Female careers, underrepresentation of women, and social identity: Evidence from the field

Abstract

This doctoral thesis analyzes female careers under the aspects of gender stereotyping, competitiveness, and performance evaluation. Further, social identity is investigated. Female careers and underrepresentation of women are analyzed in the first paper Board Gender Quota Effectiveness and Firm Financial Performance: A Difference-in-difference Approach, in the second paper Are Women Really Less Competitive Than Men? Career Duration in Nordic and Alpine Skiing as well as in the third paper The Influence of Career Concerns of Judges on Subjective Evaluation of Athletes: The Case of Ski Jumping. The topic of social identity is investigated in the fourth paper Between Heaven and Hell: Spillover Effects of Exogenous Shocks on Exits from the Catholic and Protestant Churches in Germany. In paper 1 the implementation of a gender quota on corporate boards as an effective method to increase the female share on corporate boards is investigated. Especially the effect on financial as well as market performance is analyzed by comparing the situation in Norway to neighbouring countries Denmark, Sweden and Finland which do not have a binding gender quota. The aspect of competitiveness of women is analyzed in paper 2 by comparing career lengths of male and female athletes in skiing competitions, which is a highly competitive field. In paper 3 the evaluation of performance in ski jumping is investigated. Based on the assumption that judges have career concerns, they make their subjective evaluation dependent on the objective measure how far an athlete jumped. This paper especially analyzes if career concerns are more pronounced for male or female judges. The aspect of social identity is investigated in paper 4. By analyzing the impact of scandals in the Catholic church on the exit rate in the Catholic church, but also on the Protestant church in Germany, this paper reveals how individuals react to exogenous shocks that threaten their social identity with an organization they are a member of.

Annotation: An earlier version of paper 1 has been submitted to The Leadership Quarterly as joint work with PHILIP YANG, KERSTIN PULL and SIRI TERJESEN and has received an invitation to be revised and resubmitted. Within the revision process, the paper’s contribution has been changed towards a rather methodological contribution and a further coauthor has been added: JAN RIEPE. The paper presented in this chapter is based on the original submission to Leadership Quarterly and has been further developed by KATHARINA MOSER for the sake of this thesis. The published article can be found here: The Leadership Quarterly 30(2019)5 doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2019.05.004

Paper 2 is joint work with BERND FRICK. After the final submission of this PhD thesis a revised version of this chapter has been published in Frontiers in Sociology 5(2021) doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2020.539766

Paper 4 is joint work with BERND FRICK. After the final submission of this PhD thesis, ROB SIMMONS has been added as further coauthor. A revised version of this chapter has been published in Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 0(2021)0 https://doi.org/10.1111/jssr.12736