All Entries in the "Research/Study" Category
New Report Offers Strategies for Closing the Gender Gap in Organizational Leadership
A new report from the IBM Institute for Business Value examines the status of women in leadership roles across 10 industries and 9 geographic regions. The study also offers recommendations of what organizations can do that will make significant progress in closing the gender gap in leadership roles.
Examining the Gender Gap in Household Chores
Researchers analyzed the gender division of nonmarket work, comparing immigrant and native-born men and women. They found that the gender gap for first-generation immigrants has narrowed but it is still larger on average than gender gaps between native-born men and women.
Stanford University Study Shows How to Reduce Gender Bias in Performance Reviews
A new study conducted at Stanford University finds although workplace evaluations are supposed to be merit-based, gender bias too often influences how supervisors rate employees, resulting in women having to meet a higher bar than their male colleagues to advance professionally.
During the Pandemic, Women Made Gains Both Behind and in Front of the Hollywood Camera
In 2020, women make up 47.8 percent of the lead actors in the 185 top-grossing films. Women were 41.3 percent of all actors in these films. Despite progress, women made up just 26 percent of film writers and just 20.5 percent of the directors.
A New Approach to Science Education May Help Reduce the Gender Gap in STEM Fields
A new study by researchers at North Carolina State University finds that fifth-grade girls who participated in science classes that were held outdoors had higher average science grades and an increase in a measure of scientific knowledge than girls who participated only in traditional classroom settings.
Study Examines the Gender Gap in Career Advice Given to College Students
A working paper by women scholars at the University of Chicago and the University of California, Los Angeles, finds that women college students regularly receive different messages from career counselors than their male counterparts.
How Parenting Can Impact the Sexual Behavior of Women College Students
A study found that women college students who did not have good relationships with their parents were more likely to engage in risky sexual behaviors than college women who had a more engaged relationship with their parents.
Easy Access to Contraception May Boost the High School Graduation Rates of Teenage Girls
Researchers at the University of Colorado found that when teenage girls had access to free and low-cost birth control through a statewide program, the percentage of students who left high school before graduating decreased by 14 percent. The authors also found that increased access to birth control led to lower birth and abortion rates.
The Gender Gap in Enrollment Declines During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Male undergraduates are increasingly falling behind their female counterparts during this pandemic. In the spring semester, male enrollments are down by 8.9 percent from the spring 2020 semester. For women undergraduates, enrollments are down 4 percent.
University of Michigan Study Finds High Suicide Risk Among Women Who Are Nurses
A new study by researchers at the University of Michigan finds that nurses who are women are roughly twice as likely to die by suicide than women in the general population. Among male nurses, the risk of suicide is no higher than the general male population.
The Gender Gap in Voter Participation Narrows at the Top of the Educational Ladder
Overall, 74.1 percent of all adult women in the United States were registered to vote in 2020, and 68.4 percent cast ballots. For those with a graduate degree, 85.9 percent of women were registered to vote and 83.3 percent cast ballots.
Women in High-Net-Worth Households Tend to Leave the Financial Decisions to Men
In all different sex, married-couple families, men are deemed more knowledgable about financial matters in slightly more than half of all households. But among high-net-worth married couples, the husband was rated most knowledgable on finances in 90 percent of the households.
Michigan State University Study Examines Why Young Women Do Not Report Sexual Violence
The researcher found that many of the young women who were raped by their boyfriends had experienced a lot of abuse growing up, which led them to minimize the sexual violence. Additionally, some participants who had been raped noted they had been socialized to believe that forced sex was part of their role as a girlfriend.
New Survey Documents Perceptions of Sexism and Gender Discrimination in the High-Tech Sector
Dice, the leading database for technology professionals, managing over 9 million profiles in the United States, recently released a new survey that examines perceptions of sexism and gender discrimination in the high-tech industry by employees who work in the field.
Pew Research Center Report Documents Gender Gap in STEM Degree Attainment and Employment
Women now earn a majority of all undergraduate and advanced degrees. But they remain a small share of degree earners in fields like engineering and computer science – areas where they are significantly underrepresented in the workforce. And when women do find work in STEM fields they tend to earn less than men.
Study Finds That Women Faculty Perceive Unfairness in Workloads
The researchers, led by Joya Mira, a professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, found that faculty members in departments with greater transparency in workloads – knowing not only what they do, but what their colleagues do – perceive their departments as having more equitable workloads.
Stanford University Study Finds Women Suffer “Zoom Fatigue” Far More Than Men
The researchers found that what contributed most to the feeling of exhaustion among women was an increase in what social psychologists describe as “self-focused attention” triggered by the self-view in video conferencing. That prolonged self-focus can produce negative emotions, or what the researchers call “mirror anxiety.”
International Study Finds a Gender Bias in the Perception of Other People’s Pain
When male and female patients expressed the same amount of pain, observers viewed female patients’ pain as less intense and more likely to benefit from psychotherapy versus medication as compared to men’s pain, exposing a significant patient gender bias that could lead to disparities in treatments.
