Equal but Inequitable: Who Benefits from Gender-Neutral Tenure Clock Stopping Policies?

By Heather Antecol, Kelly Bedard, Jenna Stearns. The American Economic Review, 2016

309 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Many skilled professional occupations are characterized by an early period of intensive skill accumulation and career establishment. Examples include law firm associates, surgical residents, and untenured faculty at research-intensive universities. High female exit rates are sometimes blamed on the inability of new mothers to survive the sustained negative productivity shock associated with childbearing and early childrearing in these environments. Gender-neutral family policies have been adopted in some professions in an attempt to “level the playing field.” The gender-neutral tenure clock stopping policies adopted by the majority of research-intensive universities in the United States in recent decades are an excellent example. But to date, there is no empirical evidence showing that these policies help women. Using a unique dataset on the universe of assistant professor hires at top-50 economics departments from 1980–2005, we show that the adoption of gender-neutral tenure clock stopping policies substantially reduced female tenure rates while substantially increasing male tenure rates. However, these policies do not reduce the probability that either men or women eventually earn tenure in the profession. (JEL I23, J16, J24, J32, J44)

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Gender Studies, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/379e01968877897f24fb58c317bca54c6ae39060

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Economics and Econometrics

1. Steve Stewart-Williams
2. L. Halsey
3. E. Hengel
4. Da Ke

In Gender Studies

1. Steve Stewart-Williams
2. L. Halsey
3. E. Hengel
4. Da Ke

In Sociology and Political Science

1. L. Halsey
2. Steve Stewart-Williams
3. E. Hengel
4. Da Ke

Citations in the corpus

• Who Wears the Pants? Gender Identity Norms and Intrahousehold Financial Decision‐Making (2017, background): “…and Seru (2018) document that the financial advisor industry is more forgiving of misconduct by men relative to women, and there is evidence of women facing barriers in the fields of both economics and finance in academia (Chari and Goldsmith-Pinkham (2017), Antecol, Bedard, and Stearns (2018)).”
• Publishing while Female. Are women held to higher standards? Evidence from peer review. (2017, background): “, Blau and Kahn, 2016) and policy design (Antecol et al., 2016).”
• Men, women and STEM: Why the differences and what should be done? (2020, background): “One study found, for instance, that gender-neutral tenure clock-stopping policies reduced women’s tenure rates in economics, but increased men’s (Antecol et al., 2018).”
• Gender Differences in Recognition for Group Work (2020, unknown): “, 2015); and institutional factors (Antecol et al., 2018).”