Summary: Mike interviews Jenny Hoobler about why the glass ceiling effect still persists for executive women. Jenny talks about the results of her study that show that managers tend to perceive women as having lower levels of fit with their jobs because they perceive them to have high levels of family-to-work conflict. (Interestingly, this effect holds even for women who were single and had no children!) As a result, women whose managers perceived them as not being a good fit for their jobs were promoted less often. Jenny M. Hoobler (Ph.D., University of Kentucky) is Associate Professor of Management at University of Illinois at Chicago. She has published 8 journal articles on gender, diversity, and work and family intersections since receiving her Ph.D. Her current projects continue to focus on the importance of bosses’ perceptions in women’s career progress. In a large grant-funded project on this topic, she and colleagues at UIC test whether when bosses are presented with objective indicators of women’s career success (e.g., salary histories), they are less likely to engage in career-limiting biases. She has received 3 Best Paper Awards at the Southern Management Association, serves on two editorial boards, and was elected to the executive committee of the Human Resource Division of the Academy of Management. She and her husband Ryan live with their dog, Indie, in Chicago’s Little Italy. You can download the podcast by clicking here. Recommended further readings: These articles provide summary statistical information about employees in managerial and academic positions and their corresponding salaries by demographic group. They are useful in comparing, for example, men versus womens’ annual earnings. “Women and men in U.S. corporate leadership: Same workplace, different realities?” Catalyst (2004). “The 2006 Catalyst census of women corporate officers and top earners,” Catalyst (2004). National Center for Education Statistics’ “Postsecondary institutions in the United States: Fall 2003 and degrees and other awards conferred: 2002-03 (NCES 2005-154),” (Washington, DC: Author, 2005a). National Center for Education Statistics’. “Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), Winter 2003-04, Table 228,” (Washington, DC: Author, 2005b). For further research that investigates how gender impacts perceived and actual work productivity, we suggest the following articles: K. S. Lyness and M. E. Heilman’s “When fit is fundamental: Performance evaluations and promotions of upper-level female and male managers,” Journal of Applied Psychology,” 91 (2006): 777–785. N. H. Wolfinger, M. A. Mason, and M. Goulden’s “Problems in the pipeline: Gender, marriage, and fertility in the Ivory Tower,” Journal of Higher Education 7 (2008): 388-405. For definitions, descriptions, and analyses of family-work conflict and its counterpart, family-work enrichment (when the two domains complement one other), the following articles are informative and widely cited: K. Byron’s “A meta-analytic review of work-family conflict and its antecedents,” Journal of Vocational Behavior 67 (2005): 169–198. J. H. Greenhaus and N. J. Beutell’s “Sources of conflict between work and family roles,” Academy of Management Review 10 (1985): 76–88. J. H. Greenhaus and G. Powell’s “When work and family are allies: A theory of work-family enrichment,” Academy of Management Review 31 (2006): 72–92. For more information about “think leader, think male” biases, Alice Eagly and Madeline Heilman have written several key research reports that discuss the sociological and cultural foundations of this bias and its effect on women’s upward mobility at work. M. E. Heilman’s “Description and prescription: How gender stereotypes prevent women’s ascent up the organizational ladder,” Journal of Social Issues 57 (2001): 657–674. A. H. Eagly’s Sex differences in social behavior: A social role interpretation. (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1987). Michael Johnson is an Assistant Professor in D
