Extra-organizational determinants of careers: Gendered expert authority and attainment of patent examiners

• In Event: 3513 - Inequality and Mobility

Abstract

This paper studies factors outside of organizations that influence gender disparities in career attainment. We focus on one such extra-organizational factor—external stakeholders’ perceptions of knowledge workers’ expertise—and provide task-level evidence that it differently shapes men’s and women’s careers. Using data on the production activities of early-career patent examiners at the United States Patent and Trademark Office, we find that patent applicants afford less expert authority to women than men, and that this difference in authority explains a large part of the gender gap in the examiners’ career progression. Female examiners face stronger resistance from applicants when issuing rejection decisions, compared to male examiners in the same technology field and job level. The resistance appears to be in part statistical in nature, as direct discussions with applicants are associated with higher acceptance of women’s expert decisions. Women in our sample need to exert more effort than men to attain the same task outcomes as they require four discussions with applicants, on average, to achieve the same level of authority as men have without any discussions. Extra-organizational factors may thus substantially disadvantage women even in egalitarian workplaces.

Authors

• Colleen Stuart, Johns Hopkins University

• Roman V. Galperin, Johns Hopkins University