Mabel Abraham

Barbara and Meyer Feldberg Associate Professor of Business
Columbia Business School

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Research

In my research, I strive to triangulate on how and why workplace inequality emerges, with a specific focus on gender, and to identify what can be done to help close these inequities.

One stream of my research focuses on how organizational, network, and market processes directly perpetuate gender differences. For example, I have shown how the structure of evaluative processes and network dynamics lead to different outcomes for men and women.

In a second research stream, I study the ways men and women respond differently to the same situation or information. In this work, I have demonstrated how men and women differ in the types of employers they prefer when seeking a job.

Across my papers, I use a wide range of methods and empirical approaches based on what is most appropriate for addressing the focal research question. While I primarily leverage field data from a diverse set of contexts and industries, I have also conducted both field and laboratory experiments, interviews, and content analyses.

Published Research

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Congruence Between Leadership Gender and Organizational Claims Affects the Gender Composition of the Applicant Pool: Field Experimental Evidence (w/ V. Burbano)

Organization Science (2022)
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The extent to which men and women sort into different jobs and organizations—namely, gender differences in supply-side labor market processes—is a key determinant of workplace gender composition. This study draws on theories of congruence to uncover a unique organization-level driver of gender differences in job seekers’ behavior. We first argue and show that congruence between leadership gender and organizational claims is a key mechanism that drives job seekers’ interest. Specifically, many organizational claims are gender-typed, such that social claims activate the female stereotype, whereas business claims activate the male stereotype. Thus, whereas female-led organizations making social claims are gender-congruent, male-led firms making the same claims are gender-incongruent. Beyond demonstrating a general preference among job seekers for congruence, we also find that female job seekers are most interested in working for organizations that are simultaneously congruent and provide credible signals that they are fair and equitable employers. The congruence of leadership gender and organizational claims thus affects the gender composition of applicant pools for otherwise identical jobs.

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Gender Role Incongruity and Audience-based Gender Bias: The Case of Resource Exchange among Entrepreneurs

Administrative Science Quarterly (2020)
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Runner-up Mark Granovetter Award for Best Published Article in Economic Sociology (2021); Third Place, Wharton People Analytics Research Paper Competition (2018); Louis R. Pondy Best Dissertation Paper (2015), OMT Division of the Academy of Management

While most research explaining the persistence of gender inequality has focused on how decision makers’ own biases perpetuate inequities, a growing body of work points to mechanisms of bias that may arise when a decision maker is concerned with satisfying a third party or audience. Using data from 2007 to 2013 on 2,310 members of a popular networking organization for entrepreneurs, I examine the extent to which the presence of third parties leads to gender inequality in resource exchange, or connections to potential clients. I show that decision makers are most apt to favor male network contacts in exchanges involving a third party when considering whether to connect a contact in a male-typed occupation. Decision makers do not display this gender bias in exchanges that do not involve a third party or when sharing connections to potential clients with contacts in gender-neutral or female-typed occupations. This setting offers a unique opportunity to compare gender inequality in exchanges involving a third party with cases that do not involve a third party, providing direct evidence of the effects of audiences or third parties for gender inequality.

This study is partially funded by the generous support of the Kauffman Foundation and the American Association of University Women.

Featured in ASQ Women’s History Month Virtual Special Issue (2021) →

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Pursuing Quality: How Search Costs and Uncertainty Magnify Gender-based Double Standards in a Multistage Evaluation Process (w/ T. Botelho)

Administrative Science Quarterly (2017)
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Runner-up, Mark Granovetter Award for Best Published Article in Economic Sociology (2018)

Despite lab-based evidence supporting the argument that double standards—by which one group is unfairly held to stricter standards than another—explain observed gender differences in evaluations, it remains unclear whether double standards also affect evaluations in organization and market contexts, where competitive pressures create a disincentive to discriminate. Using data from a field study of investment professionals sharing recommendations on an online platform, and drawing on status theory, we identify the conditions under which double standards in multistage evaluations contribute to unequal outcomes for men and women. We find that double standards disadvantaging women are most likely when evaluators face heightened search costs related to the number of candidates being compared or higher levels of uncertainty stemming from variation in the amount of pertinent information available. We rule out that systematic gender differences in the actions or characteristics of the investment professionals being evaluated are driving these results. By more carefully isolating the role of this status-based mechanism of discrimination for perpetuating gender inequality, this study identifies not only whether but also the conditions under which gender-based double standards lead to a female disadvantage, even when relevant and objective information about performance is readily available.

Podcast interview on ASQ Blog about the paper →

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Pay Formalization Revisited: Considering the Effects of Manager Gender and Discretion on Closing the Gender Wage Gap

Academy of Management Journal (2017)
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While most studies of the formalization of pay systems suggest that it helps reduce inequality, some recent studies suggest the opposite. The present study draws on social identity theory to shift this debate from whether formalization reduces inequality to when, or under what conditions, less formalized pay systems may also serve to reduce inequality. Specifically, I consider both the gender of the decision maker and the job of the employee being evaluated. The goal of this study is to determine whether male and female managers differ in how they use the discretion afforded by less formalized pay systems, and to identify the implications for pay among employees at different levels of the organizational hierarchy. Among 857 employees in 120 retail branches of a financial services firm, I find evidence of less gender pay inequality in terms of less formalized components of pay for employees reporting to a female manager. However, this effect is only among employees in the lowest organizational ranks. These findings demonstrate that it is critical to take manager gender and the organizational position of the employees being evaluated into account when assessing the relationship between the formalization of pay and gender pay inequality.

Research in Progress

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Gender Parity in Running for Office: Female and Male Elected Officials Run for Higher Office at Equivalent Rates (w/ K. Wald, K., B. Pike & A. Galinsky)

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Status and Compensation (w/ T. Botelho)

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From Self-Diagnoses to Change: Organizational Narratives and the Gender Pay Gap (w/ K. Weisshaar)

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Downstream Effects of Evaluator Placement (w/T. Botelho & T. Botelho)

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Workplace Misconduct and Inequality (w/ E. Bailey & S. Mobasseri)

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The Effect of Diversity Claims Decoupling (w/ V. Burbano & J. Carter)

Publications in Popular Press

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Uncovering the Drivers of Gender Inequality

Ideas at Work (2020)
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To Overcome Gender Bias, Objective Performance Metrics are Not Enough. (w/ T. Botelho)

London School of Economics Business Review (2017)
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Objective Performance Metrics Are Not Enough to Overcome Gender Bias.  (w/ T. Botelho)

Harvard Business Review (2017)
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