A Discussion of “Social-status ranking: a hidden channel to gender inequality under competition”
Reports women earn less than men is not what this story is about. Arguing about that statistic, the role of selectivity bias, and the presence of proper controls is not the point of this study although its findings may add to the discussion.
Schram, Brandts, and Gerxhani (2019) report on experimental results that show women’s performance declines when the environment is focused on competitive status-seeking. Their goal is to examine causal evidence of the role of status ranking on these gender effects.
As they point out, knowing what triggers the observed gender effects is key to developing policies that will actually work at addressing the issue properly.
Experimental economics is a branch of economics that allows us to see how people change their behaviors in reaction to a controlled change in the rules of the game. Why they react that way is likely more a question for psychologists, sociologists, or other social sciences.
Knowing that they are reacting a certain way though can help guide economists and policymakers in setting up rules that will address social issues like the observed gender gap.
The Theory
The first thing they tell us is that competition is actually made up of 2 dimensions (p. 396)
- Rivalry for resources
- Ranking of relative performance
To understand each, imagine two different scenarios regarding promotions in the workplace.
If there is a limit to how many can earn the promotion, then there is definitely a rivalry for resources. One person being promoted means there are fewer other opportunities. Competitive, yes, but in a zero sum kind of way.
If instead promotion is based on each person attaining certain metrics, there is still competition to achieve these higher levels of performance, but the competition is not a rivalry for resources. Such a promotion can raise social status, but it is not at the expense of others’ likelihood of promotion.
While there are these two dimensions to competition, in the real world the authors note they are often interlinked. Even in my example above for rivalry of resources, there is also a ranking element between those who are promoted and those who are not.
As a result, it is not surprising that much of the research on gender differences and competitive pressures has apparently focused on rivalry for resources, while ranking has “escaped scholarly attention.” (p. 397)
Isolating each is challenging in the real world.
Which is what experimental economics has to offer the academic literature!
The Experiment
The authors set up a laboratory experiment that does not have the rivalry for resources aspect of competition to isolate the effects of status ranking to see if there is any difference between men and women.
In the experiment, participants “do a time-limited task where they need to search for numbers and add them up.” (p. 396)
To induce an honest effort, all participants are paid based on their performance, which is measured by the number of successfully completed problems. In this first part of the experiment, there is no competition against others, just a race against the clock.
For one group of participants, this first part is all they do. The authors then use their results as a benchmark for the second group, which will be put in one of two treatments.
Treatment 1 is the Status-Ranking treatment (SR). The participant must verbally report his/her score to a person in another office who does not know what task was completed. In addition to the score, the participant also has to report the rank of the score, based on the benchmark. This rank is creating a social status because their relative performance is now publicly known.
Treatment 2 is the Conformity treatment (CF). Again the participant has to verbally report his/her score to a person in another office but this time there is no ranking.
This way people in both treatments have to suffer any possible effects of publicly reporting their scores, but only the first treatment feels the effect of social ranking.
Participants in both treatments are told they will be reporting their score to someone before starting the numerical task. Those in Treatment 1 know they will also be reporting their rank.
Results?
No significant gender differences in performance are seen in the group that only does the summation task in part 1 or in the CF treatment group.
Yet for the SR treatment, at a statistically significant level, men increase the number of summations they attempt and increase the number of correct sums.
At the same time, at a statistically significant level, women in the SR treatment reduce the number of problems attempted.
Interestingly, in the results section they report,
The observed gender difference in performance between men and women in SR is a direct consequence of the difference in attempts because the fraction of attempted summations that is correct does not differ between men and women in SR. (p. 408)
Conclusion
Total productivity (measured by the total number of correct summations) is on average (p. 410)
- 22.8 for the group who only does part 1 and does not report their score
- 22.5 for the CF treatment group
- 23.7 for the SR treatment group.
This suggests that adding a competitive status-ranking element into the workplace could result in overall output increasing. Thus, such programs may get favorable marks on efficiency grounds.
However, once we look at the differences in performance by gender, we see a negative impact on gender equality.
Efficiency and equity could both be enhanced if one could diminish the effect of social-status ranking on women while maintaining the stimulation effect it has on men. (p. 410)
The authors speculate on what may cause these gender effects. (p. 410)
- Women are choking under the pressure of the status ranking
- Status ranking with peers demotivates women
- Women become more careful under the pressure of status ranking which slows them down
- Women may be conforming to a gender norm (Not wanting to outperform men? Not being good at math?)
The authors seem to think it is not likely gender norms because you see no negative impact on women’s performance in the CF treatment. In both treatments they have to publicly state their score. Only when they know a rank will be attached do they change their performance.
All participants are motivated extrinsically by money in every treatment of the experimental design. But when status is on the line, for some reason men step up and women retreat.
The authors note that they believe this is the first study to isolate the impact of status ranking and see the effects on outcome by gender.
Of course more research is needed.
First, repeating this study to see if others find the same results.
And second, examining the reasons behind this behavior change. While that may be for another field, it would be very interesting.
References:
Schram, Arthur, Jordi Brandts, and Klarita Gerxhani (2019). “Social-status ranking: a hidden channel to gender inequality under competition.” Experimental Economics, 22: 396–418.
By Ellen Clardy, PhD on .
Exported from Medium on December 15, 2022.
