Gender Inequality in Product Markets Research Paper 2022

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Gender Inequality in Product Markets: When and
How Status Beliefs Transfer to Products
Elise Tak, Stanford University
Shelley J. Correll and Sarah A. Soule, Stanford University
T his paper develops and evaluates a theory of status belief transfer, the process
by which gender status beliefs differentially affect the evaluations of products
made by men and women. We conduct three online experiments to evaluate
this theory. In Study 1, we gathered 50 product categories from a large online retailer
and had participants rate each product’s association with femininity and masculinity.
We find evidence of the pervasiveness of gender-typing in product markets. In
Studies 2 and 3, we simulate male-typed and female-typed product markets (craft
beer and cupcakes, respectively). In the male-typed product market, a craft beer
described as produced by a woman is evaluated more negatively than the same
product described as produced by a man. Consistent with our predictions, we further
find that if the beer is conferred external status via an award, the evaluation of the
beer made by a woman improves by a greater magnitude than the same beer made
by a man. In the female-typed product market of cupcakes, the producer’s gender
does not affect ratings. Together, the two studies provide evidence of an asymmetric
negative bias: products made by women are disadvantaged in male-typed markets,
but products made by men are not disadvantaged in female-typed markets. These
studies also provide compelling evidence of status belief transfer from producers to
their products. We draw out the implications of these findings and suggest ways that
gender biases in product markets can be reduced.
Introduction
Research has consistently shown that women are disadvantaged by the status
belief that they are less competent than men, which leads people to have lower
expectations for women’s performance relative to men’s (Ridgeway 2011).
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This research was supported by a grant from the Stanford Graduate School of Business,
“Collaboration and Innovation in the American Craft Beer Industry.” Stanford University approved
this IRB protocol (31730). An earlier version of this paper was presented at the American
Sociological Association Meetings in August 2015 in Chicago, Stanford–Berkeley Organizational
Behavior Conference, EGOS 2016, and the Academy of Management Meeting 2017 in Atlanta,
Chicago, IL. The authors would like to thank the participants of the Stanford Organizational
Behavior Seminar for comments on an earlier version of this paper. Direct correspondence to Elise
Tak, 655 Knight Way, Stanford, CA, 94305; email: [e-mail].
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© The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. All rights reserved. For permissions,
please e-mail: [e-mail] Forces 98(2) 548–577, November 2019doi: 10.1093/sf/soy125Advance Access publication on 22 January 2019Gender Inequality in Product Markets Social Forces 98(2)548
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fined as culturally shared expectations about the competency or
worthiness of certain social categories (Correll and Ridgeway 2006), powerfully
shape evaluations and interactions in ways that disadvantage members of devalued
groups. These beliefs have substantial repercussions in the labor market—in the
case of gender, women, relative to men, tend to be judged by harsher standards
(Foschi 1996, 2000; Steinpreis, Anders and Ritzke 1999), are compensated less
(Castilla and Benard 2010), are less likely to get jobs (Goldin and Rouse 2000;
Turco 2010; Correll et al. 2007), and are less satisfied with their jobs (Chan and
Anteby 2015). These patterns are especially pronounced for women in male-
dominated jobs (Turco 2010). In contrast, there is no consistent evidence of such
penalties for men in female-dominated domains (Taylor 2010; Williams 1992).
While there is extensive research on the disadvantaging effects of status beliefs
in the domain of labor markets, there is surprisingly little work on the effects of
these status beliefs on the evaluations of products.1 This is surprising because
many products are closely associated with those who produce them, as is the
case in entrepreneurship (e.g., Thornton 1999), small and medium businesses,
scholarly work (Simcoe and Waguespack 2011), and cultural markets
(DiMaggio 1987). If, as we argue in more detail below, status beliefs about indi-
vidual producers transfer to their products, status beliefs affect the assessments
of the quality of products, in addition to affecting the assessments of the people
producing them. This suggests that the effects of gender status beliefs on gender
inequality in the economy are greater than previously shown.
