The “State” of Equal Employment
Opportunity Law and Managerial
Gender Diversity
Julie A. Kmec, Washington State University
Sheryl L. Skaggs, University of Texas-Dallas
Women’s underrepresentation in management is a persistent social problem. We take a new approach to
understanding the lack of managerial gender diversity by investigating how U.S. state equal employment opportunity
laws are related to women’s presence in upper and lower management. We draw on data from 2010 EEO-1 reports
documenting managerial sex composition in U.S. work establishments and a state employment law database to answer
our research questions. State mandates are found to be differentially associated with upper- versus lower-level
managerial gender diversity. Establishments in states with an equal pay law, or that once ratified the ERA, employ
more women in upper management than those in states without such a law or in nonratifying states, but this holds
only in establishments in industries that typically employ women. In contrast, establishments in states that require
anti-discrimination workplace postings employ fewer women in upper-management than those in states without such
a requirement. State equal pay laws, especially those adopted before federal equal pay legislation, family responsibility
discrimination protections, and past ERA ratification are positively associated with women’s lower-level managerial
presence. Conversely, state expanded family and medical leave coverage, prohibited sex discrimination, and specific
posting rules are negatively associated with women’s presence in lower management. Results hold net of establishment,
state, firm, and industry factors. We discuss the meaning behind differences across managerial level and the role of state
regulation in moving toward greater managerial gender equity. Keywords: managerial gender diversity; state law;
upper management; lower management; EEO-1 data.
Women’s underrepresentation in U.S. managerial positions, especially at the top level, is
a well-documented and persistent social problem (see Cohen, Huffman, and Knauer 2009;
Stainback and Tomaskovic-Devey 2012). Women’s absence in management limits their access to
highly compensated jobs and positions with power, authority, and autonomy (Huffman, Cohen,
and Pearlman 2010). Scholars have identified both individual-level (Correll 2004; Okamoto and
England 1999) and organizational-level determinants of women in management (see Huffman
2012 for a review). Additionally, U.S.-based research has shown how federal equal employment
opportunity (EEO) law impacts women’s presence in management (Stainback and TomaskovicDevey 2012). Missing from these discussions, however, is documentation of the extent to which
state-level EEO mandates relate to gender diversity across levels of management. In fact, we know
of no comprehensive analysis examining the impact of U.S. state-level EEO statutes pertaining to
gender-based rights on establishment-level managerial sex composition. Nor are we aware of
research that separately examines the processes of gender diversity in lower and upper management.
An earlier version of this article was presented at the 2012 American Sociological Association meetings in Denver, CO.
The authors wish to thank participants of the Northwestern University Department of Sociology Colloquium series for comments and Ronald Edwards of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for providing access to the primary data
source and for his expertise. Pew Research Center bears no responsibility for the interpretations presented or conclusions
reached based on analysis of their data. Direct correspondence to: Julie Kmec, Washington State University, Department of
Sociology, Pullman WA 99164-4020. E-mail: [email protected].
Social Problems, Vol. 61, Issue 4, pp. 530–558, ISSN 0037-7791, electronic ISSN 1533-8533. © 2014 by Society for the Study of
Social Problems, Inc. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content
through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions website at www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintinfo/asp.
DOI: 10.1525/sp.2014.12319.
Equal Employment Opportunity Law and Managerial Gender Diversity
To fill this gap in our understanding of women’s underrepresentation in upper- and
lower-level management, we consider whether state statutes that vary in the extent to which they
expand federally mandated workplace EEO protections are associated with managerial gender
diversity in U.S. work establishments. We first ask: To what extent is state-level regulation of
workplace sexual harassment, family and medical leave, gender-based discrimination, equal pay,
and family responsibility discrimination associated with managerial gender diversity in U.S. work
establishments? Because the dynamics surrounding employment in upper versus lower management differ, we also ask: Are these state-level statutes uniquely related to upper- versus lowerlevel managerial gender diversity?
These analyses are warranted on several accounts. First, understanding factors related to
women’s presence in management is crucial because of the potential impact female managers
have on workplace gender inequality more broadly. New research has demonstrated that when
women are managers, especially at the highest levels, establishments see a subsequent decline in
both occupational sex segregation and gender pay gaps (Cohen and Huffman 2007; Huffman,
Cohen, and Pearlman 2010; Kurtulus and Tomaskovic-Devey 2012; Skaggs, Stainback, and
Duncan 2012). Second, since women in top management positions tend to exercise greater power
than those in mid- or low-level managerial roles, and top management positions are among the
most difficult positions to obtain in companies, it is crucial to consider how a set of key explanatory
factors may differentially influence women’s presence in these two levels of leadership. Third, a
focus on the relationship between state law and work establishments is relevant because establishments are subject to—and create policy in response to—the standards, norms, and laws enacted
by state governments (Stainback, Tomaskovic-Devey, and Skaggs 2010). The fact that workers at
all occupational levels are protected by these state-level structures bears consideration of the possible linkages to women’s managerial representation. Furthermore, as we explain below, certain
features of the U.S. political and legal system make state institutional environments well situated
to address workplace gender equity. A comprehensive investigation of state laws regulating equal
employment has the potential to reveal the power of a state’s regulatory context in shaping gender diversity at work and to identify where to target fair-employment policy.
We begin with a brief review of research describing the effects of state-level EEO statutes on
general labor force outcomes. Following this, we draw on institutional theory to explain the relationship between state EEO law and managerial gender diversity. Next, using theories of gender
stereotyping and social network processes, we discuss why we expect to see a difference in the association between state EEO laws and upper- versus lower-level managerial gender diversity. To
test our research questions, we employ two primary data sources: (1) establishment-level EE0-1
reports filed by private U.S. companies with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
(EEOC), and (2) a privately maintained database containing information on state employment
laws. To our knowledge, we are the first to analyze EEO-1 data alongside state EEO law since the
recent EEOC reclassification of management positions into upper and lower management groups.
A separate consideration of these two levels of management is fundamental to understanding the
influence of gender at work; women occupy less than 15 percent of the executive officer positions
in Fortune 500 companies (Catalyst 2013) but closer to half of all lower- to mid-level managerial
positions, facts that suggest different and more limiting gender dynamics in the top compared to
mid- and lower-level management. After presenting results, we discuss the implication of our
findings for increasing gender diversity across occupations and the potential role U.S. states play
in creating environments that promote fair employment.
State-Level Regulation of Workplace Rights
Following the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, some states enacted their own statutes
that expanded the coverage of federal sex-based rights (see Guthrie and Roth 1999a, 1999b),
creating variation in state-level workplace coverage. Currently, some states provide no expanded
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KMEC/SKAGGS
coverage and 39 have expanded equal pay statues or comparable worth policies (American Association for University Women 2012). Three states have specific laws prohibiting discrimination
based on family responsibilities (Bornstein and Rathmell 2009; Williams et al. 2012) and two
states have adopted some form of paid leave for those engaged in family caregiving (Fass 2009).
As we elaborate below, these differences hint that states provide institutional environments,
which vary in the extent that they promote and enforce gender employment equality.
While we are not the first to address the connection between state equal employment law
and worker outcomes or employer behavior, the question of whether state EEO laws are related
to managerial gender diversity remains empirically unexplored. Much of the empirical work to
date focuses on general employment. For example, in a national study of employment at the industry level, John Beggs (1995) found race- and gender-based employment equality to be higher
in states with strong support for equal opportunity. Ana Espinola-Arredondo and Sunita Mondal
(2010) reported that states with the most generous expansions of maternity leave policies (e.g.,
those that improved federally provided benefits or relaxed federal eligibility criteria) generally experienced greater female employment than states without such expansions. The gender pay gap
was smaller in states with progressive, supportive gender equality norms than in states whose
laws do more to support women’s role as caregivers rather than breadwinners (Ryu 2010). Meanwhile, the study most closely aligned with ours found a positive relationship between the likelihood of a firm having a female CEO and the number of equal employment opportunity statutes
in the business’ home state (Guthrie and Roth 1999a).
