Gendered Labor Segregation and Gender Bias: Experimental Evidence from Russia

• In Event: Poster Session: Women and Politics Research

Abstract

In this paper, I exploit the complexity of gendered labor segregation in Russian regions to study if and under which conditions the public invokes sex bias when evaluating the performance of a local executive (mayor of a small Russian town). Theoretically, I draw on the insights of the social role theory (Koenig and Eagly 2014) and the cultural division of labor theory (Hechter 1978) to study public perception of political leadership and its substantive characteristics and evaluate these expectations in experimental surveys. I choose three different labor market contexts for my analysis: (1) complex economies of urban centers, characterized by medium horizontal and high vertical gendered segregation of labor; (2) rural agricultural areas characterized by medium vertical segregation and low horizontal segregation of gendered labor segregation; and (3) industrial mono-town economy characterized by high vertical and horizontal labor segregation by sex. To ensure the validity of this analytic framework, I conduct surveys in four culturally and ethnically diverse regions of the Russian Federation. In the experiment, I ask my respondents to read a short story about the decision of a local mayor and evaluate it in a series of questions. The mayor’s sex and a policy decision are experimentally manipulated. First, I find that complex urban labor markets facilitate the reduction of gender bias. Second, in a context of high labor sex segregation of industrial production centered on male workers, voters develop a strong preference for male leadership and demonstrate strong gender bias in the experiment. Finally, in rural areas across all regions, I find a strong preference for a female leader and register a strong pro-female bias. To investigate this puzzling finding, I study voters’ expectations of what leadership characteristics constitute the concept of “a good leader” (decisive, strong, charismatic, etc). I find that Russian voters describe “good leadership” in masculine terms. In Russian villages, however, female leaders are considered as having the masculine characteristics suitable for an effective leader (female leaders are considered stronger and more decisive than male leaders). I provide analysis to explain this puzzling finding.

Author

• Olga A. Avdeyeva