Women preferred for STEM professorships – as long as they’re equal to or better than male candidates

Stephen J Ceci, Cornell University and Wendy M Williams, Cornell University

Since the 1980s, there has been robust real-world evidence of a preference for hiring women for entry-level professorships in science, engineering, technology and math (STEM). This evidence comes from hiring audits at universities. For instance, in one audit of 89 US research universities in the 1990s, women were far less likely to apply for professorships – only 11%-26% of applicants were women. But once they applied, women were more likely to be invited to interview and offered the job than men were.

But what went on behind the scenes with these hiring decisions? Did women applicants give better job talks than men, publish more or in better journals, or have stronger letters of recommendation? Were hiring committees trying to address the faculty gender balance that typically skews more male than female?

To find out why academic faculty preferred women, an experiment was needed, and we recently conducted one.

Collecting hypothetical hiring data

Previously, in five national experiments, we asked 873 faculty from 371 colleges and universities in all 50 US states to rank three hypothetical applicants for entry-level professorships, based on narrative vignettes about the candidates and their qualifications. We told participants our goal was to collect information about what faculty looked for in job applicants when hiring, so we could advise our own graduate students.

We asked them to imagine that colleagues in their department had already met these hypothetical applicants, evaluated their CVs, attended their job talks, read their letters of recommendation – and rated the applicants as 9.5 out of 10 (very impressive) or 9.3 (still impressive, but just less so).

One of the applicants was an outstanding woman, pitted against an identically outstanding man. Because men and women were depicted as equally talented, any hiring preference had to be due to factors other than candidate quality. We included a third, male, foil candidate as one of the many ploys we employed to mask the gendered purpose of the experiment. In this previously published research, we found that both female and male faculty strongly prefer (by a 2-to-1 margin) to hire an outstanding woman over an identically outstanding man. The sole exception to this finding was that male economists had no gender preference.

Faculty of both genders exhibit 2-to-1 preference for hiring women applicants with identically outstanding qualifications, with the exception of male economists.

Even when we gave faculty only a single applicant to evaluate, those given the woman rated her more hireable than did those given the identical applicant depicted as a man. Not surprisingly, this finding caused a media frenzy, as it contradicted what many believe to be sexist hiring in academia.

Note that these experiments were not designed to mimic actual academic hiring, which entails multi-day visits, job talks and so on. The purpose of our experiments was not to determine if women are favored in actual hiring but rather to determine why data suggest they are in real-world conditions. To answer this question, one needs a controlled experiment to equate applicants.

Remember that our experiment looked at typical short-listed candidates – who are extremely qualified – at the point of hiring, and did not address advantages or disadvantages potentially experienced by women, girls, men and boys throughout their development. It is worth acknowledging, though, that a 2-to-1 advantage enjoyed at the point of tenure-track hiring is substantial and represents a pathway into the professoriate that is far more favorable for women than men.

Finding the limit to a preference for women

We wondered how deeply the faculty preference for women that we’d previously identified ran. Do faculty prefer a woman over a slightly more qualified man? How about a much more qualified man?

Our most recent experiment, just published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, examined this question.

Using the same methods from our earlier study, we presented 158 STEM faculty with two male applicants and one female applicant for a tenure-track assistant professorship in their specific field. We presented another 94 faculty with two female applicants and one male applicant. In one contest, the female applicant was slightly less outstanding than her two male competitors, although still impressive; in the other, the male applicant was slightly less outstanding than his two female competitors.

It turned out that faculty of both genders and in all fields preferred the applicant rated the most outstanding, regardless of gender. Specifically, faculty preferred to hire slightly more outstanding men over slightly less outstanding women, and they also preferred to hire slightly more outstanding women over slightly less outstanding men.

Reconciling with other STEM sex bias research

These results show that the preference for women over equally outstanding men in our earlier experiments does not extend to women who are less accomplished than their male counterparts. Apparently, when female and male candidates are not equally accomplished, faculty view quality as the most important determinant of hiring rankings.

This finding suggests that when women scientists are hired in the academy, it is because they are viewed as equal or superior to males. These results should help dispel concerns that affirmative hiring practices result in inferior women being hired over superior men.

The absence of preference for a less outstanding man does not necessarily imply that academic hiring is meritocratic under all conditions. It is possible that with different levels of candidate information (or if the candidates were somewhat less competent, as opposed to being stellar), results might differ. Discrimination may be a concern when candidate qualifications are ambiguous, but, based on our study, not when candidates are exceptionally strong. Thus, our interpretation of our results is that women who are equal to or more accomplished than men enjoy a substantial hiring advantage.