In this paper, we draw on status characteristics theory (SCT) to develop and
evaluate a theory of status belief transfer, showing how gender status beliefs dif-
ferentially affect the evaluations of products made by men and women. We pre-
dict that gender status beliefs about men and women will transfer to the
products they produce, such that there will be a lower evaluation of products
made by women in certain product markets. To the extent that our predictions
hold, this implies that in many product markets, a female producer would be
rated lower than an otherwise equal male producer (e.g., being seen as less capa-
ble of delivering a product) and that her product itself would also be seen as
lower quality.
We conduct three experimental studies to examine these ideas. Study 1
shows the pervasiveness of gender-typing in product markets by testing for cul-
tural associations with masculinity or femininity among fifty widely used pro-
ducts. Studies 2 and 3 test for the transfer of status beliefs from the producer to
their products by investigating how products made by men and women fare in
male-typed and female-typed markets, respectively. We find that women-made
products receive lower evaluation than the same product made by a man in a
male-typed market (Study 2), but that this penalty does not exist for men-made
products in a female-typed market (Study 3). Furthermore, we develop and
evaluate two mechanisms that moderate the effect of gender status beliefs on
product evaluations: external status conferral and evaluator’s product knowl-
edge. We conclude by drawing out the implications of our findings for reducing
gender biases in product markets.Status beliefs, deGender Inequality in Product Markets 549 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/sf/article-abstract/98/2/548/5298604 by guest on 11 April 2020

A status characteristic is a nominal distinction, such as an ascribed attribute
(e.g., race or gender) or a role (e.g., professor or mother), with widely shared be-
liefs about the competence or worthiness of different states of the distinction
(e.g., men versus women) (Berger, Cohen, and Zelditch 1972). These beliefs are
important because they affect relative expectations individuals have for the per-
formance of individuals in evaluative contexts (Ridgeway and Correll 2004). As
a consequence, in the case of gender, people tend to have higher performance ex-
pectations for men compared to women, leading men to be judged as more com-
petent than women (Foschi 1996, 2000). SCT has been widely used to explain
the differences in evaluative outcomes of people in labor markets (Foschi 1996,
2000; Steinpreis, Anders, and Ritzke 1999) and in organizations (Bunderson
2003; Turco 2010).
We argue that status beliefs also transfer to the products that men and women
make, and we theorize about the mechanism of status belief transfer. There are
both theoretical and empirical reasons to expect that status belief transfer is per-
vasive and is also an important mechanism by which inequality is perpetuated
outside of the domain of labor markets. From a theoretical perspective, the idea
that status beliefs may spread to “non-status elements” was an assumption in
the foundational work on SCT by Berger et al. (1972, p. 245). However, this
assumption has not been systematically tested, which has limited our under-
standing of the extent to which status beliefs transfer from individuals to pro-
ducts. In addition to providing a test of the mechanism, we also develop a novel
argument for why status beliefs transfer to products. We do so by investigating
how status beliefs shape evaluations of products in male- and female-typed mar-
kets. Empirically, in many product markets, there are close associations between
the product and its producer. Examples include scholarly work (Simcoe and
Waguespack 2011), cultural products (DiMaggio 1987) and products of
entrepreneurial endeavors (Thornton 1999). Understanding the mechanism of
status belief transfer will illuminate how status-based gender inequality is perpet-
uated in these product markets.
