Women and Public Policy Program Seminar Series

Bias Interrupters: An Evidence-Based, Metrics Driven Way to Interrupt Implicit Bias

Recent studies have found that one-shot bias trainings are not an effective way to interrupt implicit bias. In this seminar, Professor Joan C. Williams discusses Bias Interrupters, a new model for interrupting the implicit bias that is constantly being transmitted in basic business systems at many companies. Joan introduces the Workplace Experiences Survey, a simple 10-minute “bias climate” survey designed to test for every major pattern of bias based on gender, race, disability, and class origin. She also explains the research and theory behind the open-sourced toolkits at biasinterrupters.org, which identify key metrics and identify low-impact tweaks to basic business systems to interrupt bias. Both the survey and toolkits are based on the 40 years of studies in experimental social psychology, industrial-organizational psychology, and behavioral economics documenting common bias patterns.

Joan C. Williams, Distinguished Professor of Law, UC Hastings Foundation Chair and Director of the Center for WorkLife Law

The Influence of Sexual Orientation and Race on Gender Prescriptive Stereotypes with Sa-Kiera Hudson

Gender stereotypes persist in society. Many of these stereotypes are prescriptive, indicating how men and women should behave in social situations. However, an outstanding question is whether these normative gender beliefs apply equally to men and women of additional social categories. In this seminar, Sa-Kiera explores this question using an intersectional approach by asking participants to indicate the desirability of men, women, and people of different sexual orientations and races displaying a series of masculine and feminine traits. The results clearly show that although the category “man” and “woman” have different prescriptive stereotypes that haven’t substantively changed since 2002, race and sexual orientation substantively alter the landscape of these gendered stereotypes. These findings have implications for norm violation accounts of discrimination.

Sa-Kiera Hudson, WAPPP Fellow; Ph.D. Candidate in Psychology, Sidanius Lab for the Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations, Harvard University

Sexual Assault on College Campuses: A Behavioral Approach with Betsy Paluck and Ana Gantman

Dr. Betsy Paluck and Dr. Ana Gantman present a behavioral perspective on campus sexual assault. Prominent models of sexual assault portray assault perpetrators as one of two extremes. In the clinical model, perpetrators are seen as unchangeable deviants. In the cultural model, perpetrators are a product of rape culture. The behavioral perspective analyzes how individual psychological phenomena and environmental configurations interact, and drive patterns of sexual assault. For example, the behavioral approach enables researchers to analyze how different contexts activate perceived norms, goals, and moral language, which shifts the likelihood of assault. Based on this theoretical framework, Dr. Paluck and Dr. Gantman field-tested an intervention in Princeton University eating club parties. A student-driven initiative requiring party-goers to read aloud a definition of consent at the door was tested by varying the framing of the consent language and the identity of the person presenting the consent language. In this seminar, Dr. Paluck and Dr. Gantman present results and discuss lessons for the design, implementation, and research on the effects of university policy on sexual assault.

Betsy Paluck, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology and Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs, Princeton University

Ana Gantman, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs, Princeton University

Can Female Role Models Reduce the Gender Gap in Science? Evidence from Classroom Interventions in French High Schools with Clémentine Van Effenterre

In this seminar, Clémentine Van Effenterre assesses whether a short in-class intervention by an external female role model can influence students' attitudes towards science and contribute to a significant change in their choice of field of study. The intervention consists of a one hour, one off visit to a high school classroom by a volunteer female scientist. It is targeted to change students’ perceptions and attitudes towards scientific careers and the role of women in science, with the aim of ultimately reducing the gender gap in scientific studies. Using a random assignment of the interventions to 10th and 12th grade classrooms during normal teaching hours, Clémentine finds that exposure to female role models significantly reduces the prevalence of stereotypes associated with jobs in science, for both female and male students. While Clémentine finds no significant effect of the classroom interventions on 10th grade students’ choice of high school track the following year, her results show a positive and significant impact of the intervention on the probability of applying and of being admitted to a selective science major in college among 12th grade students. This effect is essentially driven by high-achieving students and is larger for girls in relative terms. After the intervention, their probability to be enrolled in selective science programs after graduating from high school increases by 30 percent with respect to the baseline mean.

Clémentine Van Effenterre, WAPPP Postdoctoral Fellow

Betting the House: How Assets Influence Marriage Selection, Marriage Stability, and Child Investments with Corinne Low

In the past 50 years, marital rates have declined significantly, especially among lower socioeconomic groups. Meanwhile increase in the ease of divorce and improvements in contracting outside of marriage (e.g.,child support laws) have made marriage increasingly similar to cohabitation, except for in the treatment of assets upon divorce. Corinne Low, together with coauthor Jeanne Lafortune, present a case that as the commitment offered by marriage declined, this division of assets offered extra "insurance" to women in high asset unions. This in turn encouraged investment in child human capital, even at the cost of one's own earnings, and allowed marriage to retain its value amongst asset holders particularly homeowners. Meanwhile, the value of marriage eroded for other groups, creating a wealth gap in marriage rates that may underly the apparent income, race, and education gap. 

