[Research]

• Task allocations contribute to gender-wage inequality within jobs

  • Gounden Rock, A. Task allocations contribute to gender-wage inequality within jobs. Working paper.

Why is it important to study whether task categories contribute to gender wage inequality within jobs? My research provides evidence that the gender wage gap persists even for male and female workers who hold the same job, and that a factor related to jobs - the number of types of tasks carried out in a given job - contributes to this within-job wage gap. Past research and widely held beliefs had long assumed that once workers are compared within the same job, gender difference in wages disappear. My research provides evidence of a task-related within-job factor that contributes to the previously unknown portion of the gender wage gap.  This knowledge is a first step in building policies related to the tasks within a job. Such policies would constitute a novel direction that individuals and organizations could follow to further reduce the gender wage gap. 

• How does gender and experience affect job applications?

  • Rubineau, B., Gounden Rock., A., Reyt, J.N., Wiesenfeld, B.. Experienced women hold back, novice men rush in. A first empirical test of gender, experience and job applications. 

Why is it important to study if there are gender differences in how experience affects job applications? You may have heard that men will apply for jobs before they meet all of the requirements listed in a job application, but that women will wait until they are 100% qualified. While you may assume that is a solid academic finding, no peer-reviewed research yet grounds this assumption. In our research, we leverage a strategic dataset that can provide evidence how men's and women's prior experience affects their job application decisions. We find that when women apply for a job, they wait on average one and a half years to apply to a job that men with no prior experience would apply to. Our findings have clear implications for gender inequality.

• A critical review of gender in research in Industrial Relations (2000-2023) with a future research agenda

  • Gounden Rock., A., Riordan, C. & Minster, A.. Critical review of gender in the field of Industrial Relations, with a future research agenda.

Why is it important to study work in the context of gender in Industrial Relations? How work has been conceptualized and empirically investigated shape our understanding of work. How IR has conceptualized and studied work is foundational to our knowledge. While we know that the experience of work is gendered, past research on work in IR appears to have been conducted as if work were gender-neutral. To fully understand work, it is important to re-examine how the field of IR has theorized and has studied gender. To extend our understanding of work, a future research agenda is needed to more fully conceptualize gender in the study of work.

• Why is combining caregiving and careers so difficult? What can  be done?

  • Gounden Rock., A., Wittman, S., Wellmann, J., Bailyn, L., Goldin, C., Hill, D.T., Lovejoy, M., Stone, P. Building inclusive career paths around caregiving: Constraints and strategies. Working paper. 

Why is it important to study careers and caregiving? Careers have been studied and theorized as gender neutral. However, they have been conceptualized and enacted in reference to a male body. Research and practice focus on individual problems and their solutions while many structure factors combine to constrain women's while they enable men's career success. We argue for a social mechanism framing of careers and caregiving that links levels of analysis, in order to reveal and address the 'baked-in' structural inequality inherent in caregiving and careers.

• Are gender working norms changing, given Covid? How and why?

  • Gounden Rock, A.. Is discourse about flexible working, a mechanism of gender in/equality, changing over time? The case of Working from Home (WFH). In Dismantling Bias Conference Series (Vol. 3, No. 11, p. 5). Working paper. 

Why is it important to study gender norms? A change in gender norms would support changes in individual behavior, for example, who looks after children and who works. Changes in the underlying division of (unpaid) family and (paid) market labor could increase gender equality. However, much of the existing research on gender equality has focused on individuals: what they do and what they choose. Less research has focused on how structural factors, including gender norms, affect individual action and choice. It is important to add to our knowledge of these structural factors. 

• Should there be gender equality in hiring?

  • Gounden Rock, A. & Crisp, R. (manuscript in preparation) Distributive justice and gender equality in hiring practices 

Why is it important to distributive justice and gender equality in hiring? Since the publication of John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice in 1971, the issue of distributive justice— concerning who should get what—has been seen as foundational in political philosophy. Gender inequality is an urgent global problem, long studied by management scholars, and the achievement of gender equality is a pressing societal goal (UN, 2015). Gender equality in hiring can be seen as a matter of distributive justice: jobs should go to those with the appropriate qualifications, and in the vast majority of cases an applicant’s gender is irrelevant. But what happens when a sub-principle of justice, such as that of gender equality, clashes with some more basic principle, such as a Rawls-like principle according to which benefits to the worst off in society should be prioritized? Imagine a case in which a committee has to decide between a highly privileged female candidate, for example, and a highly under-privileged male candidate? This raises questions about the theoretical status of gender equality principles, their relation to basic principles of distributive justice, and their application in the context of hiring. In this theoretical paper, we explore these questions.