candidates to actively choose to express their interest. Using a series of incentivized experiments with more than 1000 participants, we compare such an Opt-in mechanism with an Opt-out mechanism where everyone qualified for the position is in the candidate pool by default, but individuals can choose to opt out of the selection process. The results reveal a gender gap in participation decisions under the Opt-in mechanism. The gender gap exists even when individuals know they are the top performers, suggesting helping women improve their performance may not necessarily reduce gender gaps. Importantly, women are more likely to participate under the Opt-out mechanism and gender gaps in leadership selection are reduced.     

The romance of leadership: Rekindling the fire through replication of Meindl and Ehrlich

Given changes in business and society, the romance of leadership theory, which describes a glorification of the perceived influence of leaders on organizational outcomes, is arguably more relevant than at its conception over thirty years ago. This paper presents four studies aimed to replicate Meindl and Ehrlich (1987) early experiment on the romance of leadership, specifically considering the effect of leadership attributions on company evaluations. Studies 1 and 2 are close replications, whereas Studies 3 and 4 provide a conceptual replication drawing from a broader sample in age and work experience and include additional experimental conditions. These conditions vary the gender of the leader and including both success and failure situations, as well as including additional outcomes variables of participants’ behavioral intentions to support, invest, seek employment, or purchase from the company. Taken together, these studies do not support Meindl and Ehrlich’s findings that organizations are viewed more favorably when such outcomes are attributed to leadership. We discuss implications for the romance of leadership theory.     

Early Influences and the choice of college major: Can policies reduce the gender gap in scientific curricula (STEM)?

I use rich administrative and survey data to analyse the determinants of the gender gap in STEM graduation rates among Italian college graduates. Results from both Gelbach and Oaxaca decompositions show that half of the gender gap in STEM graduation is attributed to the gender difference in maths and science content of the respective high school curricula. This finding indicates that in Italy the gender gap in STEM graduation has its roots in a gendered choice originating many years before and that effective interventions aimed at increasing girls’ interests in science and technology should be implemented at an early stage.     

Gender stereotypes explain different mental prototypes of male and female leaders

Previous research has demonstrated that social stereotypes associated with women's gender can preclude them from leadership positions. It remains unclear whether these stereotypes affect how people perceive male and female leaders, however. To examine people's stereotypes, we extracted their mental representations of male and female leaders and typical men/women (referred to as nonleaders) using reverse correlation. We then asked perceivers to rate these prototypes’ apparent leadership ability and traits related to power and warmth across contexts that represented typically masculine, feminine, or neutral domains. Leaders in a feminine context appeared more leaderlike than nonleaders, but as equally leaderlike in neutral and masculine contexts. Moreover, female leader faces appeared more powerful than female nonleader faces but male leader and nonleader faces appeared equally powerful. Male leaders were perceived as warmer than male nonleaders, however, whereas female leaders and nonleaders were perceived as equally warm. Thus, people’s gender, social stereotypes, and the context in which leaders are judged influence how people conceive of male and female leaders, with counterstereotypical attributes distinguishing leaders within their gender.     

From attitudes to social networks: National gender-role attitudes and gender differences in late-life social relationships

Studies often find gender differences in social networks in later life, but are these findings universal, or do they differ in various cultural contexts? To address this research gap, the current study examines the association between gender differences in social relationships and country-level gender-role attitudes. We combined data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) of individuals aged 50 years and older with country-level data on gender-role attitudes from the European Values Survey (EVS) for 15 European countries. We estimated a series of multivariate hierarchical regression models that predicted the size of the personal social network, its emotional closeness, and the proportion of the spouse, children, and friends in the network. The results indicated gender differences in social network characteristics. Women reported larger social networks and were more likely to have larger proportions of children and friends but smaller proportions of the spouse in their social networks. The magnitude of gender differences was associated with country-level gender-role attitudes. In countries with more egalitarian gender-role attitudes, women had larger networks with a larger proportion of friends compared to men. In countries with more traditional gender-role attitudes, women had larger proportions of their children and spouse in their social networks and had emotionally closer networks. Our findings suggest that the societal context and opportunity structures for social interactions play an important role in shaping the structure of women’s and men’s social relationships in later life.     

Adolescent network positions and memory performance in adulthood: Evidence from sibling fixed effects models with sociometric network data

Although research has explored social factors influencing memory performance during adolescence, the impact of adolescent social network positions remains largely unknown. This study examines whether adolescent network position is associated with memory performance in adulthood, while also considering potential gender differences. The study used a sibling sample from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (N = 2462) and employed sibling fixed effects models to account for unobserved family background factors, such as genetics, parental characteristics, family environment, and childhood neighborhood. Four dimensions of adolescent network position—i.e., popularity, sociality, degree centrality, and closeness centrality—were sociometrically assessed in schools. Memory performance in adulthood was measured using the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test. The sibling fixed effects estimates indicate that sociality, degree centrality, and closeness centrality are significantly associated with increased memory performance in adulthood, even after controlling for unobserved family heterogeneity as well as a set of individual-level covariates. In contrast, controlling for unobserved family heterogeneity attenuated the association for popularity, making it statistically insignificant. This study also provides evidence of gender differences in the association between social network position and memory performance. The associations for popularity, sociality, and degree centrality are more pronounced among men than women. This study’s findings highlight the importance of adolescent network positions as social determinants in shaping cognitive outcomes over the life course. Interventions that encourage positive peer interactions and reduce social isolation during adolescence may help improve cognitive health in the population.     

Gender Data Gap and its impact on management science — Reflections from a European perspective

As data increasingly inform every aspect of our lives, gender discrimination in the collection and application of female-based data has also risen. Because data are primarily sourced from (white) men, the solutions we design to address global problems are also primarily based on men, i.e. male bodies, male preferences and prototypical male life choices. The Gender Data Gap – referring to the circumstance that most data on which organisational decisions are based appear to be biased in favour of (white) men – describes this very absence of information about aspects of women's lives. In this article, we not only demonstrate how the Gender Data Gap (negatively) impacts society and management science, but also highlight how the gap can be overcome in the long run. Further, we showcase several initiatives, particularly European ones, that suggest opportunities to gradually close the Gender Data Gap.