Evidence of the direct impact of state statutes on employer adoption of EEO-related policy or
employment behavior is scarce. Robert Sutton and associates (1994) found that employer adoption
rates of due-process governance were higher in California, a state with progressive judicial and
legislative history, compared to states with historically more conservative legal and judicial environments. Erin Kelly and Frank Dobbin (1999) also found that California employers who were required by a 1978 state amendment to offer maternity leaves were more likely to offer them than
employers in New Jersey and Virginia, states without expanded maternity leave coverage. András
Tilcsik’s (2011) audit study comparing hiring opportunities for straight and openly gay men provides compelling evidence of the relevance of state statutes on employer hiring behavior. Applicant
callback rates for gay men were lower than callback rates for straight men in states without policies
that ban sexual orientation-based discrimination. Gay and straight male callback rates were the
same in states banning sexual orientation-based employment discrimination.
State-Level Institutional Environments and Managerial Gender Diversity
Institutional theorists have long argued that work organizations pay attention to and shape
their behavior in response to institutionalized rules and norms in their social environments—that
is, institutional pressures (DiMaggio and Powell 1983; Meyer and Rowan 1977; see Stainback et al.
2010 for a review). State laws and policies regulating employment are an integral component of
the institutional environment in which establishments operate (see Beggs 1995), especially when
it comes to the regulation of gender equity. However, states tend to vary in regards to normative
expectations and values related to equal employment. For example, states with more liberal ideology are likely to promote policies with worker protections that are less favorable to business interests (Witko and Newmark 2005). Several studies have demonstrated evidence of state-level
variation in organizational adoption of EEO structures, with notable differences between states
with more liberal institutional environments (e.g., California) and those with more conservative
legislative and social histories (Dobbin and Sutton 1998; Kelly and Dobbin 1999; Sutton et al.
1994). These findings suggests that workplaces may pay attention to political expectations for
appropriate business operations and behavior by creating work environments that are culturally
consistent with state institutional environments. In fact, Mary Blair-Loy’s (1999) study of the careers of executive women in finance showed that changes in social and legal environments were
positively related to opportunity structures for women at the highest organizational levels.
Equal Employment Opportunity Law and Managerial Gender Diversity
States can also exert coercive (legal) pressures on establishments to embrace gender
equity, often through the passage of laws that exceed the parameters of U.S. federal legislation.
And, compared to federal courts, state courts provide workers with greater ability to contest
their workplace rights; it is often easier, faster, and less expensive for a worker to pursue a discrimination claim in a state court than in a federal one (Redish and Meunch 1976). In fact, the
federal government looks to states as the arbiters of employment equity; for example, the
EEOC, who enforces federal equal employment law, relies on the findings of the state in employment discrimination cases (see Roscigno 2007). Given states’ power to shape workplace
norms and exert legal pressure for gender equity, it is reasonable to expect that when state
laws support workplace equality, private establishments in those states respond by implementing
fair employment practices (Albiston 2007). These practices can, in turn, lead to a climate less
tolerant of unfair gender-based treatment and greater gender diversity within managerial
ranks (Skaggs 2009).
Differences across Managerial Level
Although workplaces may adopt practices that reflect state laws whose goals promote gender
diversity, it may be more difficult to ensure these laws impact all occupations similarly. We suspect
that state laws will differentially influence women’s presence in upper- versus lower-level management because of employment dynamics and a mismatch between the intent of the equal employment law and the applicant pool for these two managerial levels.
State equal employment laws may be ineffective in shaping workplace diversity because of
the presence of additional gender dynamics that influence job attainment. Research points to especially strong barriers that slow and sometimes prevent women’s entry into upper-level positions.
First, because of the high status, risk, and uncertainty often characteristic of upper management
(Gorman 2005; Gorman and Kmec 2009), dominant group members—white men in the case of
upper management—may select other white male candidates for open positions. This process,
called homosocial reproduction, occurs because of the tendency for people to think that socially
similar others are more qualified or a better “fit” than dissimilar others (Kanter 1977). Second, the
exclusivity of social networks at the highest organizational levels further acts to limit women’s
access to upper-level management since they tend to find themselves outside of the inner circles
connected to top positions (see Boxman, De Graaf, and Flap 1991). Third, entry into upper management requires an applicant to represent the “ideal worker,” which in the case for top management requires the display of complete, uninterrupted work commitment and other culturally
masculine attributes (Turco 2010). In fact, Phyllis Tharenou (2001) found that a display of masculinity was among the strongest predictors of advancing from lower to upper management. Fourth,
“cultural matching” between the candidate and those in charge of hiring plays a more central role
in selection into upper- versus lower-level management. Lauren Rivera (2011, 2012) demonstrated
that the process of matching job candidates to elite professional service firm jobs is as much
about identifying a candidate’s skill set as it is about finding a candidate with a cultural background
that signals workplace compatibility. In short, we suspect that these dynamics, which operate to a
greater extent in limiting women’s selection into upper-level compared to lower- or mid-level
management positions, may render state EEO laws less effective in shaping upper versus lower
management gender diversity.
At the same time, we suspect that by design, state EEO statues may have a greater impact on
gender diversity in lower versus top management. As Ann Orloff (1996) pointed out, state interventions tend to be means-tested and typically target workers at the lower end of the earnings
spectrum. In our case, this means laws may target, or at least be enforced to a greater extent, in
lower-rung management jobs.
Furthermore, laws focusing on family caregiver status (family responsibility discrimination
laws or family and medical leave laws) should matter differently for women’s presence in
533
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KMEC/SKAGGS
lower- versus upper-level management. Women seeking or in line for upper management
positions may be childless or seek such positions well after they have had children, meaning that
applicants to upper-level management positions may not necessarily use these family-focused
laws. In fact, recent media attention showered on Marissa Mayer, pregnant when named Yahoo’s
new CEO, highlights the uniqueness of a woman trying to start a family while holding a top
managerial position. While no one formally tracks the pregnancy status of CEOs, the majority of
current female CEOS are well into their 50s and past the age of childbearing (Catalyst 2012).
Finally, while top executives may be unlikely because of their age to be in parental caregiving
roles, when they are, they may not use state support as much as lower-level managers because
top executives’ salaries can typically cover the costs associated with caregiving. For these reasons,
we would expect that laws pertaining to family caregiver status are less likely to influence their
gender diversity in the highest compared to the mid to lower managerial ranks.
Industry Variation
Because workplaces are also subject to industry standards and norms, we anticipate that the
association between state EEO laws and managerial gender diversity will vary across industry.
Industries provide a crucial institutional environment for work establishments, one that may be
even more salient in shaping establishment practices than norms at other levels (e.g., the federal
or societal levels) (Stainback and Tomaskovic-Devey 2012). In fact, additional research suggests
a greater relevance of industry-targeted lawsuits and federal regulation on workplace equal employment practices than establishment-targeted lawsuits (Hirsh 2009; McTague, Stainback, and
Tomaskovic-Devey 2009; Skaggs 2009). We expect the association of state laws and women’s
presence in management to be greater in industries with higher shares of women compared to
industries dominated by men.
Data and Methods
Data
Establishment Data. Under an Intergovernmental Personnel Act agreement with the EEOC,
the authors obtained access to data on nearly all U.S. work establishments that filed an annual
EEO-1 report in 2010. Annually, private employers with 100 or more full-time employees, or federal contractors with 50 or more employees (or first-tier federal subcontractors involving agreements worth $50,000), are required to file an EEO-1 report describing the racial/ethnic and sex
composition of employees in nine occupational categories. The EEOC uses these reports to ensure
employer compliance with federal laws prohibiting employment discrimination. Increasingly,
scholars and policy makers rely on EEO-1 reports to measure establishment-level segregation in
private firms because of their accuracy, high response rate, national scope, and over-time consistency in measurement of occupations and worker demographics (Robinson et al. 2005; Stainback
and Tomaskovic-Devey 2012). Despite the data’s high quality and scholars’ growing reliance on
EEO-1 reports to study workplace segregation, we are the first to couple these reports with state
laws to study gender diversity at two levels of management.