These findings may provoke concerns. If affirmative action is intended to not merely give a preference to hiring women over identically qualified men, but also to tilt the odds toward hiring women who are slightly less accomplished but still rated as impressive, gender diversity advocates may be disheartened. Those who’ve lobbied for more women to be hired in fields in which they are underrepresented, such as engineering and economics, may find the present findings dismaying and argue that extremely well-qualified female candidates should be given preference over males rated a notch higher.

One claim finds no support in our new findings: the allegation that the dearth of women in some fields is the result of superior female applicants being bypassed in favor of less accomplished men. If excellent women applicants were given short shrift, the slightly less qualified man would have been chosen frequently over more qualified women. But this scenario occurred only 1.2% of the time – similar to the number of times a slightly less accomplished woman was chosen over a more accomplished man.

None of this means women no longer face unique hurdles in navigating academic science careers.

Evidence shows that female lecturers’ teaching ability is downrated due to their gender, letter writers for applicants for faculty posts in some fields use more standout (ability) words when referring to male applicants, faculty harbor beliefs about the importance of innate brilliance in fields in which women’s representation is lowest, and newly hired women in biomedical fields receive less than half the median start-up packages of their male colleagues – to mention a few areas in which women continue to face challenges.

Nor do the present findings deny that historic sexism prevented many deserving women from being hired, or that current implicit stereotypes associating science with men are not related to lower science course-taking.

All of these studies suggest areas in need of further work to ensure equality of opportunity for women.

On the other hand, based on hundreds of analyses of national data on the lives of actual faculty women and men across the United States, we and economists Donna Ginther and Shulamit Kahn found that the overwhelming picture of the academy since 2000 is one of gender fairness. Our analyses examined hiring, remuneration, promotion, tenure, persistence, productivity, citations, effort and job satisfaction in every STEM field. The experiences of women and men professors today are largely comparable, as is their job satisfaction.

Our new experimental findings call into question unqualified claims of biased tenure-track hiring. Sex biases and stereotypes might reduce the number of women beginning training for the professorial pipeline, but when a woman emerges from her training as an excellent candidate, she is advantaged during the hiring process.

The Conversation

Stephen J Ceci, Professor of Human Development, Cornell University and Wendy M Williams, Professor of Human Development, Cornell University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Men and women biased about studies of STEM gender bias – in opposite directions

David Miller, Northwestern University

In 2012, an experiment on gender bias shook the scientific community by showing that science faculty favor male college graduates over equally qualified women applying for lab manager positions. Though the study was rigorous, many didn’t believe it.

“This report is JUNK science. There is no data here,” said one online commenter. Others justified the bias saying, “In every competitive situation, with a few exceptions, the women I worked with were NOT competent.”

Now, a study published in Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) provides crucial clues about why some people were critical of the original finding – and other studies that have followed. The new study’s authors reasoned that men especially might devalue the evidence because it threatens the legitimacy of their status in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. Men might also be critical because of prior beliefs that gender bias is not a problem in STEM.

Assessing the original study

To test these ideas, the researchers recruited 205 people from the general public and 205 Montana State University tenure-track faculty. These participants read and then evaluated the abstract of the now-famous 2012 study also published in PNAS.

The abstract noted that

In a randomized double-blind study (n = 127), science faculty from research-intensive universities rated the application materials of a student — who was randomly assigned either a male or female name — for a laboratory manager position. Faculty participants rated the male applicant as significantly more competent and hireable than the (identical) female applicant.

Men rated the research quality of the abstract less favorably than did women in both samples. This gender gap was especially large for STEM faculty, potentially suggesting that evidence of bias might threaten men in STEM seeking to retain their status.

When reading these results, a male scientist might think, “oh my gosh…if we’re going to fix this equality issue, that almost necessarily means that there’s going to be fewer opportunities for men,” said Ian Handley, lead author of the new PNAS paper and associate professor of psychology at Montana State. Handley suggested that discounting evidence more likely reflects a subtle, unconscious process than overt sexism.

The researchers also tested for gender bias toward the abstract’s authors. Participants were randomly assigned to read an abstract identifying the first author’s first name as either “Karen” or “Brian.” Either way, “Karen’s” and “Brian’s” research were overall evaluated the same. In other words, the first author’s perceived gender didn’t affect what participants thought of the research itself.

