Risky spaces, gendered places [electronic resource] : how intersecting beliefs about gender and risk reinforce and recreate gender inequality
Keywords: Sociology.

This dissertation explores how macro-level beliefs about gender and risk create micro-level gender inequalities in risky settings and risk-taking behaviors, and how these micro-level disparities subsequently reinforce existing workplace gender inequalities. The first chapter of my dissertation, "Who's on Top: Can gender differences in risk-taking lead to gendered hierarchies?, " explores whether gender differences in risk-taking behavior can cause men to be overrepresented at both the top and bottom of hierarchies. Using novel data on outcomes from a real-world, institutional setting in which outcomes are determined by both task ability and risk-taking behavior, I find that men take greater reckless and calculated risks than women. The fact that men are more likely than women to take reckless risks increases their odds of ending up at the bottom of the hierarchy, even though, due to other effects, men as a group are not overrepresented at the bottom. However, because men take greater calculated risks, I find that they are more likely than women to be at the top of the outcome hierarchy. This chapter contributes to existing gender scholarship by drawing attention to and providing evidence for a largely unexplored mechanism—gender differences in risk-taking behavior—that may be contributing to the gender gap in leadership and the dearth of women at the top of hierarchies. The second chapter of my dissertation, "The Gendered Double-Jeopardy Of Failed Risk-Taking -- How women have more to lose and nothing more to gain when they take risks, " builds on the first chapter by examining how social processes may cause women to take fewer risks than men. I argue that women have less to gain and more to lose than otherwise similar men when they take workplace risks. Using an online experiment in which participants evaluate women and men who engage in workplace risk-taking or risk-avoiding behavior, I find no evidence that women receive fewer benefits when they take risks and succeed, but I do find evidence that women have more to lose than men when they take risks and fail. While I do not find that this bias is evenly distributed in the population, I do find that individuals who identify as conservative—and who likely hold stronger gender stereotypical beliefs—believe that women who take risks and fail will receive significantly greater workplace penalties than otherwise similar men who take risks and fail. This has problematic implications for gender equality—not only because women have more to lose when they take risks—but also because this bias may decrease the likelihood that women will engage in risk-taking behavior, which may hinder their ability to access the important societal rewards that stem from successful risk-taking behavior. The third and final chapter of my dissertation, "Risky Spaces, Gendered Places -- The gendered effects of risky settings on affect and task performance, " examines how the gendered sanctions resulting from risk-taking behavior may spur an insidious gender inequality. This inequality, which I call the risky-settings effect, argues that risky settings depress the task performance of women (but not men) because risk settings provoke negative affect—and anxiety in particular—for women. Risky settings, which I define as situations in which individuals must make tradeoffs between risk and certainty as they choose between competing courses of action, are important because they provide the backdrop for the performance of many workplace tasks and also because valuable societal rewards (such as resources, power, and status) are earned and lost within them. Through the use of three separate studies, I provide evidence for the risky-settings effect. Using an online between-subjects experiment, I find that imagining the performance of an activity in a risky (versus non-risky) setting increases women's anxiety and negative affect but does not change men's affect. Through the use of two additional studies (an in-person experiment and a naturalistic observation), I find that risky settings depress the task performance of women (but not men) on both male- and female-typed tasks. In sum, this chapter makes two core theoretical contributions: firstly, it problematizes a common workplace situation—a risky setting—as an organizational mechanism that may perpetuate gender inequality. Secondly, it provides evidence that the risky-settings effect is one mechanism through which risky settings increase gender inequality, as societal rewards often accompany task performance in risky settings.