We restricted the establishment sample in several ways. First, we excluded 6,141 establishments with fewer than 25 full-time employees because establishments with few employees are
sensitive to small fluctuations in managerial sex composition. Additionally, we excluded establishments in the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands because while federal laws
apply in these areas, state laws do not. We also omitted 1,199 (.49 percent of the total sample)
Hawaiian establishments from our sample because of coding uncertainties in demographic composition measures in this state. The final sample includes 234,074 private U.S. establishments.
Equal Employment Opportunity Law and Managerial Gender Diversity
State Law Data. We draw primarily on the privately maintained CCH State and Federal
Employment Law database (see CCH Wolters Kluwer 2012). The database provides detailed information on U.S. state’s fair employment practices, record keeping, labor relations, penalties, and
wage laws. Of specific interest to us are laws and regulations covering gender-based equal employment rights at work.
We draw on David Neumark and Wendy Stock (2006) for data on Equal Pay law enactment
dates and Jocelyn E. Crowley (2006) to code state ratification of the federal Equal Rights Amendment. Additionally, we use data from Stephanie Bornstein and Robert J. Rathmel (2009) and
Joan C. Williams and colleagues (2012) to code state prohibition of family caregiving responsibility
discrimination.
Dependent Variables
2010 Managerial Gender Diversity. Our outcomes of interest are women’s share of upper-level
and lower-level management positions in 2010. In 2008, the EEOC began requiring establishments to separate the “official and manager” occupational category on the EEO-1 report into two
levels: (1) executive/senior level officials and managers (what we call upper-level managers) and (2)
first/mid-level officials and managers (what we call lower-level managers) (see EEOC 2011). The
EEOC defines the former as managers who plan, direct, and formulate policies, establish strategies,
and provide an overall direction for the company; managers in this category occupy the highest
levels of the organization (e.g., CEO, CFO) and those within two reporting levels of the CEO. The
latter are those who receive direction from senior-level managers and put into motion the policies,
programs, and directives set forth by upper management. This category also includes managers
responsible for day-to-day operations who directly supervise exempt and nonexempt employees
(e.g., branch manager, technical support manager, shift manager).
We created two continuous measures of the natural log of the percent of women in management: ln [Wui/Tui] x 100 and ln [Wli/Tli] x 100 where, Wui is the total number of women in upperlevel managerial positions in establishment i, Tui is the total number of women and men in
upper-level managerial positions in establishment I, Wli is the total number of women in lowerlevel managerial positions in establishment i, and Tli is the total number of women and men in
lower-level managerial positions in establishment i. Because natural logs are undefined at values
of 0, we substituted 0 with 1/2Nj, where Nj is the number of managers in establishment j (Kalev,
Dobbin, and Kelly 2006; Hanushek and Jackson 1977; Reskin and McBrier 2000). The results were
robust to different substitutions for 0 values (e.g., mean substitution), but we selected this method
because of the error introduced by the alternative methods (Allison 2001). See the Appendix for a
more detailed description of missing data.
Independent Variables
The primary independent variables indicate when states provide sex-based equal employment protection to workers beyond what is guaranteed by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of
1964 and related civil rights amendments. States are legally required to follow, at a minimum,
federal laws guiding employment rights, so a state cannot have laws that are less comprehensive
than those at the federal level. Table 1 provides detailed examples of select state laws alongside the
federal law that addresses the same employment issue.
Sexual Harassment Protection. We created a scale to measure the extent of a state’s sexual harassment protection coverage by averaging five dichotomous variables each coded 1 if provisions
for private and public employee in a state are more comprehensive than federal laws with regard
to: (1) sexual harassment law; (2) prohibited practices related to sexual harassment; (3) sexual harassment policy distribution requirements; (4) sexual harassment training; and (5) workplace
posting of sexual harassment protections, and coded 0 if otherwise (alpha = .9599).
535
Equal pay
Sex discrimination
Employment Issue
Relevant Extract from Select State Laws (In addition to
requiring that states comply with federal mandates,
current law states that private and public
employers . . .)
Variable
Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (CRA) . . . It
IL . . . cannot engage in the following practices Prohibited practices related to
shall be an unlawful employment practice for an
on the basis of sex: refuse to hire, segregate or
sex discrimination
employer to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any
act with respect to recruitment, hiring,
individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any
promotion, renewal of employment, selection
individual with respect to his compensation, terms,
for training or apprenticeship, discharge,
conditions, or privileges of employment, because of
discipline, tenure or terms of employment;
such individual’s sex or to limit, segregate, or classify
have 2+ persons conspiring to retaliate against
his employees or applicants for employment in any
a person who opposes unlawful
way which would deprive or tend to deprive any
discrimination; having 2+ persons willfully
individual of employment opportunities or
interfering with the commission in the
otherwise adversely affect his status as an employee,
performance of its duties; post/publish an
because of such individual’s sex.
advertisement or listing which directly or
indirectly expresses a limitation/specification
based on sex; and establish a system of
classification, seniority or progression on basis
of sex.
Title VII of the 1964 CRA . . . every employer . . . shall KY. . . must post EEO notices readily apparent to Required posting of sex
post and keep posted in conspicuous places upon its
employees and applicants in easily accessible,
discrimination law
premises where notices to employees, applicants for
well-lighted places near each location where
employment, and members are customarily posted a
employee services are performed. As a
notice to be prepared or approved by the EEOC
remedy for fair employment practice
setting forth excerpts from or, summaries of, the
violations, employers may be directed to post
pertinent provisions of this subchapter and
notices in conspicuous places in the
information pertinent to the filing of a complaint.
workplace, in a form prescribed by the
Commission on Human Rights.
1963 Equal Pay Act . . . No employer shall discriminate, MN . . . cannot retaliate against employees for Equal Pay law
within any establishment in which such employees
filing equal pay complaints or participating in
are employed, between employees on the basis of
the investigation or hearing of claims under
sex by paying wages to employees in such
the Equal Pay law or reducing any employee’s
establishment at a rate less than the rate at which he
wages in order to comply with the law.
pays wages to employees of the opposite sex in such
Relevant Extract from Federal Law
Table 1 • Examples of State and Federal EEO Laws
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KMEC/SKAGGS
Sexual harassment (SH)
(continued)
establishment for equal work on jobs requiring
equal skill, effort, responsibility, and performed
under similar working conditions, except where
payment is due to a seniority or merit system, a
system which measures earnings by quantity/
quality of production; or a differential based on any
other factor other than sex . . .
Title VII of the 1964 CRA . . . affords employees the
NY . . . cannot legally engage in unwelcome
Sexual harassment coverage
right to work in an environment free from
sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, or
scale
discriminatory intimidation, ridicule, and insult . . .
other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual
unwelcome sexual conduct constitutes SH when
nature to a domestic worker when: (1)
submission to such conduct is made either explicitly
submission to such conduct is made either
or implicitly a term or condition of an individual’s
explicitly or implicitly a term or condition of
employment or when submission to or rejection of
employment, (2) submission to or rejection of
such conduct by an individual is used as the basis for
such conduct by an individual is used as basis
employment decisions affecting such individual.
for employment decisions, or (3) such
conduct has the purpose or effect of
unreasonably interfering with an individual’s
work performance by creating an
intimidating, hostile, or offensive working
environment.