This lack of author gender bias replicates prior research. Both experimental and real-world data typically show little to no gender bias in peer review. However, notable exceptions are sometimes found.

This evidence about mostly gender-fair peer review is encouraging. But men, especially those in STEM, are still overall more reluctant to accept the evidence of bias when it does exist. This reluctance might prevent efforts to change bias because men hold the majority of top positions in STEM. In 2010, for instance, men were 65% of full professors in psychology, 76% in life science and 92% in physics.

“We can’t try to solve a problem if we don’t know it exists,” said Jessi Smith, professor of psychology at Montana State and coauthor of the new PNAS study.

Women have their own biases

A third study tested how people respond to studies finding no bias. This addition is important because some facets of academia such as peer review don’t always show bias. Researchers therefore randomly assigned 303 participants from the general public to read an abstract that either reported bias favoring men or reported no bias.

Results from Experiment 3 showing that both genders are biased, but in opposite directions. Source: Handley, Brown, Moss-Racusin, and Smith (2015)
David Miller

Even though the research methods were identical across conditions, women rated the quality of the research higher when the abstract showed bias than when it didn’t. Men showed the reverse pattern. So both genders were biased, but in opposite directions.

Fairly evaluating gender bias research

The results suggest challenges in fairly evaluating gender bias research. People may unintentionally ignore evidence if it conflicts with their social identities or prior beliefs. Special care should be taken to seek disconfirming evidence. For instance, the new paper made claims about “robust gender biases documented repeatedly,” but could have also noted the vigorous scholarly debate about such claims.

The paper argues that “numerous experimental findings” provide “copious evidence” of gender bias. But studies have found mixed evidence. For instance, the paper notes an experiment showing bias against female psychology tenure-track applicants. But experiments conducted 15+ years later show opposite results. In fact, several studies show a preference for female applicants in real-world faculty searches, not just hypothetical ones.

The taller red bars show the higher percentage of women offered jobs compared to the percent in the original applicant pool. The data reflect real-world tenure-track searches at research-intensive universities. Source: National Research Council (2010)
David Miller, NRC data

These results collectively suggest some biases are weakening over time, consistent with other related evidence. For instance, the bachelor’s-to-PhD pipeline no longer leaks more women than men, as it did among college graduates in the 1970s.

This mixed literature tempers the paper’s claims about strong gender bias. But obviously, the paper’s central goal was not to systematically review literature on gender bias, but rather to present studies of reactions to evidence of bias.

Communicating controversial research with caution

Understanding how bias varies can help target action and use limited resources wisely. Nevertheless, failures to carefully communicate this nuanced research can easily unravel progress.

In 2014, for instance, Cornell University professors Wendy Williams and Stephen Ceci wrote a New York Times op-ed about their 67-page review of literature on women in academic science. The full-length review was rigorous and expansive in scope. But the op-ed was a disaster in science communication.

The NYT wrote the headline “Academic Science Isn’t Sexist,” which ignited understandable outrage. Ceci called the headline “sensationalistic” and “offensive” in an email to me. He explained the headline was inappropriate because their review, “reported some areas of sex differences (eg, tenure being harder for women in biology).”

Ceci stands by the conclusion of “largely gender-fair outcomes for professors,” but also agrees the exceptions are important. Based on the best current data, remaining challenges include sexual harassment, bias in teaching evaluations and science mentoring, and gender stereotypes about innate genius and creativity. My own research spanning 66 nations also shows robust implicit stereotypes associating science with men, even in supposedly “gender-equal” nations like Sweden. The NYT op-ed should have done more to explicitly discuss these notable problems.

The new PNAS study shows that men, on average, are less likely to believe this evidence of gender bias where it exists. And that’s a concern, considering men are the current majority of STEM professors. But it’s also a concern if the evidence of gender bias is overhyped. Overhyped claims could make these fields unattractive to women or even make people less likely to believe evidence of bias when it does exist.

Pushing the debate forward

The new study affirms we all have bias to varying degrees. So no one should feel smug for being free of bias or impugn others because of it.

In my case, I should interrogate how my identity as a gay white male liberal academic shapes my judgments. I doubt I can ever be truly free of my biases. But I can help minimize them by seeking to learn from those with different views.

