Examining the Origins of the Gender Gap in Pay in Childhood

• In Event: Fairness and Inequality

Abstract

Fairness concerns are an important driver of decision-making, as evidenced by people’s willingness to pay for fair outcomes under laboratory conditions. In tension with these strong fairness concerns, however, are countless real-world examples of persistent unfairness. One such example is the gender gap in pay. Women in the USA and in many other countries tend to be paid less than men for doing the same job. A number of explanations have been put forth to account for this gap, including biases in allocation behavior and differences in negotiation, and these explanations have been studied extensively in adults. By contrast, we know very little about the origins of the gender gap in development. Understanding when and why the gender gap in pay emerges can shed important light on the factors that shape and sustain it and can help point to areas where interventions to attenuate the gap may be particularly effective. In this presentation, I discuss the results from three studies investigating the origins of the gender gap in pay. The studies employ unique approaches, each targeting a possible mechanism by which the gender gap may emerge.

Study 1 (N = 157, 4-12yo) examined whether children expect a gender gap in pay. Specifically, do both girls and boys expect boys to be rewarded more favorably by an authority figure for performing the same work. Findings from Study 1 (Fig. 1a) suggest that both girls and boys expect partial treatment from teachers, revealing expectations that are more consistent with strong equality concerns than with a gender-gap in pay.

In Study 2, children in the USA (N = 123, 4-9yo) and Peru (N = 115, 4-9yo) participated in a task in which they had the opportunity to sacrifice their own resources to intervene against unfair payment decisions. Children learned about a classroom manager who paid a male and female character either equally or unequally, favoring either the male or the female. When children chose to intervene, they then had the opportunity to redistribute the payment. Findings showed that children in both the USA and Peru paid to intervene against unfairness—regardless of who benefitted from it (Fig. 1b)—and tended to redistribute equally upon intervening. Like findings from Study 1, these results suggest that children are principally concerned with fairness in a context that calls upon third-party allocations.

Finally, Study 3 (N = 240, 4-9yo) examined the gender gap from the perspective of negotiation, a known driver of the gender gap in adults. Here, children were given the opportunity to ask for rewards for themselves upon completion of an activity. They were paired with either a male or female evaluator. Results showed that, paralleling work in adults, older girls asked for less from the male than female evaluator whereas boys showed no such difference (Fig. 1c). Results from this study suggest that gender differences in negotiation extend into childhood.

Authors

• Katherine McAuliffe, Boston College
  Presenting Author

• Melisa Kumar, Boston College
  Non-Presenting Author

• Shaina Coogan, Yale University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Yarrow C Dunham, Yale University
  Non-Presenting Author

• John Corbit, Dalhousie University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sophie Arnold, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author