MA . . . must adopt a policy against SH which
must include: (1) statement that SH in the
workplace is unlawful, (2) a statement that it
is unlawful to retaliate against an employee
for filing a complaint of SH, (3) description
and examples of SH, (4) statement of the
range of consequences for employees found
to have committed SH, (5) description of the
process for filing internal complaints about SH
and work addresses and phone numbers of
person(s) to whom complaints should be
made, and (6) identity of state and federal
employment discrimination enforcement
agencies and directions as to how to contact
them.
Equal Employment Opportunity Law and Managerial Gender Diversity
537
Relevant Extract from Federal Law
Family and medical leave Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) . . . provides
an entitlement of up to 12 weeks of job-protected,
unpaid leave during any 12-month period to
eligible, covered employees for the birth/care of the
eligible employee’s child, or placement for adoption
or foster care of a child with the employee, care of an
immediate family member (spouse, child, parent)
who has a serious health condition, care of the
employee’s own serious health condition, or for
any qualifying exigency arising out of the fact that a
spouse, son, daughter, or parent is a military
member on covered active duty or call to covered
active duty status. Employee’s group health benefits
be maintained during the leave . . . Covered
employers must: Post notice explaining rights and
Employment Issue
Table 1 • Examples of State and Federal EEO Laws (Continued)
Variable
ME . . . (in workplaces with 15+ employees)
must conduct an education and training
program for all new employees within 1 year
of hire that includes information on: (1)
illegality of SH, (2) definition of SH under
state and federal laws/federal regulations,
(3) description of SH, using examples, (4)
internal complaint process, (5) legal recourse
and complaint process available through
commission, (6) directions on how to contact
commission, (7) protection against retaliation.
RI . . . must maintain copies of their written
policies on SH at their premises and copies
must be made available to any state or federal
employment discrimination enforcement
agency upon request.
CT . . . must allow eligible employees to use up Family and medical leave
to 2 weeks of paid accumulated sick leave to
coverage scale
attend to a serious health condition of a child,
spouse, parent, or birth/adoption of a child.
TN . . . must provide relief and be penalized for
unlawful discriminatory practices that violate
family and medical leave requirements
including: (1) cease and desist orders, (2)
hiring, reinstatement, or upgrading with or
without back pay, (3) admission to, or
participation in, apprenticeship/training
programs, (4) extending full and equal
enjoyment of employer’s advantages,
facilities, and services, (5) reporting as to the
manner of compliance, (6) posting of notices,
Relevant Extract from Select State Laws (In addition to
requiring that states comply with federal mandates,
current law states that private and public
employers . . .)
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KMEC/SKAGGS
Sources: For Title VII of the 1964 CRA (EEOC n.d); for FMLA (U.S. Deparment of Labor 2012a); for state laws (CCH Wolters Kluwer 2012).
responsibilities under FMLA (and may be subject to
(7) payment of damages for injury, (8) other
a civil money penalty of up to $110 for willful failure
remedies to eliminate discrimination, and (9)
to post); include information about the FMLA in
publishing names of persons engaged in
their employee handbooks/provide information to
discriminatory practices.
new employees upon hire; when employee requests WI . . . must post, in 1+ conspicuous places a
FMLA leave . . . provide employee with notice
notice setting forth employees’ rights to leave.
concerning eligibility for leave and rights and
Employers with 25+ employees shall also post
responsibilities and notify employees whether leave
a notice describing policy with respect to
is designated as FMLA leave and amount of leave
family and medical leaves.
that will be deducted from the employee’s FMLA
VA . . . must include on records retained for
entitlement.
FMLA purposes: (1) medical certifications and
related medical information, (2) dates/hours
of leave taken, (3) copies of all notices given
or received from employee, (4) documents
describing employee benefits or employer
policies and practices regarding paid and
unpaid leave, (5) payments of employees
benefits, and 6) records of any dispute
between employer and employee. Medical
records must be maintained in separate file
and treated as confidential for at least 3 years
from date leave ended.
Equal Employment Opportunity Law and Managerial Gender Diversity
539
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KMEC/SKAGGS
Family and Medical Leave Rights. A second scale averages four dichotomous variables each
coded 1 if a state’s provisions for private and public employees are more comprehensive than federally required provisions with regard to: (1) family and medical leave; (2) penalties for violation
of family and medical leave requirements; (3) posting of family and medical leave rights; and
(4) record keeping requirements for family and medical leave policy use, and coded 0 if otherwise
(alpha = .7564).
Sex Discrimination Prohibitions. Models include a dichotomous variable coded 1 if a state’s
laws include at least five prohibited practices related to gender discrimination in the employment
of public and private employees and coded 0 if the state law lists four or fewer prohibited practices.
Examples of such prohibited practices include refusal to hire on the basis of sex, publishing a job
advertisement, which directly or indirectly expresses a limitation or specification based on sex, or
establishing a seniority system on the basis of sex.
Sex Discrimination Law Posting. We created a dichotomous variable coded 1 if a state requires
public and private employers to visibly post state laws prohibiting sex-based discrimination at
work and coded 0 if a state does not have specific posting requirements.1
Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) Ratification. In 1972, Congress passed the ERA guaranteeing
equal rights for women. By 1977, 35 states had ratified the amendment, although five states later
rescinded (see Crowley 2006). To capture the potential effects of state ERA ratification on the outcomes, we include a dichotomous variable coded 1 if a state ratified (and did not subsequently
rescind ratification) and 0 if it did not. We do not include a measure of the year of state ERA ratification because there is little variation in the timing of ratification; 34 of the 35 ratifying states did
so within two years of the federal amendment.
Equal Pay Law. We include a dichotomous variable coded 1 if a state has legislation regulating
equal pay on the basis of sex beyond what is required by federal law (i.e., the 1963 Equal Pay Act)
and 0 if a state has no such legislation. We measure the timing of equal pay law adoption by including a dichotomous variable coded 1 if a state passed an equal pay law before enactment of equal
pay legislation by the federal government (1963) and 0 if it passed an equal pay law after 1963.
Family Responsibility Discrimination Law. Models include a dichotomous variable coded 1 if a
state has legislation prohibiting employment discrimination against workers based on their family
caregiving responsibilities (e.g., firing an employee for taking family leave to care for a spouse)
and 0 if it does not (Bornstein and Rathmel 2009; Williams et al. 2012). We do not include a measure of the timing of family responsibility law adoption because of the lack of variation in adoption
times; the four states with such laws adopted their legislation in either 2007 or 2009.
Control Variables
We include several control variables derived from 2010 EEO-1 reports thought to be associated with the presence of women in management and relevant to institutional theory. First,
because larger establishments tend to have in-house counsel trained to draft equal employment
policies, in addition to more formal policies compared to small workplaces, we control for establishment size (the natural log of the number of full-time employees in an establishment). Models include a dichotomous variable coded 1 if an establishment is a federal contractor, and thus subject
1. We do not include a timing of adoption measure for state laws regulating sexual harassment, family and medical
leave, and sex-based discrimination because these laws are comprised of components adopted at different times. For example,
our family and medical leave protection scale contains laws regulating requirements for leave, posting of leave rights, length
of time of leave that were, in many states, adopted in different years.
Equal Employment Opportunity Law and Managerial Gender Diversity
to greater oversight by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) and 0 if not.