Progress in science requires actively engaging in and learning from debate with others, even if we may find their views offensive. Civil discussion can be challenging with controversial topics such as gender bias. But, to flourish, the science needs the debate.

The Conversation

David Miller, Doctoral Student in Psychology, Northwestern University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Let’s face it: gender bias in academia is for real

Cynthia Leifer, Cornell University; Hadas Kress-Gazit, Cornell University; Kim Weeden, Cornell University; Marjolein C H van der Meulen, Cornell University; Paulette Clancy, Cornell University, and Sharon Sassler, Cornell University

Cornell Professor Sara Pritchard recently made the argument in The Conversation that female professors should receive bonus points on their student evaluations because of the severe negative bias students have toward their female professors.

Commentators on FOX News attempted to discredit her argument as “insane,” ridiculed the idea that gender plays a role in evaluations and repeatedly mentioned a lack of data to support her claims. But the reality is women faculty are at a disadvantage.

Unfortunately, as we well know, for many women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), the path to academia ends long before they obtain a faculty position and are the “lucky” recipient of biased student evaluations.

We represent the success stories – women with careers at Ivy League universities. And yes, while we agree that there are more women in STEM fields today than ever before, bias still affects women in STEM, and not just in student evaluations.

Letters of recommendation and teaching evaluations

It starts right from the hiring process.

In the first stage of the hiring process, a candidate for an academic position must be selected from a pool of hundreds to give a job talk and on-site interview.

The decision of who to invite for a job talk is based on materials about the candidate including CVs, letters of recommendation from prominent figures in the field, samples of research, “buzz” about who’s a rising star and teaching evaluations.

A large body of research shows that many of these materials, and how they are evaluated by search committees, reflect bias in favor of male candidates.

Letters of recommendation, for example, tend to have a very different character for women than for men, and their tone and word choice can affect the impression that the hiring committee forms about candidates.

For example a 2008 study of 886 letters of recommendations for faculty positions in chemistry showed that these letters tended to include descriptors of ability for male applicants, such as “standout,” but refer to the work ethic of the women, rather than their ability, by using words such as “grindstone.”

It turns out that female candidates are seen as less hireable as well.
Mike Licht, CC BY

A similar study showed that female, but not male, students applying for a research grant had letters of recommendation emphasizing the wrong skills, such as the applicants’ ability to care for an elderly parent or to balance the demands of parenting and research.

Furthermore, a 2009 analysis of 194 applicants to research faculty positions in psychology found that letters of recommendation for women used more “communal” adjectives (like helpful, kind, warm and tactful), and letters of recommendation for men used more decisive adjectives (like confident, ambitious, daring and independent), even after statistically controlling for different measures of performance.

Perhaps not surprisingly, a follow-up experiment in the same paper found that these subtle differences in the language can result in female candidates being rated as less hireable than men.

Unfortunately, even when the same language is used to describe candidates or when the key objective criteria of productivity are used, evaluators rated female candidates lower than male candidates.

Teaching evaluations, as our colleague already pointed out, are also known to be biased.

Historian Benjamin Schmidt’s recent text analysis of 14 million rankings on the website ratemyprofessor.com showed substantial differences in the words students used to describe men and women faculty in the same field: men were more likely to be described as “knowledgeable” and “brilliant,” women as “bossy” or, if they were lucky, “helpful.”

If a female candidate makes it through the “on paper” process and is invited for an interview, the bias does not end.

What makes a ‘fit’?

Once a field of candidates is narrowed down from hundreds to a handful, very little distinguishes the top candidates, male or female. Final decisions often come down to intangible qualities and “fit.”

Although “fit” can mean many things to many people, it boils down to guesses about future trajectories, judgments about which hole in a department’s research profile or curriculum is most important to fill, and assessments about whether a person is going to be a colleague who contributes to mentoring, departmental service, and congeniality.

Research in social psychology and management shows that women are seen as competent or likable, but not both. The very traits that make them competent and successful (eg, being strong leaders) violate gender stereotypes about how women are “supposed to” act. Conversely, likable women are often perceived as being less likely to succeed in stereotypically male careers.

Despite all this information, FOX News isn’t alone in its view that women candidates for academic positions are not at a disadvantage.

In fact, one of the commentators in that segment cited a study from other researchers at Cornell that concluded the employment prospects for women seeking faculty positions in STEM disciplines have never been better.

The authors of that study go so far as to blame women’s underrepresentation in the sciences on “self-handicapping and opting out” of the hiring process.

