The Influence of Gender Ratios on Career Advancements of Women in Senior Positions

• In Event: 589 - Regular Session. Gender Bias, Segregation, and Opportunities at Work

Abstract

This paper addresses career advancements of women in different minority situations within an organization. Research to date has come to conflicting conclusions regarding the existance of a gender promotion gap for people in senior positions. We argue that this can be explained with the fact that researchers in their studies have not paid enough attention to gender proportions as an important factor affecting carreers. Based on the theory of social network structures, we expect to find a gender promotion gap only in situations where women are in an extreme minority position (“token position”). We develop respective hypotheses which we test on an empirical sample of academic professors at a Swiss University. Our empirical results confirm that the gender promotion gap disappears when gender ratios are more balanced.

Authors

• Constantin Schoen, University of Zurich

• Katja Rost, University of Zurich

• David Seidl, University of Zurich