Session Summary

Session Number:263
Session ID:S324
Session Title:Discretionary Income and Arbitrary Advancement?: New challenges to Gender Equity in Pay and Promotions
Short Title:Equity in Pay and Promotions
Session Type:Division Joint Symposium
Hotel:Hyatt West
Floor:LL1
Room:Comiskey
Time:Wednesday, August 11, 1999 10:40 AM - 12:00 PM

Sponsors

CAR  (Jay Mahoney)Mahoneyj@saturn.montclair.edu (973) 655-7476 
GDO  (Audrey Murrell)amurrell@katz.business.pitt.edu (412) 648-1651 
OB  (Robert Liden)bobliden@uic.edu (312) 996-4481 

General People

Chair Belliveau, Maura A. Duke U. mab12@mail.duke.edu 919-660-7967 
Discussant Ely, Robin J. Columbia U. rely201244@aol.com 212-854-3239 

Submissions

Reward method and the gender wage gap: Can compensation systems explain wage inequality? 
Presenter Elvira, Marta M. U. of California, Irvine mmelvira@uci.edu (949)824-5178 
Presenter Graham, Mary E. George Washington U. megraham@gwu.edu 202-994-7291 
Engendering inequity? An experimental test of procedural justice and dyadic composition as causes of the gender wage gap 
Presenter Belliveau, Maura A. Duke U. mab12@mail.duke.edu 919-660-7967 
Presenter Cool, Karen S. Stanford U.     
The state of career progress among managerial women of color 
Presenter Giscombe, Katherine  Catalyst, Inc. Giscombe@netgate.catalyst.org (212)-514-7600 

Abstract

Consistent with this year's Academy theme, this symposium addresses change and stability, progress and evidence of continuing policy challenges, with regard to women -- and women of color's -- status in the workplace. Two of the papers gathered for this symposium explore new threats to the establishment of pay equity for women in the workplace, while the third examines a different kind of cost for women of color: the psychic cost of facing continuing, oftentimes subtle barriers to career advancement. Elvira and Graham use a comprehensive dataset on the careers and compensation of men and women across occupations and jobs in a large organization to show the deleterious effects of incentive and non-incentive based reward schemes on women's compensation. Belliveau's vignette study reveals the influence of social accounts and colleague gender on the pay allocated to female and male targets, demonstrating that mechanisms associated with enhanced procedural fairness may actually disadvantage women -- but not men -- with regard to outcomes. Finally, Giscombe presents data on the distinct career experiences of women of color in corporate management, showing ethnic variation in perceived obstacles to their advancement, as well as barriers faced by the women from all three under-represented ethnic groups examined. The three papers, in conjunction with the expertise of the discussant chosen for this session, aim to elucidate the ways in which policy interventions and corporate good intentions may be stymied by subtle psychological processes and structural conditions intended to be race and gender neutral.