Women doing better, but not better than men

The fact is at the current rate of increase in women faculty in tenure-track positions in STEM fields, it may be 2050 before women reach parity in hiring and, worse, 2115 before women constitute 50% of STEM faculty of all ranks.

This is supported by faculty data at Cornell itself. Between 2010 and 2014, there was only a modest 3%-4% increase in women tenure-line STEM faculty.

In contrast to these data, the study cited by FOX News argued women are preferred to men for tenure-track STEM academic positions. The authors of that study used a research method common in social sciences in which true randomized experiments are impossible to carry out in real-life contexts called an audit study.

In an audit study, people who make the relevant decisions, such as faculty or human resource managers, are sent information about two or more fake applicants for a position. The information is equivalent, except for a hint about the question of interest: for example, one CV may have a male name at the top, the other CV a female name.

The battle against sexism has yet to be won.
European Parliament, CC BY-NC-ND

Although the audit study design can be very useful, in the case of STEM faculty hiring it oversimplifies the complex hiring process, which typically involves many people, many stages and many pieces of information.

The authors sent out equivalent descriptions of “powerhouse” hypothetical male or female candidates applying for a hypothetical faculty opening to real professors. Among the respondents, more said that they would hire the woman than the man. However, the study in question “controlled for,” and thus eliminated, many of the sources of bias, including letters of recommendation and teaching evaluations that disadvantage women in the hiring process.

Furthermore, only one-third of faculty who were sent packets responded. Thus, the audit study captured only some of the voices that actually make hiring decisions. It is also hard to believe that participants didn’t guess that they were part of an audit study about hiring. Even if they didn’t know the exact research question, they may have been biased by the artificial research context.

The study by our Cornell colleagues has already generated a lot of conversation, on campus and off. The authors have entered this debate, which will undoubtedly continue. That’s how science works.

Contrary to what FOX News and some of our academic colleagues think, the battle against sexism in our fields has not been won, let alone reversed in favor of women. We must continue to educate hiring faculty, and even the society at large, about conscious and unconscious bias.


Paulette Clancy, Hadas Kress-Gazit, Cynthia Leifer, Marjolein van der Meulen, Sharon Sassler, and Kim Weeden are professors at Cornell University. Hadas Kress-Gazit, Cynthia Leifer and Kim Weeden are also Public Voices Fellows at The Op-Ed Project.

The Conversation

Cynthia Leifer, Associate Professor of Immunology, College of Veterinary Medicine, Cornell University; Hadas Kress-Gazit, Associate Professor of Mechanics and Aerospace Engineering, Cornell University; Kim Weeden, Professor of Sociology, Cornell University; Marjolein C H van der Meulen, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Cornell University; Paulette Clancy, Professor of Chemical Engineering, Cornell University, and Sharon Sassler, Professor of Policy Analysis and Management , Cornell University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

 

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Here’s how minority job seekers battle bias in the hiring process

David S. Pedulla, University of Texas at Austin and Devah Pager, Harvard University

Discrimination in the hiring process has limited the opportunities available to both racial minorities – such as African Americans – and women, with important consequences for their well-being and careers.

For example, research has shown that white job applicants receive 50% more callbacks for interviews than equally qualified African American applicants. And, in the low-wage labor market, scholars have found that African American men without criminal records receive similar callback rates for interviews as white men just released from prison. Researchers have also documented discrimination in hiring against women, with particularly strong penalties against mothers.

But how does this reality affect these groups – African Americans and women – as they hunt for jobs? Do they tailor their searches narrowly to help them avoid discrimination, sticking to job opportunities deemed “appropriate” for them? Or do they cast a wider net with the hopes of maximizing their chances of finding a job that does not discriminate?

Until now, we have known little about this issue, largely because no existing data source has closely followed individuals through their job search.

New research that we recently published in the American Journal of Sociology attempts to address this limitation by drawing on two original datasets that track job seekers and the positions to which they apply.

The results of our study point to three general conclusions about the job search process:

  1. African Americans cast a wider net than whites while searching for work
  2. women tend to apply to a narrower set of job types than men, often targeting roles that have historically been dominated by women
  3. past experiences of discrimination appear to drive, at least in part, the broader job search patterns of African Americans.

On an important side note, these racial differences exist for both men and women and these gender differences exist for both whites and African Americans.

Let’s go into a little more detail on these three main findings.

