Stephen versus Stephanie? Does Gender Matter for Peer to Peer Career Advice.

We designed two experiments to assess whether the gender of a peer alone would cause UK students to give differential career advice. These experiments are distinct in that they consider the advice given to a peer on sorting i) within majors and ii) across majors. We recruited two mixed gender schools in the area of Hertfordshire in England. The students were in Year 11 (about age 15 – 16). The survey satisfied the ethics committee at the author’s home institution. Schools were advised of the survey two months ahead of time. The experiment took place in January 2018. The students completed the surveys in an assembly hall on a day when the authors visited the school, accompanied by research assistants. All students who were present on the day participated in both experiments, but were given the option to opt out (and sit silently) or skip any question they like. No identifying information was gathered and the students were made aware of this prior to commencing the study. The study design did not offer incentives to the students to participate. Students were allocated 45 minutes to complete the survey.

2019-01-07

2019-01-21

career recommendation to fictious peer

To consider the potential role perceived gender identity can play in choices within college majors we designed a ‘Stephen/Stephanie’ experiment, which describes a fictitious student who is finishing high school in the UK. Specifically, the experiment describes a student who has focused their studies on politics, economics, and English literature. They expect to do very well in their high school exams and have decided to pursue a career in law. However, they do not yet know how they should specialise. The student answering has been asked to provide guidance to this fictitious peer. The experiment provides a brief description of what both a civil rights and corporate lawyer does on a day-to-day basis, along with some other information on what the student’s day to day life looks like. We choose to focus on law as it has a couple of appealing characteristics. First, law is one of the major professional occupations that women have entered more regularly. Currently in the UK about 50% of solicitors are female , and more than 60% of students studying law are female. So, the purpose of our experiment is not overtly obvious. Second, within law there are big disparities in income that depend on speciality, with male lawyers being over represented in the highest earning specialties, and in progression to the highest ranks (Beioley 2014). In terms of career advancement in private practice in the UK, 40.2% of male solicitors with Practising Certificates (PCs) holders are partners versus only 29.5% of female, while 75% of men become partners versus 30% of women (Solicitor Regulation Authority (2017)). Similarly, the 2014 Gender in the Law Survey (with breakdown of gender by firm) shows a steady decline of females from trainees (nearly 60% are female) to partners (24% average).

Notably, corporate law has higher earnings as compared to civil law. In addition, corporate law has a larger gender pay gap as compared to civil law, and in neither case are the gender pay gaps explained by the area of law or billable hours (Azmat and Ferrer, 2017). This raises a question of whether women are less accepted in corporate law in terms of ‘face not fitting’, and this contributes to the gender pay gap. Overall, this implies that any differences in peer recommendations cannot be rationally explained away by the children in the study having a true knowledge that women do not choose either law speciality regularly enough. Rather, it points to simpler explanation of gender driving any differences in advice received by the fictitious peer.

degree recommendation to fictious peer

In the experiment that they meet John they read the following text:
“John Collins is a colleague of Stephanie Williams at school. He is taking Economics, Maths, Physics and French for his A levels. He is a straight A student. His mother died when he was a very young. His father is a very successful builder. John has many friends. He enjoys reading, listening to music and playing computer games. He does not know what to do in university and needs your help [to choose a field of study].”
Subsequently they are asked two open-ended questions:
i) State the university degree that they think John should consider
ii) Say why they recommended that specific degree to John

We intentionally choose two subjects at A level which are STEM (i.e. Maths and Physics), so that students should choose a STEM degree if they are only taking subject choice into account STEM is currently male dominated in England (share of males >85% in all careers). We choose a subject that relates to business (economics), which is closer to 50:50 gender split on entry level, but does have a glass ceiling. Finally, French is included as an Arts subject, where major careers that utilise this language in the UK (teaching and translating) have high shares of females.

We designed two experiments to assess whether the gender of a peer alone would cause UK students to give differential career advice. These experiments are distinct in that they consider the advice given to a peer on sorting i) within majors and ii) across majors. We recruited two mixed gender schools in the area of Hertfordshire in England. The students were in Year 11 (about age 15 – 16). The survey satisfied the ethics committee at the author’s home institution. Schools were advised of the survey two months ahead of time. The experiment took place in January 2018. The students completed the surveys in an assembly hall on a day when the authors visited the school, accompanied by research assistants. All students who were present on the day participated in both experiments, but were given the option to opt out (and sit silently) or skip any question they like. No identifying information was gathered and the students were made aware of this prior to commencing the study. The study design did not offer incentives to the students to participate. Students were allocated 45 minutes to complete the survey.

coin flip

pupil

No

0

300 (150 per arm)

311

0.2 std dev