Affirmative Action Policies in Academic Job Advertisements: Do They Facilitate or Hinder Gender Discrimination in Hiring Processes for Professorships?

Evidence of female-favoring hiring preferences for assistant professorships suggests that universities can implement affirmative action programs successfully. However, research on the role of applicant gender and the actual use of affirmative action policies in hiring processes for high-level professorships remain scarce. A web-based experiment with 481 economic university members assessed whether evaluators perceived a female applicant as less qualified than a male applicant for an associate professorship position when the job advertisement highlighted the university’s commitment to affirmative action (gender-based preferential selection) but not when it solely highlighted its commitment to excellence (non-gender-based selection). Contrary to previous experimental findings that affirmative action would adversely affect female applicants, evaluators perceived the female applicant as more hirable and ranked her first for the job significantly more often than the male candidate. Furthermore, male evaluators had a stronger preference for the female candidate in the gender-based condition than in the non-gender-based condition and a stronger preference for the male candidate in the non-gender-based condition than in the gender-based condition. Overall, the results provide evidence that gender-based preferential selection policies can evoke their intended effect to bring highly qualified women to high-level professorships, especially when being evaluated by non-beneficiaries of these policies, such as men.

The Effects of “Live,” Authentic, and Emotional Instagram Images on Congressional Candidate Evaluations

This study examines how Instagram’s design and norms influence expectations for political imagery and, subsequently, the effects of these images on electability, vote likelihood, and candidate evaluations. Using the Elaboration Likelihood Model, we propose three norms of Instagram that likely function as heuristic cues and affect the reception of political visual communication on the platform: liveness, authenticity, and emotionality. We experimentally test these visual features on Congressional candidate images, finding some evidence that live, authentic, and emotional images positively influence vote likelihood but negatively impact electability. Results also indicate that live, authentic, and emotional images either have no or negative effects on female candidate evaluations or have no or positive effects on male candidate evaluations.

‘Dress Code’ Controversy: A Victim of Misogynistic Mindset or Something Else ?

In the middle of September 2021, a female candidate wearing ‘shorts’ (the so-called ‘half pant’), hailing from Biswanath Chariali, went to Tezpur to appear at an entrance test of Assam Agricultural University (AAU) at Girijananda Chowdhury Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (GIPS), one of the agencies of AAU. While the gatekeeper of GIPS gave her access, the invigilator on duty at the examination hall raised eyebrows on her ‘dress code’ but allowed her to sit in the examination, coercing her to drape a curtain to cover her legs. Doing so, the invigilator not only trespassed into her personal space— her body; humiliated her by lowering her dignity. This perspective is an attempt to revisit the debate of the dress code of Indian women, which refuses to die even in 21st Century India.

The Contingent Effects of Sexism in Primary Elections

Although the landscape for female candidates in U.S. politics has improved, research continues to find that many voters possess sexist attitudes. We rely on a standard political communication framework to help reconcile sexism in the electorate with increasingly favorable outcomes for women in primary elections. Based on two national survey experiments, we first demonstrate that in the absence of gendered campaign rhetoric, sexism is a weak predictor of support for female candidates on both sides of the political aisle. We then show, however, that when a male candidate attempts to activate sexism among voters by attacking a female opponent, gender attitudes become more salient—but not to the woman’s disadvantage. In a Democratic primary, gendered attacks backfire and lead to a significant boost in support for the female candidate. On the Republican side, a male candidate does not face the same backlash, but the attacks do very little to depress his female opponent’s support. While the persistence of hostile attitudes toward women has slowed the march toward gender equality in society, our experimental results suggest that sexism exerts only contingent effects in primary elections and not systematically to female candidates’ detriment.

Missing Women in Tech: The Labor Market for Highly Skilled Software Engineers

This paper examines the behavior of job seekers and recruiters in the labor market for software engineers. I obtained data from a recruiting platform where individuals can self-report their computer programming skills and recruiters can message individuals they wish to contact about job opportunities. I augment this data set with measures of each individual’s previous programming experience based on analysis of actual computer source code they wrote and shared within the open-source software community. This novel data set reveals that candidates’ self-reported technical skills are quantitatively important predictors of recruiter interest. Consistent with social psychology and behavioral economics studies, I also find female programmers with previous experience in a programming language are 11.07% less likely than their male counterparts to self-report knowledge of that programming language on their resume. Despite public pronouncements, however, recruiters do not appear more inclined toward recruiting female candidates who self-report knowing programming languages. Indeed, recruiters are predicted to be 6.47% less likely to express interest in a female candidate than a male candidate with comparable observable qualifications even if those qualifications are very strong. Ultimately, a gender gap in the self-reporting of skills on resumes exists; but recruiters do not appear to be adjusting their response to such signals in ways that could increase the representation of women among software engineering recruits. This paper was accepted by Yan Chen, behavioral economics and decision analysis.

