{"id":8780,"date":"2017-03-28T08:00:05","date_gmt":"2017-03-28T08:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/?p=8780"},"modified":"2017-03-27T19:55:40","modified_gmt":"2017-03-27T19:55:40","slug":"class-status-helps-men-more-than-women-in-elite-jobs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/2017\/03\/28\/class-status-helps-men-more-than-women-in-elite-jobs\/","title":{"rendered":"Class Status Helps Men More than Women in Elite Jobs"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n Lauren A. Rivera and Andr\u00e1s Tilcsik, <\/span>“Class Advantage, Commitment Penalty: The Gendered Effect of Social Class Signals in an Elite Labor Market,” American Sociological Review<\/em>,<\/a><\/span> 2016<\/span><\/div>\n
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Photo by Kathryn Decker, Flickr CC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Economic inequality is at high tide in the United States, across numerous demographic lines. For example, privileged children often attend high-quality schools that lead to further advantages in adulthood like elite employment opportunities. However, does class status only impact elite employment prospects through education? <\/span>Lauren Rivera<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>Andras Tilcsik<\/span><\/a> use an experimental audit study to examine how class status influences employment likelihoods above and beyond educational credentials. <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/div> Rivera and Tilcsik sent random fictitious resumes to 316 summer associateships at large law firms. They manipulated the gender and the class status of the applicant, while other application items such as educational credentials and experience were identical across applications. Gender was signaled via the applicant first name (John vs. Julia) and class status was signaled through the last name (Cabot vs. Clark), extracurricular activity (sailing vs. track and field), athletic award (regular athletic award vs. athletic award for student on financial aid), and personal interests (e.g. classical music vs. country music). The researchers then measured whether the applicant was invited for an interview callback.\u00a0\u00a0Although firms also saw higher-class women as better fits, they simultaneously perceived them as less committed to full-time, demanding careers.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The findings reveal that the effect of status markers depends on one\u2019s gender: men who display markers of high social class are significantly more likely to receive a callback than high-status women. Rivera and Tilcsik followed up with\u00a0a survey experiment and interviews to investigate why status works in the favor of men but not for women. Overall, firms saw higher-class applicants as better fits than lower class candidates, even though their credentials were the same. Although firms also saw higher-class women as better fits, they simultaneously perceived them as less committed to full-time, demanding careers. This \u201ccommitment penalty\u201d offset the gains in callback likelihood that higher-class women get through perceived fit. <\/span><\/p>\n

In the context of elite employment, the implications of class status vary based on an applicant\u2019s gender. \u00a0 The authors argue that the \u201ccommitment penalty\u201d is a type of anticipatory discrimination, where employers, hiring in the ethos of time-intensive jobs, question women\u2019s commitment due to the perceived potential for external commitments (e.g. motherhood), as well as gendered notions of work devotion. Overall, this research highlights how the interaction of class and gender, rather than either alone, pattern opportunities for elite employment.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lauren A. Rivera and Andr\u00e1s Tilcsik, “Class Advantage, Commitment Penalty: The Gendered Effect of Social Class Signals in an Elite Labor Market,” American Sociological Review, 2016 Economic inequality is at high tide in the United States, across numerous demographic lines. For example, privileged children often attend high-quality schools that lead to further advantages in adulthood […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1957,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,13],"tags":[88850,37335,37332],"class_list":["post-8780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gender","category-inequality","tag-elite-jobs","tag-gender","tag-inequality"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1957"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8780"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8780\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8785,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8780\/revisions\/8785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}