It may take more than just female managers to close the gender wage gap
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Women help women. At least that is what happens in the ideal workplace, particularly as women rise to management positions and use their power and influence to promote female employees whose careers and earnings may have been stifled by gender discrimination.
Research shows that women in the United States make 78 cents for every dollar a man earns, partly as a result of bias. Experts have watched women climb the managerial ranks and noticed a subsequent decline in the wage gap between female and male employees. The two trends, they have argued, appear related.
SEE ALSO: Women still make less than men, and it costs them billions every year
A forthcoming study in the American Journal of Sociology, however, suggests female managers don't necessarily aid their female employees. In some cases, women might fare worse under female managers.
The study, co-authored by U.C. Berkeley Haas School of Business Assistant Professor Sameer B. Srivastava, looked at the employment records of 1,701 employees at an unnamed information services company. Their records included salary and performance evaluations.
The female employees earned $56,920 on average compared to $72,295 for men. When the researchers controlled for factors like experience and age, they found that women made 17% less than men.
After analyzing performance reviews and salary data between 2005 and 2009, they discovered that there was no statistically significant advantage for women when they switched from a male to a female manager. A smaller subset of lower-performing female employees actually made 30% less than their male peers, when assigned to a higher-performing female boss.
The findings are not necessarily surprising. Researchers have long debated whether or not female managers are “agents of change” or “cogs in the machine.”
When women are agents of change, they are eager to make the workplace less hostile to their female subordinates, and reward their hard work with pay equity.
When women are agents of change, they are eager to make the workplace less hostile to their female subordinates, and reward their hard work with pay equity. But when female managers are “cogs” they have no effect on the wage gap, and may even exacerbate it. In this scenario, women may believe that men are more competent than women, whether they realize it or not.
All of this is complicated by women's relationships to their female co-workers, which are often influenced by what is known as “competitive threat” and “collective threat.” A low-performing female manager might treat an employee harshly or less fairly if she’s being outperformed by her –- hence the threat by competition.
On the other hand, a low-performing female employee might make her superior look bad, and her boss is already worried about being perceived as less competent than her male peers. As a result, she deems that employee as less valuable, and likely underserving of a raise or promotion.
Srivastava told Mashable that it’s not clear if the high-performing female managers in his study treated the lower-performing women differently because of collective threat, though it is a strong possibility.
While the study, which focused on a single company, can’t be generalized to all female managers, Srivastava said that the findings suggest businesses must do more than just appoint more women to leadership positions.
"It's one thing to have more women in management and another to have an organizational culture that promotes gender equality."
"It's one thing to have more women in management and another to have an organizational culture that promotes gender equality."
Catherine Hill, vice president of research for the American Association of University Women, a nonprofit organization that promotes gender equality, said that she wasn't surprised by Srivastava's findings. Previous research has shown that both men and women believe stereotypes about gender, often unconsciously.
Hill said that female managers should honestly assess their opinions on gender in the workplace, and maybe even take animplicit bias test to learn if they have biased attitudes about women's competency. (Men, of course, can take the test too.) They should also use objective measures to evaluate employees, particularly when looking at the contributions of a female charge who seems to be contributing less than her co-workers.
These situations deserve special attention, Hill said, because supervisors frequently rely on their gut reaction when making a decision about a less-than-impressive employee. The only problem is that those instincts may actually be shaped by bias. "Use evidence whenever possible," she said.
Closing the pay gap has become a popular issue. It was the subject of Patricia Arquette's Oscarspeech, Hillary Clinton has mentioned it on the campaign trail, and even the Pope has called for fair pay.
Now the challenge is translating that support into real change at the most basic level: the relationship between a manager and her employee.