The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Domestic Violence in the United States
A survey sponsored by the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence found that intimate partner violence, child abuse, and sexual assault have increased during the pandemic. Also, researchers found that professionals who deal with these issues have faced many barriers to serving victims of domestic violence.
Florida State Study Finds Health Benefits of Religious Service Participation Do Not Extend to All Women
The researchers found that women who attend sexist religious institutions report significantly worse self-rated health than those attending more inclusive congregations. They found that women who attend sexist congregations have the same health as those who do not attend religious services at all and have worse health than women who attend gender-inclusive churches.
Census Data Shows Women Making Snail-Like Progress in Business Ownership
Women-owned firms made up only 19.9 percent of all firms that employed people in the United States in 2018. Women-owned firms earned an average of $1.6 million in sales, shipments, or revenue; male-owned firms’ earnings were double that at $3.2 million.
Women Are Closing the Gap in Enrollments in Graduate Degree Programs in STEM and Health Fields
Men still outnumber women in master’s and doctoral degree programs as well as in postdoctoral researchers in STEM and health disciplines at U.S. academic institutions. But new data from the National Science Foundation shows that women are closing the gender gap.
Tracking the Progress of Women Ladder Faculty at Yale University
The number of women ladder faculty in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Yale’s professional schools has almost doubled, from 612 in 2008 to 1,174 in 2020. But women still make up a small percentage of ladder faculty in STEM disciplines.
Women in Sports Continue to Be Ignored by Mainstream Television New Shows
The authors have analyzed coverage of women’s sports in televised sports news shows for three decades. They have found “little change in the quantitative apportionment of coverage of women’s and men’s sports over the past 30 years.” Of all the sports news showed watched by researchers, 80 percent had no stories whatsoever about women’s sports.
Study Finds a Gender Gap in Negotiation Skills as Early as Age 8
The study of a large group of boys and girls between ages four and nine found the gap appears when girls who participated in the study were asked to negotiate with a male evaluator, a finding that mirrors the dynamics of the negotiation gap that persists between men and women in the workforce. There was no gender gap between boys and girls when there was a woman evaluator.
University Study Finds Gender Bias Is Prevalent in the Early Recruitment Phase for Leadership Positions
Participants were told they had to recruit a male and female leader for an imaginary company. Conservative participants in the group that thought they were communicating with a male candidate picked more positive pieces of information about the position and the company, and those communicating with the female picked less positive information. Political liberals did not exhibit this trend.
New AAUW Report Examines the Reasons for the Large Gender Gap in Manufacturing Jobs
Women are more likely to quit jobs in manufacturing than women in other industries, reflecting a history of sexual harassment, unequal pay and opportunity denied. A survey by the American Association of University Women found that more than 82 percent of women in manufacturing jobs reported unwanted touching, kissing, or other physical advances.
Does Increased Use of Online Meetings Impact Women’s Perceptions of Their Face and Body Satisfaction?
The study found that participants who engaged in more video chatting appearance comparisons reported lower face and body satisfaction. Furthermore, video chatting appearance comparison was associated with more frequent usage of certain Zoom features, such as the “touch up my appearance” feature.
Women Who Were Abused in Childhood Are Found to Age Faster Genetically
A study by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, finds that Women who have experienced high levels of trauma in childhood, such as abuse by a parent, are biologically older at the epigenetic cellular level in adulthood than women of the same age who have not experienced such adversity.
New UNESCO Report Examines the Status of Women in Higher Education Worldwide
Despite the fact that the enrollment of women in higher education tripled between 1995 and 2018, there has not been a corresponding increase in terms of leadership and academic positions, pay, research, and publications in a higher education setting.
Are Women Athletes Portrayed the Same as Male Athletes in High School Yearbooks?
A new study by Heather Van Mullem, a professor of kinesiology and health in the Division of Movement and Sport Sciences at Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, Idaho, finds that males are more often portrayed in uniform and groups of males were more often seen on the court than groups of women athletes.
Endocrinologists Call for Increased Attention to Women in Biomedical Research
In a recently released Scientific Statement, the Endocrine Society called for sex differences to be studied thoroughly to improve public health. Biological differences between females and males affect virtually every aspect of medicine and biomedical research, according to the statement.
Texas A&M University Study Finds No Gender Gap in Success in Physics Courses
The researchers analyzed both the midterm exam scores and final grades of more than 10,000 Texas A&M students in physics courses over a 10-year period. They found no evidence that male students outperformed women students in these courses.
Women’s Employment Took a Hard Hit From COVID-19, But the Gender Gap Has Now Evaporated
Before the pandemic, the unemployment rate for women was below the rate for men. By April 2020, the unemployment rate for women increased by fivefold, a larger increase than for men. By October, the unemployment rate for women once again dropped below the rate for men and has remained so through February 2021.
Study Confirms a Global Surge in Domestic Violence During the Pandemic
Researchers compared the number of domestic violence incidents before and after multiple jurisdictions began imposing stay-at-home restrictions last spring. They found an average 8.1 percent spike in the U.S. The authors say the increase is probably much higher as they believe many incidents were not reported.