 

Corinne Low, Assistant Professor of Business Economics and Public Poliy, The Wharton School University of Pennsylvania.

New Ways of Thinking About Gender and Leadership Effectiveness with Aparna Joshi

The challenges and barriers that women face in both entering into and performing effectively in leadership roles have been widely documented across many research domains.  In this seminar Aparna Joshi takes a look at this issue from the perspective of both women and men in leadership roles. First, she unpacks conditions under which women leaders can be effective change agents in highly male-dominated settings. Based on a sixteen- year longitudinal data set of women legislators in the US Congress she examines how the content of bills can prime the legitimacy of women in leader roles and predict their success in passing bills over the course of their tenures.  Second, shifting the focus on men in leadership roles, she also problematizes the “think manager think male” paradigm that has been applied extensively to understand barriers faced by women, from the perspective of men. Based on a sample of Fortune 500 male CEOs she examines the consequences for firm performance and CEO pay among men who subscribe (or not) to masculine stereotypes.  Through these two studies she aims at highlighting new ways of thinking about gender and leadership effectiveness.

 

Aparna Joshi, Arnold Family Professor of Management, Smeal College of Management, Penn State University 

Estimating Income Inequality from Binned Incomes with Paul von Hippel

Researchers studying the gender wage gap often analyze data that puts income into bins, such as $0-10,000, $10,000-20,000, and $200,000+. Many methods have been used to analyze binned incomes, but few have been evaluated for accuracy. In this seminar, Paul von Hippel compares and evaluates three methods: the multi-model generalized beta estimator (MGBE), the robust Pareto midpoint estimator (RPME), and the spline CDF estimator. He finds that the MGBE and RPME produces comparable results, while the spline CDF estimator is much more accurate. Paul has implemented all three methods in software for Stata and R.

Paul von Hippel, Associate Professor of Public Affairs, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, The University of Texas at Austin

 

Linking Non-Cognitive Skills and Educational Achievement to Girls in Developing Societies: The Case of Ghana with Sally Nuamah

Recent literature on non-cognitive skills provides promising evidence on the power of community and classroom based interventions for closing achievement gaps across school quality, race, and class. Yet, much of this work has been conducted on males that attend elite institutions in the U.S. There is very little work on how these same tactics can be implemented to overcome gender barriers and improve educational achievement of girls, particularly those that attend schools in non-western settings. In this seminar, Sally Nuamah investigates the experiences of girls from underprivileged backgrounds in Ghana striving to be the first in their families to go to college. She finds that school structure - leadership, curriculum, and peer networks - mediates the effects of their socio-cultural environments and individual background through the facilitation of positive academic identities (non-cognitive skills) that promote identity building and strategy development. These positive academic identities are useful for navigating the gender specific barriers that these girls face, thereby enabling their academic achievement.

Sally Nuamah, WAPPP Fellow; Joint Postdoctoral Fellow, University Center for Human Values and Center for Study of Democratic Politics, Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University

 

On Her Account: Can Strengthening Women’s Financial Control Boost Female Labor Supply? With Simone Schaner

Across the world, the increasing use of digital payments for government to person transactions for social programs has provided an entry point for the world’s poor into the formal financial sector. This phenomenon begs the question: how can governments best leverage this opportunity to enable economic empowerment for women? This seminar explores research that uses a randomized controlled trial to assess how financial inclusion coupled with targeted benefit payments impact women's labor force participation and economic welfare in India.

Simone Schaner, Assistant Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, Dartmouth College

 

How to Elect More Women: Gender and Candidate Success in a Field Experiment with Jessica Robinson Preece

Women are dramatically underrepresented in legislative bodies (supply), and most scholars agree that the greatest limiting factor is the lack of female candidates. However, voters’ subconscious biases (demand) may also play a role, particularly among conservatives. In this seminar, Jessica Preece discusses her findings from a field experiment conducted in partnership with a state Republican Party. She finds that party leaders’ efforts to increase both supply and demand (especially both together) result in a greater number of women elected as delegates to the statewide nominating convention. Her field experiment shows that simple interventions from party leaders can influence the behavior of candidates and voters, which ultimately leads to a substantial increase in women’s electoral success.

Jessica Robinson Preece, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Brigham Young University; Co-director, Gender and Civic Engagement Lab