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Home > News & Events > Events Calendar > Performance Support Bias and the Gender Pay Gap among Stockbrokers
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emailThursday, September 20, 2012
Performance Support Bias and the Gender Pay Gap among Stockbrokers
Janice Fanning Madden, Professor of Urban Studies, Regional
Science, Sociology and Real Estate, University of
Pennsylvania
In this seminar, we will analyze the organizational mechanisms
leading to a gender pay gap among stockbrokers in two large
national retail stockbrokerages. The pay gap is the result of
gender differences in sales, as both firms pay entirely by sales
commissions. The research we will examine develops and tests
whether performance-support bias, whereby women receive inferior
sales support and sales assignments, causes the commissions gap.
Newly available data on the brokerages’ internal transfers of
accounts among brokers now allows measurement of
performance-support bias. Gender differences in the quality and
quantity of transferred accounts provide a way to measure gender
differences in the assignment of sales opportunities and support.
Sales generated from internally transferred accounts, controlling
for the accounts’ sales histories, provide a “natural experiment”
testing for gender differences in sales capacities. The evidence
for performance-support bias is: (1) Women are assigned inferior
accounts; and (2) women produce sales equivalent to men when given
accounts with equivalent prior sales histories. We will discuss
these results and their implications in this session.
Lunch will be provided.
An RSVP is not required as this is an open event.
- Location:WAPPP Cason Seminar Room, Taubman Building, Room 102
- Date:Thursday, September 20, 2012
-
Time:11:40 AM