Because headquarters locations are more likely to employ upper-management workers than
branch or nonheadquarter establishments or be the location where policies impacting the managerial gender composition are made and, hence, enforced, models include a dichotomous variable
coded 1 if an establishment is the company headquarters and 0 if not. To capture the institutional
effects of industries, models include a dichotomous variable coded 1 if an establishment’s main industry is one with the lowest overall representation of women: manufacturing and construction,
wholesale trade, mining, utilities, and transportation (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2012). To account
for possible variation in the association between state EEO statutes on women’s managerial representation across industry, models include a set of state EEO law and industry gender composition
interactions. We approximate the internal labor pool with measures of an establishment’s percentage of women in lower-level management (in models estimating women’s share of upper-level management only) and percentage of women in nonmanagement and their squared terms to capture one
form of nonlinearity. Establishments located in federal appellate court circuits known to be more
liberal with regard to EEO issues may create a normative expectation for gender equity by employing greater shares of women than establishments located in less liberal circuits (Skaggs
2009). To capture these normative expectations, we include a dichotomous variable coded 1 if an
establishment is located in a liberal federal appellate court circuit (i.e., one with a history of EEOfavorable decisions, including second circuit = NY, CT, VT, the third circuit = PA, DE, NJ, and the
ninth circuit = WA, OR, CA, ID, MT, AK, HI, NV, AZ) and 0 if otherwise (Guthrie and Roth 1999a,
1999b; Skaggs 2009).
We control for characteristics external to establishments, some of which reflect a broader
state-level normative climate for gender equality, including the 2009 state unemployment rate since
economic climate may influence women’s likelihood of seeking managerial jobs and managerial
employment opportunities. Economic downturns, reflected by high unemployment rates, may
also lower occupational sex segregation (see Weishaar 2012). To control for the influence of a
state government’s ideological position, we use a measure developed by William D. Berry and colleagues (1998) based on annual ideology scores for a state’s governor and the major political parties in each legislative chamber weighted to account for the relative distribution of power among
these state government actors. We also include Berry and colleagues’ (1998) state citizen ideology
measure that combines interest group-based ratings of each congressional member’s ideological
position, the estimated ideological score of the challenger, and election results reflecting the electorate’s ideological divisions (aggregated from congressional district to the state level). The ideology measures range from 0 (most conservative) to 100 (most liberal).2
We control for the 2009 state sex pay gap measured as women’s earnings as a percentage of
men’s earnings in each state (Getz 2010).3 Models include a state-level corporate gender inequality
scale created from the 2008 Pew Social Trends survey item: “As you may know, although women
have moved into the work force in great numbers, very few top-level business positions in this
country are filled by women.” Respondents were asked to indicate whether they considered the
following reasons to be either a major, minor, or no reason for women’s limited representation in
high corporate positions: (1) women don’t make as good of bosses as men; (2) women are discriminated against in all areas of life, and business is no exception; (3) women’s responsibilities to
family don’t leave time for running a major corporation; (4) women aren’t tough enough for business; (5) women who try to rise to the top of major corporations get held back by the “old-boy
network;” (6) there are few women in high corporate positions to inspire others; and (7) the doors
have not been open long enough to women for many of them to have made it to the top. We coded
this variable so higher values indicate that a respondent considers discrimination and structural
2. Correlations between these two ideology measures (.39) do not suggest a problem of multicollinearity when both are
included in models.
3. Earnings are the 2009 state-level inflation-adjusted median earnings for full-time, year-round workers age 16 and
older.
541
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KMEC/SKAGGS
barriers, rather than personal attributes, explain women’s underrepresentation (alpha = .6593).
We aggregated individual state resident responses to form state-level scores. The Pew data did not
include Alaskan respondents so we assigned the overall mean scale value (15.10) to this state to
avoid excluding Alaskan establishments.
A final set of controls serve as proxies for the state-level managerial applicant pool. Specifically,
we control for the 2009 share of a state’s population with an advanced degree to capture both a
state-level managerial labor supply and an indicator of women’s opportunity. We appended this
information onto the data set from the U.S. Census Bureau (U.S. Census Bureau 2011). Models
also include a measure of 2010 state-specific industry percent female in management, a measure we
constructed from 2010 EEO-1 reports using NAICS two-digit industry codes.
Methods
We estimate one model predicting women’s share of upper management and a second
predicting their share of lower management in the same establishment. A Breusch-Pagan test
of independence (Breusch and Pagan 1979) indicated that the error terms in the equations
predicting women’s share of upper and lower management in the same establishment are
correlated, undoubtedly because processes affecting women’s presence at top levels also affect
their presence at lower management levels. For this reason, ordinary least squares (OLS)
estimation is an inefficient estimation technique. To overcome the dependency of error terms
between the equations, we carried out seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) (Srivastava and
Giles 1987). SUR is the appropriate analytic method when the error terms in two regression
equations are correlated because it allows for contemporaneous cross-equation error correlation by simultaneously estimating multiple equations. The technique also relaxes the assumption of uncorrelated errors in order to adjust the coefficient’s standard errors (nonreported
findings from OLS analyses are not substantively different from those using SUR). Clustering
occurs, as the characteristics of states in which establishments are located do not vary across
establishments within each state (see Primo, Jacobsmeier, and Milyo 2007). Because clustered
observations can lead to downward bias in the standard error estimates, we adjusted for statelevel clustering in SUR models.
Results
Table 2 displays descriptive statistics for the variables in our analysis. On average, women hold
roughly 35 percent of upper-level managerial positions while they comprise roughly 40 percent of
the lower-level managerial workforce in U.S. establishments.
Just about one quarter (27 percent) of establishments are in states with sexual harassment
regulations that go beyond what the federal government requires. Forty-four percent of establishments are in states with more comprehensive family and medical leave coverage than federal
ones. Nearly all (91 percent) establishments are in states with more comprehensive sex-based discrimination laws than are federally required, 82 percent are in states with more stringent sex discrimination posting laws than required by federal law, and about 80 percent are in states with
expanded equal pay legislation. Roughly half of establishments are in states that adopted equal
pay legislation before equal pay legislation was enacted by the federal government in 1963. Only
six percent of establishments are in states with formal family responsibility discrimination legislation, not surprising given these laws are relatively new. Sixty-three percent are in states that ratified the federal ERA.
Establishments in our sample employ an average of about 200 full-time employees, with
a full-time workforce ranging from 25 to just over 65,000. Women comprise just under half
Equal Employment Opportunity Law and Managerial Gender Diversity
Table 2 • Descriptive Statistics
Dependent variables
Percent women upper-level management
Percent women lower-level management
Independent variables
Sexual harassment coverage scale
Family and medical leave coverage scale
Prohibited practices
Required posting of sex discrimination law
Equal pay law
Equal pay law, pre-1963
Family responsibility discrimination law
Ratified ERA
Controls
Number full time employees (2010)
Federal contractor
Headquarter
Industries with lowest levels of female
employees
Percent women, nonmanagement
Liberal federal appellate court circuit
State level
Unemployment rate (2009)
Government ideology scale
Citizen ideology scale
Women’s earnings as percentage of men’s
(2009)
Corporate gender inequality scale
Percent with advanced degrees (2009)
Percent women in management in industry
Agriculture
Mining
Utility
Construction
Manufacturing
Wholesale trade
Retail trade
Transportation
Information
Finance and insurance
Real estate rental and leasing
Professional, scientific, and technical
services
Management of companies and
enterprises
Administration and support and waste
management and remediation
Educational services
Health services
Arts, entertainment, and recreation
Accommodation and food services
Other services
Public administration
Mean/Prop.
SD
Min-Max
35.60
40.22
27.24
28.02
.27
.44
.91
.82
.80
.51
.06
.63
.41
.36
200.45
.38
.25
.41
457.50
25–65,371
dichotomous
dichotomous
dichotomous
48.12
.32
25.56
0–100
dichotomous
8.71
47.49
52.15
78.13
1.89
27.08
10.93
3.67
4.30–13.30
4.50–94.58
23.97–83.96
65.50–82.70
15.10
10.32
.39
2.37
14.10–17.03
6.10–16.40
19.22
10.28
16.51
11.43
18.58
21.64
36.68
21.04
33.43
47.02
37.99
31.58
6.34
4.62
3.42
1.87
1.93
2.69
2.72
2.89
2.21
3.36
5.08
3.08
0–43.48
0–24.32
7.31–30.22
17.11
9.24–21.88
8.10–30.53
30.92–43.43
11.33–34.91
26.84–44.54
35.72–63.22
23.03–66.67
20.55–44.55
37.28
7.17
30.51
2.77
23.75–52.55
53.33
67.55
32.83
34.28
36.47
33.17
5.84
2.66
5.64
3.72
6.08
19.88
37.35–67.68
55.22–74.24
21.35–54.45
23.93–49.93
22.18–55.63
0–100
.006–100
.00007–100
0–1
0–1
dichotomous
dichotomous
dichotomous
dichotomous
dichotomous
dichotomous
5.56–79
Sources: 2010 EEO-1 reports (EEOC 2010); CCH State and Federal Employment Law database (CCH Wolters Kluwer 2010).
