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American Economic Review Vol. 104 No. 5 2014

Are Female Supervisors More Female-Friendly?

Steven Bednar1; Dora Gicheva2

1 Department of Economics, Elon University, 2075 Campus Box, Elon, NC 27244 (e-mail: ) · 2 Department of Economics, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, PO Box 26170, Greensboro, NC 27402 (e-mail: )

open access

Abstract

We introduce the idea that easily inferable demographic characteristics such as gender may not be sufficient to define type in the supervisor-employee mentoring relationship. We use longitudinal data on athletic directors at NCAA Division I programs to identify through observed mobility the propensity of top-level administrators to hire and retain female head coaches, above and beyond an organization's culture. We show that supervisor gender appears to be unrelated to female friendliness in this setting. Overall, our findings indicate that more focus should be placed on the more complex manager type defined by attitudes in addition to attributes.

DOI
10.1257/aer.104.5.370
Volume
104
Issue
5
Pages
370-375
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib crossref openalex

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