Extra JESS Seminar: How Do Gender Quotas Affect Hierarchical Relationships? Complementary Evidence from a Representative Survey and Labor Market Experiments

Gender quotas are implemented in many organizations but it is unclear whether they improve or damage the functioning of hierarchical relationships. We conduct a representative survey and a novel set of laboratory experiments to study opinions on gender quotas for managers and how they influence wage setting and worker effort. Our findings reveal that opinions and workplace reactions to gender quotas crucially depend on the specifics of the labor market. In our survey, we observe that approval for gender quotas is low if there is no disadvantage against women in the manager selection process, regardless whether there are gender differences in performance. Complementing this evidence, we observe in our experiments that quotas lead in such environments to lower wages and effort levels. However, in an environment where there is a biased selection process, we observe a high approval rating for quotas and that they increase wage and effort levels. Our results suggest that it is important to evaluate the existence and nature of disadvantage in the specific labor market before implementing gender quotas.