Agents or Cogs? Re-examining the Influence of Female Managers on the Gender Wage Gap

• In Event: 228 - Regular Session. Gendered Work and the Wage Gap

Abstract

Do female managers ameliorate or instead perpetuate the gender wage gap? Although conceptual arguments exist on both sides of this debate, the preponderance of the empirical evidence has favored the view that female managers are agents of change who act in ways that reduce the gender wage gap. Yet the evidence from which this sociological baseline has emerged comes primarily from cross-establishment surveys, which do not provide visibility into the choices of individual managers. Using longitudinal personnel records from a large information services firm in which managers had considerable discretion to influence employee salaries, we estimate within-individual models that indicate no support for the proposition that the gender of a manager influences the gender wage gap among employees who report to that manager.

Authors

• Sameer Srivastava, University of California-Berkeley

• Eliot Sherman, University of California-Berkeley