543
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KMEC/SKAGGS
(48 percent) of nonmanagerial positions. Approximately 38 percent of establishments are classified
as federal contractors, and thus held to higher federal equal employment standards than noncontractors. One quarter of establishments in our sample are the company headquarters, while
41 percent are in an industry with the lowest representation of women. Approximately one-third
of establishments are located in a liberal federal appellate court jurisdiction.
Turning to characteristics of states, we find that establishments in our sample are in states with
a mean unemployment rate of 8.71 in 2009. On average, establishments are located in states with
moderate government and citizen ideology scores (roughly 47 and 52, respectively, where 0 = most
conservative and 100 = most liberal). The state-level sex pay gap is, on average, 78.13. States have
a mean score of about 15 on the Pew corporate gender inequality scale and about 10 percent of
states’ residents have an advanced degree. Lastly, our state-level measure of women’s representation in management by industry shows the highest percentage of women managers in health
services (68 percent) and educational services (53 percent), with the lowest in construction
(11 percent) and mining (10 percent).
To provide a somewhat different view of the distribution of EEO regulations across states, we
created an overall state-level, sex-based EEO regulation score by summing state’s scores on the
sexual harassment coverage scale, family and medical leave coverage scale, and the dichotomous
measures indicating the presence of a comprehensive state-level sex discrimination law, family
responsibility discrimination law, posting requirement, equal pay law, and ERA ratification. The
overall score ranges from 0 = no additional regulation beyond that required by the federal government to 7 = expanded regulation in all areas (no state had a score of 7 so the highest observed
value was 6). Figure 1 depicts state scores on this overall measure (the darker the state color, the
higher the score). Two states—Alabama and Missouri—rely solely on federal law spelling out EEO
rights at work. At the opposite end of the spectrum, California offers the most expanded coverage
of gender-based workplace rights and has the highest score (6) followed by Pennsylvania (5.75)
and Maryland (5.55).
Results from SUR models suggest that state policies differentially affect women’s presence in
upper- and lower-level management. We turn first to the equation predicting women’s share of
upper-level management positions (Table 3, column 1).
Regulations [5.01–6.00]
Regulations [3.01–4.00]
Regulations [1.01–2.00]
Figure 1 • Prevalence of State-Level Gender-Based EEO Statutes
Regulations [4.01–5.00]
Regulations [2.01–3.00]
Regulations [0.00–1.00]
Equal Employment Opportunity Law and Managerial Gender Diversity
Table 3 • Coefficients from SUR Model Predicting 2010 Managerial Sex Diversity, Clustered Standard Errors
Percent Women Upper Management
Sexual harassment coverage scale
Family and medical leave coverage
scale
Prohibited practices
Required posting of sex
discrimination law
Equal pay law
Equal pay law, pre-1963
Family responsibility discrimination
law
Ratified ERA
Controls
Number full-time employees
(2010)
Federal contractor
Headquarter
Industry with lowest levels of
female emp.
Percent women, lower
management
Percent women, lower
management2
Percent women,
nonmanagement
Percent women,
nonmanagement2
Liberal federal appellate court
circuit
State level
Unemployment rate (2009)
Government ideology scale
Citizen ideology scale
Women’s earnings as percent
of men’s (2009)
Corporate gender inequality
scale
Percent with advanced degrees
(2009)
Interactions
Ratified ERA x industry with
lowest levels female
employment
State equal pay law x industry
with lowest levels female
employment
Percent Women Lower Management
.01
(.03)
−.06
(.04)
−.01
(.03)
−.07***
(.02)
.08*
(.04)
−.05**
(.02)
−.02
(.03)
.08***
(.02)
.03
(.01)
−.07***
(.02)
−.09***
(.02)
−.04***
(.01)
.07***
(.01)
.03***
(.01)
.04*
(.02)
.04***
(.01)
−.02***
(.01)
−.10***
(.01)
−.48***
(.02)
−.12***
(.03)
.006***
(.001)
.00003***
(.000)
−.008***
(.001)
.0002***
(.000)
.08**
(.03)
.03***
(.01)
.01
(.005)
.10**
(.009)
−.26***
(.01)
–
.01**
(.004)
.0001
(.000)
−.003
(.001)
.01
(.004)
−.01
(.02)
−.01
(.01)
−.001
(.002)
−.0001
(.0002)
.0001
(.001)
−.001
(.003)
−.03**
(.01)
.01**
(.003)
−.08***
(.02)
Not sig.
−.08***
(.03)
Not sig.
–
.04***
(.01)
−.0002***
(.000)
.02
(.01)
(continued)
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KMEC/SKAGGS
Table 3 • Coefficients from SUR Model Predicting 2010 Managerial Sex Diversity, Clustered Standard Errors
(Continued)
Percent Women Upper Management
Constant
Observations
Correlation of residuals
Breusch-Pagan test of independence
Percent Women Lower Management
.26
218,928
−.02
χ2(1) = 46.74, p <. 0000
Notes: Robust standard errors in parentheses. Models include control for state-level percent women in management; coefficients not shown.
Sources: 2010 EEO-1 reports (EEOC 2010); CCH State and Federal Employment Law database (CCH Wolters Kluwer 2010).
*p < .05 **p < .01 ***p < .001 (two-tailed tests)
Upper Management
Recall, upper-level managers include executive and senior level officials and managers (e.g.,
CEO or CFO), and those within two reporting levels of the C-suite. Consistent with our prediction,
fewer state EEO policies are associated with women’s presence in top compared to lower managerial levels. First, net of controls, establishments in states with visible sex discrimination posting
requirements employ 7 percent fewer women in upper-level management than those in states
without this requirement. As our main and multiplicative terms show, the relationship between
the presence of a state equal pay law and women’s upper-level managerial representation differs
across industry; equal pay laws are only positively associated with women’s upper-management
presence in industries with an already strong female presence. At the same time, establishments in
states that adopted an equal pay law prior to when the federal government did in 1963 employ
somewhat fewer women in top management than establishments in states with later or no adoption. In establishments in states that ratified the ERA in the 1970s, women’s net share of upperlevel management is greater (by 8 percent) than in establishments in nonratifying states, but only
if the establishment is located in an industry with relatively high female representation. In the industries dominated by men, establishments in ratifying states employ roughly similar shares of
women as establishments in nonratifying states, net of controls. The presence of expanded
state-level sexual harassment, family and medical leave rights, and sex-based discrimination
prohibition protections, and family responsibility discrimination protections are unrelated to
women’s presence in upper-level management.
Turning to control variables, we see that the larger the establishment, the fewer women in
upper management. Establishments without federal contracts employ roughly net 10 percent
fewer women in upper management than establishments with federal contractor status. The relationship between women’s share of upper-level management positions and headquarter status is
significant and negative. Compared to nonheadquarters, headquarter establishments employ a
net 48 percent fewer women in upper-level management. The impact of women’s share of nonmanagerial positions is nonlinear; when women occupy from 0 to 40 percent nonmanagement,
we observe a negative relationship between percent female nonmanagers and women’s share of
upper management. At 40 percent female nonmanagement we observe no relationship but when
women’s share of nonmanagement is over 40 percent, their presence is positively related to women’s share of upper management. In these models, women’s lower managerial representation
serves as a proxy for the internal promotion pool for top management positions. When women’s
share of lower management increases, their net share of upper management increases at an
increasing rate. Federal courts also shape women’s upper-level managerial presence; establishments located in liberal federal appellate court circuits employ about 8 percent more
women in upper management, net of controls, than establishments in more conservative
circuits. While the findings indicate a positive and significant relationship between 2009
state unemployment rates and women’s presence in upper-level management, the impact is
not substantial (β = .01).