Casting a wide net

Our analysis shows that African Americans apply to a greater range of job types with a broader range of occupational characteristics than similar whites.

For example, one of our survey respondents was previously employed as a “material moving worker.” Over the course of the survey, this respondent applied for jobs consistent with his prior work experience, such as “material handler” and “warehouse worker.”

However, the respondent also reported applying for jobs in retail sales, as an IT technician, a delivery driver, a security guard, a mail-room clerk and a short order cook. This respondent applied to jobs in a total of seven distinct occupations over the course of the survey, which represents a fairly broad approach to job search.

While this is just one example, it was typical. In both of the datasets we examined, African Americans systematically applied to a larger number of distinct job types than whites with similar levels of education and work experience.

Women and self-selection

Our study demonstrates that women pursued a search strategy very different than that of African Americans.

Women appeared to self-select into distinctive occupational categories consistent with historically gendered job types, such as office and administrative support positions.

During their job search, women also applied to a narrower range of occupations than men with similar education and work experience.

For example, women wanting to work in retail sales were more likely to apply strictly for that type of position during their job search. Men with similar aspirations, on the other hand, were more likely to branch out and apply to adjacent job types, such as wholesale, advertising or insurance sales.

Past discrimination drives blacks’ behavior

So what accounts for these race and gender differences in how people search for a job?

For African American job seekers, we found that perceptions of or experiences with racial discrimination played an important role in explaining their greater search breadth.

In one of the surveys we conducted, we asked job seekers about their experiences with racial discrimination at work. In our analysis, we found that individuals who reported that they had previously observed or experienced racial discrimination in the workplace were more likely to cast a wide net in their job search compared with those without such experience.

A gender-segregated workforce

But if discrimination, in part, drives the search behavior of African Americans, why do we not see similar adaptations by women, who also undoubtedly face employment discrimination?

We suspect the answer is related to the deeper and more explicit nature of gender inequality in the labor market. Occupations remain highly segregated by gender, and individuals from an early age can identify male- and female-typed jobs.

This reality affects women’s occupational aspirations as well as perceptions of the constraints they may encounter when deviating from gendered patterns. In either scenario, women’s self-selection into female-typed occupations may allow them to avoid jobs where they are more likely to experience discrimination. At the same time, this strategy likely reproduces gender segregation at work, which is an important source of gender inequality.

For African Americans, things are quite different. There are far fewer readily identifiable “black” or “white” jobs. The barriers facing African American job seekers can pop up across the labor market. Thus, it is more difficult for African Americans to target jobs where they will be able to avoid discrimination.

But a broad job search allows black job seekers to reach otherwise difficult-to-identify job opportunities in which racial discrimination is less prevalent. Given the challenges of anticipating where and when discrimination is likely to occur, applying to a broad set of job types raises the probability that an African American job seeker will apply to a job that does not discriminate.

Key consequences and takeaways

Job search strategies matter and can make a big difference in everything from lifetime earnings to potential career opportunities.

We find that broad search is associated with being more likely to receive a job offer, but also with receiving lower wage offers. Thus, job seekers appear to face a trade-off between the goals of finding any job and finding a good job. The broader search patterns among African Americans, therefore, may reduce some of the employment gap but contribute to the long-standing racial disparity in wages.

Second, to the extent that broad search leads job seekers to occupations that are different from their past work experiences, this strategy may limit African Americans’ ability to build coherent careers that are consistent with their experience and aspirations. Given significant racial differences in search breadth, these dynamics are likely to contribute to persistent racial inequalities in labor market outcomes.

In the case of women, limiting the scope of their search likely reinforces existing patterns of occupational segregation, which has consequences for the gender earnings gap and implications for other forms of persistent gender inequality.

Where does this leave us?

Together, the findings from our study suggest that the job search process plays an important role in shaping, reinforcing and sometimes counteracting inequality in the labor market.

At the same time, discrimination and other barriers to employment must be considered to fully understand how labor market inequality is generated.

And, as the comparison of race and gender suggests, how individuals adapt to workplace barriers can take different forms and have distinct consequences.

Our research points to the importance of systematically examining both job search processes as well as discriminatory behavior and other constraints in the workplace if we hope to fully understand and rectify persistent racial and gender inequalities in the labor market.

The Conversation

David S. Pedulla, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology & Population Research Center, University of Texas at Austin and Devah Pager, Professor of Sociology and Public Policy, Harvard University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.