Roth, Barbara. 2006. “The Myth of Meritocracy: Gender and Performance Based Pay.” Flashcards
What did the authors find about wallstreet?
Wall Street firms compete for the most talented individuals
performance-based pay system should have, theoretically, created equity by compensating workers on their worth
rather than according to characteristics like gender
BUT: But men and women encountered different environments in this industry
Resulting in inequality
How does gender shape Wall Street careers right from the start?
(entry level)
- women applied in smaller numbers than men. Women represented only 20 percent of incoming associates.
- Women also started in different areas of the securities industry (and became tokens in higher paying jobs)
- very few women made it into the senior ranks, and those who did had to overcome contradictory standards
- intense time commitment that Wall Street required. This generated a culture of workaholism that precluded involvement in family life
Is there specific wallstreet jobs with higher diversity?
Yes, there tended to be pockets where there was greater diversity = usually job ghettos with lower pay.
How might some managers at securities justify not hiring women?
managers appeared to believe that distributing fewer good accounts to women was economically rational because they expected clients to prefer men
or
believed that investments in women’s careers were a waste of resources because they would eventually leave the labor force
Why was meritocracy considered a myth for women in wallstreet?
- bonuses seemed arbitrary (huge pay discrepancies)
- subjective evaluations even contradicted more objective measures of performance, (based more on how much u like a person)
Why were Women much more likely than men to disbelieve the myth of meritocracy?
Women were much more likely than men to disbelieve the myth of meritocracy because women were more subject to nonmerit influences having a negative impact on
their bonuses (43% don’t believe it)
What is a theory for why men are prefered?
When evaluations of performance are
partly subjective, they will inevitably be swayed by attraction to and beliefs about others. Men’s preference for other men and a cultural gender hierarchy that awards men higher status than women led to higher evaluations for men.
So Homophily
How can high visibility hurt women?
I think that a weak woman
stands out more than a weak man.
As this suggests, women who were exceptional could receive an advantage from their higher visibility, but mediocre men could pass through the ranks more easily than mediocre women
How are definitions of skills biased towards men?
definitions of skill in a male-dominated setting like Wall Street are biased toward expertise and characteristics that are typically held by men, while those that
most women possess are devalued
(ex. every woman is described / categorized as “timid.”)
What is Gutek’s theory of sex-role spillover?
argued that as occupations become gender typed, the gender role becomes part of the work role.
- Work in female-dominated jobs is then structured to take advantage of women’s stereotyped traits while not rewarding them as skills (think emotional labour)
Which type of people think wallstreet is a meritocracy?
Over two-thirds (71 percent) of Wall Street workers believed that the
compensation system was a meritocracy,
They believed in it because they were high earners, they did not know how much others were paid, they compared their earnings only to others in the exact same job
How does the myth of meritocracy self-perpetuate?
Thirty percent of the women, or 69 percent of those who challenged the myth of meritocracy, left Wall Street
Leaving their jobs after a disappointing bonus might have resolved their individual sense of injustice, but the system retained its legitimacy. In fact, the system
maintained its legitimacy partly through the self-selection of dissenters out of the industry.
(keeps it’s legitimacy cuz those who “can’t crack it” drop out - but it doesn’t acknowledge they were not being treated fairly)
(only see the best of the best there)
What are some solutions to the wallstreet bias issue?
- Wall Street firms could stop pretending
that market forces lead to fair and unbiased outcomes. They don’t. - Women try work in fields with more objective measures of success
- Firms holding comprehensive evaluations for sales and trading
- most successful women was that women do best in jobs that are not relationship intensive (contradict stereotypes of women being relationship focused)
- Wall Street firms could reduce the impact of client preferences by prohibiting gender-stereotypical client entertaining activities.
(ex. They could forbid workers of all ranks from taking clients to strip joints or on hunting expeditions.) - Wall Street firms could also encourage greater equality with a few very specific affirmative action and diversity initiatives.
- work-family policies