Gonadal transcriptomes associated with sex phenotypes provide potential male and female candidate genes of sex determination or early differentiation in Crassostrea gigas, a sequential hermaphrodite mollusc

Background In the animal kingdom, mollusca is an important phylum of the Lophotrochozoa. However, few studies have investigated the molecular cascade of sex determination/early gonadal differentiation within this phylum. The oyster Crassostrea gigas is a sequential irregular hermaphrodite mollusc of economic, physiological and phylogenetic importance. Although some studies identified genes of its sex-determining/−differentiating pathway, this particular topic remains to be further deepened, in particular with regard to the expression patterns. Indeed, these patterns need to cover the entire period of sex lability and have to be associated to future sex phenotypes, usually impossible to establish in this sequential hermaphrodite. This is why we performed a gonadal RNA-Seq analysis of diploid male and female oysters that have not changed sex for 4 years, sampled during the entire time-window of sex determination/early sex differentiation (stages 0 and 3 of the gametogenetic cycle). This individual long-term monitoring gave us the opportunity to explain the molecular expression patterns in the light of the most statistically likely future sex of each oyster. Results The differential gene expression analysis of gonadal transcriptomes revealed that 9723 genes were differentially expressed between gametogenetic stages, and 141 between sexes (98 and 43 genes highly expressed in females and males, respectively). Eighty-four genes were both stage- and sex-specific, 57 of them being highly expressed at the time of sex determination/early sex differentiation. These 4 novel genes including Trophoblast glycoprotein-like, Protein PML-like, Protein singed-like and PREDICTED: paramyosin, while being supported by RT-qPCR, displayed sexually dimorphic gene expression patterns. Conclusions This gonadal transcriptome analysis, the first one associated with sex phenotypes in C. gigas, revealed 57 genes highly expressed in stage 0 or 3 of gametogenesis and which could be linked to the future sex of the individuals. While further study will be needed to suggest a role for these factors, some could certainly be original potential actors involved in sex determination/early sex differentiation, like paramyosin and could be used to predict the future sex of oysters.

INC’s performance in Gujarat’s reserved constituencies should be a lesson for future planning