Equal Employment Opportunity Law and Managerial Gender Diversity
Lower Management
Workers who occupy lower-level management positions receive direction from upper-level
managers, are responsible for daily operations, and may supervise exempt and nonexempt employees (e.g., branch manager, shift manager). Establishments located in states with family and medical
leave coverage that exceeds federally mandated leave employ roughly 7 percent fewer women in
lower management than those without expanded family and medical leave coverage (see Table 3,
column 2). Meanwhile, establishments in states with at least five sex-based discrimination prohibitions employ roughly 9 percent fewer women in lower managerial positions than establishments
with fewer prohibitions. A state’s posting requirements and family responsibility discrimination
laws are also negatively related to women’s presence in lower management (β = −.04). However,
establishments in states with equal pay legislation employ more lower-level female managers than
those in states without such laws; they employ a net 3 percent more lower-level female managers if
the state equal pay law was adopted before the 1963 federal equal pay law. We also find that establishments in states with expanded family responsibility discrimination coverage employ about 4 percent more women in lower management than those in states without such coverage. Finally,
establishments in ERA-ratifying states employ roughly 4 percent more women in lower-level management than their counterparts in nonratifying states.
In model controls, the larger the establishment, the more women employed in lower management. Establishments that are corporate headquarters employ about 10 percent more women
in lower management than nonheadquarter establishments. Industry location plays a role in
women’s lower-level managerial representation; establishments located in industries with the
lowest levels of female representation employ 26 percent fewer women in lower management
than establishments outside of these industries. As the share of women in nonmanagement (a
proxy for the internal promotion pool for lower-level management) increases, women’s net share
of lower-level management increases at a decreasing rate. We observe a negative relationship between state-level attitudes about corporate gender inequality and women’s lower managerial
presence; citizen’s views that discrimination prevents women’s corporate leadership are negatively
associated with women’s representation in lower management. Lastly, a state’s share of the population with advanced degrees is positively, but only marginally, associated with women’s presence
in lower management (β = .01).
To illustrate the state variation in managerial gender diversity, we estimated predicted values
of women’s upper- and lower-level managerial representation in states by setting control variables at their state mean (or in the case of dichotomous variables, their mode) and allowing policy
values to vary according to their state values. Table 4 presents the predicted values for lower and
upper-level managerial sex composition across states.
Table 4 • Estimated Managerial Sex Diversity by State
Alabama
Missouri
Kentucky
Delaware
North Carolina
Texas
Utah
Montana
Colorado
Oklahoma
Mississippi
Overall State EEO Score
Percent Women Lower
Management
Percent Women Upper
Management
0
0
1.50
2.00
2.25
2.25
2.25
2.50
2.65
2.70
2.75
21.54
26.84
24.95
27.94
23.81
22.20
20.09
27.94
27.39
21.33
23.10
23.34
24.78
24.78
26.58
24.05
23.10
19.30
26.05
25.53
26.04
23.34
(continued)
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KMEC/SKAGGS
Table 4 • Estimated Managerial Sex Diversity by State (Continued)
Arkansas
Florida
Georgia
Illinois
Rhode Island
South Carolina
Kansas
Arizona
New Mexico
Tennessee
Michigan
Nebraska
South Dakota
Vermont
Virginia
Wyoming
Nevada
Indiana
Iowa
West Virginia
Massachusetts
New Jersey
Ohio
Idaho
Minnesota
Connecticut
Wisconsin
Louisiana
Maine
New Hampshire
New York
Alaska
North Dakota
Washington
Oregon
Maryland
Pennsylvania
California
Median
Overall State EEO Score
Percent Women Lower
Management
Percent Women Upper
Management
3.00
3.00
3.00
3.00
3.00
3.00
3.25
3.40
3.50
3.50
3.75
3.75
3.75
3.75
3.75
3.84
3.90
4.00
4.00
4.00
4.25
4.25
4.25
4.35
4.50
4.55
4.60
4.75
4.75
4.75
4.75
5.00
5.00
5.15
5.25
5.55
5.75
6.00
3.75
23.57
27.66
24.05
26.58
27.94
23.10
25.53
27.94
25.79
24.05
26.31
27.66
29.37
31.19
29.96
19.29
26.58
24.95
24.29
19.30
28.79
25.28
25.28
25.03
28.22
27.94
26.58
16.95
33.12
27.66
30.27
22.87
23.10
29.37
27.11
26.84
23.81
27.39
26.31
23.34
27.39
22.65
23.10
31.50
24.29
26.58
25.03
28.79
24.05
23.57
26.31
32.46
27.39
25.03
18.17
32.46
24.05
24.05
26.31
24.05
22.65
23.34
23.57
26.31
23.34
25.03
23.81
34.47
25.53
25.53
25.53
27.38
28.22
26.58
24.78
25.28
25.79
25.03
Notes: Predicted values when control variables are set to their state means and state laws set to the state value. States arranged
in descending order of their expanded coverage.
With some exceptions, women’s presence in lower management tends to be greater in
establishments in states with the median or greater number of EEO statutes (i.e., a score of
3.75 on the overall state-level EEO measure). The same can be said of women’s presence in
upper management; in the 28 states with a higher than median score, 61 percent employ
more than the median share of women in upper management. We see somewhat more inconsistencies (i.e., more than the median level of women in management when the overall
EEO score is less than 3.75 or a below the median level of women in management when the
overall EEO score is greater than 3.75) in upper (39 percent) compared to lower management (33 percent). This variation likely stems from strong network and social “fit” factors
Equal Employment Opportunity Law and Managerial Gender Diversity
affecting hiring into upper management and also the wide range of jobs in the EEOC’s
lower-level management category.4
Discussion
We sought to identify the extent to which the regulation of workplace sexual harassment,
family and medical leave, sex-based discrimination, equal pay, and family responsibility discrimination by states was associated with managerial gender diversity in U.S. work establishments and
whether state-level statutes were uniquely related to gender diversity in upper versus lower
management. We speculated that state-level EEO laws could not diminish the salience of homosocial reproduction, social network connections, the embodiment of the “ideal worker” image, and
cultural “fit” to the top management selection process. These dynamics, coupled with the original
intent of EEO laws, led us to anticipate that fewer laws would be associated with gender diversity in
top compared to lower-level management. Furthermore, because upper-level managers are less
likely than their lower-level counterparts to have young children at home (and also greater means
to provide economic support for needed caregiving), we speculated that family-related policies
would matter more for gender diversity at lower compared to top managerial ranks. Findings lend
some support to both of these predictions; sometimes, however, laws are negatively or not associated with managerial gender diversity. We discuss gender diversity in upper and lower management separately and speculate why we sometimes observe negative or nonsignificant relationships.
Women’s Presence in Upper Management
Establishments located in states with sex discrimination posting requirements employ fewer
women in top management than states without posting laws. Of the laws we measure, the posting
policy is perhaps the weakest signal of support for gender equity. It may not influence employer
behavior because posting requirements do not ensure employers do anything to improve women’s
selection into top management. We are somewhat puzzled by its negative association with women’s presence in upper-level management, a negative relationship that holds in models without
measures of any other state EEO laws. It may be that we observe a spurious effect of a hostile work
environment on managerial gender diversity because establishments that engage in practices that
block women’s opportunities may also comply with the relatively easy and inexpensive posting
mandate. Alternatively, posting requirements could cause complacency; an employer in a state
requiring posting may view posting as enough to satisfy legal compliance and fail to implement
policies that reduce barriers to top management. In other words, it may be that the law-posting
compliance signifies a symbolic gesture of good faith rather than a meaningful reflection of an
employer’s commitment to gender equality.