Status Beliefs and the Evaluations of Products in Male- and Female-
Typed Markets
Conceptually, there are two types of status characteristics that have been shown
to affect the evaluation of individuals: specific and diffuse (Correll and
Ridgeway 2006). Specific status characteristics, such as an occupational role or
possession of specific skill set, carry cultural expectations for a well-defined
range of tasks, thus forming beliefs and aiding evaluations in a limited range of
contexts (Kunda and Spencer 2003). For instance, without specific information
about an individual, we expect a software engineer to be competent at program-
ming a computer and a kindergarten teacher to be adept at teaching children. To
the extent that those characteristics are relevant to the task at hand, specific sta-
tus characteristics influence performance expectations.A Theory of Status Belief Transfer Social Forces 98(2)550
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eral expectations about the competence of members of a category. In the case of
gender, widely shared beliefs continue to contain expectations that men are
more capable than women in a wide array of settings, independent of the specific
task at hand (Correll and Ridgeway 2006). In tandem, there are also specific ex-
pectations that men are more capable at stereotypical masculine tasks (e.g.,
sports), while women are more capable at stereotypical feminine tasks (e.g.,
caretaking). Research has shown that these combinations of specific and diffuse
status beliefs shape the evaluations of men and women in self-fulfilling ways
that, on balance, disadvantage women in various labor market outcomes (e.g.,
Castilla and Benard 2010; Chan and Anteby 2015; Goldin and Rouse 2000;
Steinpreis, Anders, and Ritzke 1999; Turco 2010).
We argue that these specific and diffuse status beliefs combine to produce rel-
ative devaluation of women’s products, leading to the mechanism of status belief
transfer. Concretely, we argue that the diffuse status beliefs associated with pro-
ducer’s gender combine with the specific status beliefs associated with the
gender-typing of the product market, which jointly determine the overall evalua-
tion of the product. When the producer’s gender aligns with the gender-typing
of the product market, such as men in male-typed product markets or women in
female-typed product markets, specific status beliefs will favor these producers,
leading to higher performance expectations. However, when a product is made
by someone whose gender does not align with the gender-typing of the product
market, specific status beliefs will be disadvantaging. In other words, specific sta-
tus beliefs vary with gender-typing of the market, whereas diffuse status beliefs
are consistent across contexts.
We differentiate between male-typed markets (i.e., those culturally associated
with men, such as sports markets) and female-typed markets (i.e., those cultur-
ally associated with women, such as markets for children’s products) and make
predictions about each of these markets. First, in male-typed product markets, a
man’s product will benefit both from the diffuse status belief that men are gener-
ally more capable and from the specific status belief that men are better at male-
typed tasks, such as those required to make or consume male-typed products.
Both the specific and diffuse status characteristics are associated with more posi-
tive performance expectations for a man’s product than for a woman’s product,
leading to more favorable assessments of men’s products. If the identical product
were instead made by a woman, her product would be disadvantaged both by
the diffuse status belief that women are overall less capable and by the specific
status belief that women are not as good at the tasks required to produce male-
typed products. This results in a lower evaluation for the same product made by
a woman than by a man in such markets. 2
Hypothesis 1. In a male-typed market, a product made by a woman will
be evaluated more negatively than the same product made by a man.
In female-typed product markets, the diffuse expectation that men are generally
competent is at odds with the specific expectation that men are less skilled at the
tasks required to make or consume female-typed products. Based on the contentDiffuse status characteristics, such as gender and race, carry broad and gen-Gender Inequality in Product Markets 551 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/sf/article-abstract/98/2/548/5298604 by guest on 11 April 2020

woman would be evaluated more positively than an identical product produced
by a man. However, even in female-typed markets, the diffuse status belief that
women are less competent or worthy may persist, thus disadvantaging women’s
products. This tension between diffuse and specific status beliefs complicates our
prediction. Status characteristics theory has shown that specific status beliefs
have a bigger impact on performance expectations and evaluations than do dif-
fuse status beliefs because specific status beliefs are more relevant to the task at
hand (Correll and Ridgeway 2006). Thus, we expect that the advantage wo-
men’s products gain from specific status beliefs is larger than the advantage
men’s products gain from diffuse status beliefs. This means that women’s pro-
ducts should have an advantage over men’s products, but the magnitude of that
advantage should be smaller than that experienced by men in male-typed
markets.
Hypothesis 2. In a female-typed market, a product made by a man will
be evaluated more negatively than the same product made by a woman,
although the magnitude of the gap will be smaller than that found in a
male-typed market.