The analysis of past trends shows that the vote share of BJP in various assembly elections of Gujarat increased from 1990 onwards and has remained close to around 49 percent since 2002. However, for the first time since 1995 the total number of seats won by BJP in different assembly elections of Gujarat came down below 100 in 2017 (i.e., 99 seats).INC's vote share in various assembly elections of Gujarat went up gradually since 1990 and reached almost 43 percent in 2017. The total number of seats won by INC in different assembly elections of Gujarat has more than doubled from 33 in 1990 to 77 in 2017.The number of seats won as a proportion of seats contested was greater than 60 percent for the BJP in the assembly polls of 1995, 1998, 2002, 2007 and 2012. In fact, BJP's chances of winning a particular seat reached its peak in 2002 (viz. 69.8 percent). On the contrary, the number of seats won as a proportion of seats contested crossed 40 percent for INC (viz. 43.5 percent) for the first time in the assembly polls of 2017.During the past 7 assembly elections since 1990, the total number of seats won by INC in the ST reserved constituencies surpassed the total number of seats won by BJP, except in the years 1995 and 2002. It would be too early to say that BJP's anti-Muslim propaganda and communal agenda is yielding diminishing returns in the ST reserved seats. Why so? It is because the vote share of victorious BJP candidates has risen from 47.9 percent to 53.6 percent between 2012 and 2017 in the ST reserved constituencies. On the contrary, the vote share of victorious INC candidates has declined from 51.5 percent to 50.4 percent between 2012 and 2017. Having said that, it should be added here that INC's pre-poll alliance with BTP helped it to increase its overall number of seats to 17 in 2017 from 16 in 2012 in those constituencies. The total number of seats won by INC during assembly elections in the SC seats was always lesser than the total number of seats won by BJP since 1990. However, during the 2017 assembly polls, BJP (7) was marginally ahead of INC (5) in terms of winning SC reserved seats. The average vote share of both INC's (51.5 percent in 2012; 53.8 percent in 2017) and BJP's (49.9 percent in 2012; 55.3 percent in 2017) victorious candidates went up between 2012 and 2017. If we take into account the victory by the independent candidate Jigneshkumar Natvarlal Mevani in Vadgam, then the overall number of seats won by INC has doubled to 6 in 2017 from 3 in 2012 in the SC constituencies. In the reserved constituencies (SC+ST), the total number of seats won by INC on its sole power has increased from 19 in 2012 to 20 in 2017 and the total number of seats won by BJP fell from 20 to 16 during the same span. On certain parameters, however, the performance of BJP and INC show mixed results. My data analysis shows that the average vote share of a winning candidate of BJP increased in both the SC and ST constituencies between the two timepoints. While the average vote share of a winning candidate from INC increased in SC constituencies, it fell in the ST constituencies. Although the probability of winning by an INC candidate has increased in both SC and ST constituencies between 2012 and 2017, the average victory margin secured by a winning candidate of INC against the nearest rival in the ST constituencies has fallen, shows this analysis. On the contrary, the average victory margin secured by a winner of INC against the nearest rival in SC constituencies has increased between the two timepoints under discussion. The chances of winning by a BJP candidate has decreased in both SC and ST constituencies between 2012 and 2017. However, the average victory margin secured by a victorious BJP candidate against the nearest rival in both ST and SC constituencies has gone up.Due to anti-incumbency factor, both BJP and INC gained same number of seats (3 each) in the ST constituencies in 2017. INC (4) gained a greater number of seats vis-à-vis the BJP (1) due to anti-incumbency factor in the SC constituencies. No female candidate could win a single seat for BJP in the ST constituencies in both 2012 and 2017. Likewise, no female candidate could win a single seat for INC in the SC constituencies in 2012. In 2017, no female candidate from INC contested election in the SC constituencies.

Going Feminine: Identifying How and When Female Candidates Emphasize Feminine and Masculine Traits on the Campaign Trail

Female candidates face a messaging challenge. There is a strong association between masculinity and political leadership. Stressing masculinity can result in a likability backlash for female candidates often seen as lacking feminine qualities, such as warmth. Preventing a likability backlash by highlighting feminine qualities can also harm female candidates. Current scholarship offers conflicting conclusions about how female candidates balance these gendered challenges. We fill this empirical and theoretical gap with a trait-balancing theory clarifying how and when female candidates use feminine and masculine traits to manage competing expectations. We use original data merging information on candidate advertising strategies across three election cycles. We show that female candidates strategically balance masculine and feminine stereotypes in ways that often differ from their male counterparts but also differ based on female candidate partisanship and incumbency. These results are consequential because they highlight how female candidates manage gendered pressures in campaign strategies, which can affect their ability to win elections and, ultimately, women’s representation in government.

Gender-Equality Concerns and Political Attitudes toward Women in the 2019 Legislative Election: Evidence from Pelalawan

The presence of women in Indonesian politics remains underrepresented whereas cultural and societal aspects pose critical influence in determining voter behavior toward female candidates. The aim of this article is to examine voter behavior regarding female candidates and the probability for them to be elected as members of parliament. We apply quantitative method by developing three models representing three combinations of predictor variables, (i) socio-demography, (ii) gender- equality concern, and (iii) political attitude towards female candidates as determinants towards female candidate electability. The study took place in Pelalawan Regency in Riau Province, by analyzing 400 respondents with equal numbers of men and women from various socio-economic backgrounds through clustered random sampling method. We tested these hypotheses and our three models by utilizing logistic regression analysis. The result shows that political attitude toward female candidates (Model 3) are the strongest coefficient and most significant determinant for female candidate electability. The study also revealed that female candidate’s electability in Pelalawan Regency is lower than male candidate’s electability among male respondents. On the other hand, female candidate’s electability is higher than male candidate’s electability among female respondents. Moreover, we also found that education determines female candidate’s electability where the more educated an individual is, the more he/she tends to vote for female candidates.