External Status Conferral
Sociologists have shown that status beliefs powerfully influence judgments under
conditions of uncertainty (Gould 2002; Podolny 1993; Salganik, Dodds, and
Watts 2006). Similarly, social psychologists have shown that stereotypes func-
tion as cognitive shortcuts when there is ambiguity about how to evaluate per-
formances (cf. Correll 2017). Applying these insights to product evaluations, we
expect that if there is uncertainty about the quality of a product, individuals rely
on status beliefs to reduce the uncertainty, thereby forming evaluations that are
consistent with status beliefs associated with the product (Hypotheses 1 and 2).
However, to the extent that there is a reduction in uncertainty about the prod-
uct, we should expect the effects of status beliefs to diminish.
One way to reduce uncertainty around the quality of a product is external sta-
tus conferral. Research shows that status conferral, such as winning an award or
receiving a certification, is associated with more positive evaluations because it
signals external judgments of quality (Podolny 1993; but see Kovács and
Sharkey 2014). However, external status conferral could have different effects
for products made by women and men. For example, recent empirical work has
shown that there may be greater benefits from status conferral for low-status ac-
tors (e.g., women) in the context of entrepreneurship (Thébaud 2015; Tinkler
et al. 2015). Building on this work, we explore how these predictions play out in
product markets and, importantly, how these predictions might differ depending
on the gender-typing of the product market.
We develop an argument for why there may be different effects of external
status conferral by theorizing about how multiple pieces of status information
are synthesized when forming performance evaluations and expectations. We of specific status beliefs, we might expect that female-typed products made by a Social Forces 98(2)552
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attenuation principle,
additional information about status has more impact on evaluations when the
information is novel than when the information is redundant (Correll and
Ridgeway 2006). Additional positive status information (such as winning an
award) adds incremental value on performance expectations. Second, the incon-
sistency principle predicts that a single piece of positive status information will
have a greater impact on the evaluative outcome if it is conventionally associated
with negative status information (Correll and Ridgeway 2006). Based on these
principles, we predict that a product made by a high-status actor will benefit less
from additional status than a product made by a low-status actor.
Applying these principles to a male-typed product market, products made by
men already benefit from both diffuse (being produced by a man) and specific
(men’s higher competency in a male-typed task) status beliefs. For a product
made by a man, winning an award adds more positive information to a field
already imbued with positive status. Thus, the attenuation principle leads us to
predict that the evaluation of a man’s product would be raised only slightly after
winning an award. However, as argued in Hypothesis 1, a woman’s product in
a male-typed market typically experiences negative expectations because of both
lower diffuse and specific status beliefs. Thus, for women’s products, the positive
signal from winning an award should have a large positive increase on the evalu-
ation of her product, as predicted by the inconsistency principle. We predict a
gender-differentiated impact of status conferral on product evaluations.
Hypothesis 3. In a male-typed market, the evaluations of products made
by women will experience greater gains from status conferral than the
evaluations of products made by men will.
In female-typed product markets, we expect that status conferral will have a less
gender-differentiated effect on product evaluations. In these settings, specific and
diffuse status beliefs lead to inconsistent information about status, such that the
gain that women experience in female-typed markets is relatively small com-
pared to the gain men experience in male-typed markets (Hypothesis 2). The
partially offsetting effects of diffuse and specific status beliefs mean that the level
of uncertainty about product quality should also be more equal for women and
men in female-typed markets compared to male-typed markets. Thus, we predict
that status conferral will have a similar effect for men and women in female-
typed markets.
Hypothesis 4. In a female-typed market, status conferral will lead to pos-
itive improvements in the evaluations of both products made by men
and products made by women.
Product Knowledge
Another way that uncertainty about product quality could be reduced, and
therefore decrease an evaluator’s reliance on status beliefs, is by assessing
whether the evaluator is knowledgeable about the product. Lack of knowledge
draw on two principles in SCT. First, according to the
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