Being in a state with an equal pay law is positively associated with women’s presence in top
management, but somewhat less so in states that adopted equal pay legislation prior to 1963 (the
date the federal government enacted equal pay legislation), and only in establishments in industries that have relatively high levels of female employment. We suspect that early adoption had
little influence on women’s presence in upper management given that in the past, so few women
occupied these highly coveted roles. It may also be that early adoption of this legislation reflects
4. To determine whether states with many versus no expanded rights are driving results, we estimated models without
“outlier” states. In analyses excluding the 7,679 establishments in Alabama and Missouri (the two states without expanded
rights), the effects, direction of effects, and level of statistical significance of state laws in both models are virtually the same as
in the model including establishments in all states. Similarly, in models excluding 34,172 establishments in states with the most
protections (California and Pennsylvania), the results are not substantively different from those that include establishments in
all states. This is the case for both upper and lower management. That the models predicting both women’s presence in upper
and lower management do not differ substantially when the “outlier” states are excluded suggests establishments in these states
are not driving results.
549
550
KMEC/SKAGGS
organizational age and the broader influence of founding institutional norms characteristic of the
pre-civil rights era, both of which could disproportionately affect how senior management is
viewed compared to mid- and lower-level management. In other words, older workplaces may
have a narrow view of the ideal profile for top managers and thus have greater gender-based barriers to top management than their younger counterparts.
Establishments located in states that voted to ratify the 1972 ERA employ more women in
upper management than establishments in nonratifying states, but only if the establishment is in
an industry that typically employs women. In the industries with the lowest rates of female
employment, we observe essentially no ERA ratification-managerial gender diversity relationship.
ERA ratification reflects a state’s general climate toward women. For example, of the 15 states not
voting to ratify the ERA, a majority have the country’s lowest levels of reproductive rights protections, affirmative action programs, and domestic violence laws (Swers 2002). Nonratifying states
also consistently rank at the bottom in terms of women’s general economic status (Institute for
Women’s Policy Research 2004). Thus, ERA ratification may symbolize a broader gender equity
climate that could foster more state-sponsored workplace training options, opportunities to earn
advanced degrees, or resources to combine work and home responsibilities, all of which are positively related to women’s managerial presence. Models already include several other indicators
of a state’s gender climate. That ERA ratification is significantly related to women’s presence in
upper-level positions net of these measures suggests that ERA ratification may be symbolic of a
state’s previous and continued innovativeness with regard to civil rights policy (Soule and Olzak
2004). Because states tend to be consistent over time with regard to civil rights policy adoption
(Soule and Zylan 1997), ratifying states may also be those that pay greater attention to policies
impacting workplace gender diversity and those with stronger enforcement of the laws they
have on the books. Furthermore, ERA ratification in the 1970s was supported by pro-ERA social
movement organizations (Soule and Olzack 2004). The positive association we see between ERA
ratification and women’s top managerial presence could also partly reflect the presence of active
state-level social movement organizations that support gender equity in employment.
Some state laws are unrelated to women’s presence in top management, including expanded state-level sexual harassment protections. Sexual harassment prohibitions, with their
focus on one form of discrimination, may simply not be strong or broad enough to overcome
the many obstacles to women’s entry into top management. At the same time, women in top
management positions may be reluctant to report or acknowledge harassment out of concern
for how this could hinder their credibility and overall image. If women vying for top positions
do not report sexual harassment, state sexual harassment protections would appear to lack influence as we observe here.
In line with our expectations, we find no relationship between women’s share of upper management and state laws that expand federally provided family and medical leave protections or
state expansion of family responsibility discrimination protection. We think this nonsignificant
relationship stems primarily from the lack of use of state policy among women vying for or in line
for top management positions. State policies regulating the work-family connection likely matter
most for women who become mothers or who have young, dependent children, attributes that
rarely apply to women vying for top management posts (e.g., CEO, COO). Those seeking top-level
management positions may also have the financial resources to purchase caregiving assistance,
making state support less essential for women in these positions. Underlying this nonuse are also
pressures to conform to the ideal manager profile (i.e., be a fully committed worker with limited
family obligations) that women at all workplace levels face. Women in line for top positions may
especially fear that using state family-related policies brings into question their work commitment
and jeopardizes their career (see Turco 2010). On a different note, state-level family responsibility
discrimination policies are relatively new and limited in geographic coverage; as recently as 2012,
only four states and the District of Columbia (and 67 localities across 22 states) had such policies
(Williams et al. 2012). For this reason, these laws may not have existed long enough to impact
top-level managerial gender diversity in 2010, the focal year of our study.
Equal Employment Opportunity Law and Managerial Gender Diversity
Women’s Presence in Lower Management
The negative association between state EEO laws that increase federally provided family and
medical leave protections and women’s share of lower management suggest that employers may
view expanded family and medical leave coverage as a liability among managers whose positions
may be difficult to temporarily fill (i.e., part time or via telecommuting). Of course, this negative
association could be evidence of a management motherhood penalty. That is, if female managers
(or applicants to management jobs) inquire about or use state-provided family protections, employers may label them as “unfit” for management (see Correll, Benard, and Paik 2007; Turco
2010). This motherhood penalty may manifest as a negative association between family and medical leave provisions and women’s lower-level managerial presence in our models. We do not
observe this same penalty among top management because as just discussed, too few women in
line for top positions may utilize state protections. However, we observe a positive association between women’s presence in lower management and state family responsibility discrimination
protections. This positive association may be partly driven by their novelty and appearance in the
courts. That is, because state family responsibility discrimination protections are relatively new,
employers may be scrutinizing their impact, including how family responsibility discrimination
lawsuits play out in court. Employers have had numerous opportunities to gauge the recent legal
climate surrounding family responsibility discrimination as lawsuit filings related to this legislation
increased by roughly 400 percent between 2000 and 2010, a time when lawsuit filings on other
bases declined (Calvert 2010).
The presence of state-level sex discrimination prohibitions and visible posting of sex discrimination laws are negatively associated with women’s share of lower management, possibly because only 9 percent of establishments in our sample are in states that do not have these
prohibitions as part of their sex discrimination law and only 12 percent are in states without
posting requirements. The significant and negative findings for both of these state-level regulations on women’s representation in lower management could also represent a more general
set of dynamics about gender equality within the managerial ranks. Because both types of regulation are relatively weak in terms of oversight, it may be that other unobserved establishment-level factors (i.e., the absence of mentoring programs, recruitment practices, formal
diversity training, or grievance structures) are reinforcing barriers to women’s managerial
access. The data for this study are primarily limited to examination of external macro-level
factors on workplace outcomes, which makes it difficult to assess precisely how internal processes affect managerial gender diversity at these two levels. Additionally, given that these
types of state-level regulations are more normative than coercive, in isolation they may be insufficient to alter existing establishment-level gender bias routines. Thus, managerial positions
may be more resistant to broad normative and social pressures for equality, particularly since
they have long been the domain of white men.
We see that state-level equal pay laws are positively associated with women’s presence
in lower management, especially when adoption occurred before 1963, possibly because
women have historically had greater access to lower management positions compared to top
management positions. Early equal pay laws may have created a normative environment
where gender inequities at lower managerial levels were discouraged. Thus, while the early
passage of equal pay laws did not seem to expand women’s presence at the highest levels,
we suspect that such legislation helped pave the way for women entering mid and lower
managerial levels.
Establishments located in states that voted to ratify the ERA employ more women in lower
management than establishments in nonratifying states. As previously noted, nonratifying states
tend to have few positive indicators of women’s general economic status (Institute for Women’s
Policy Research 2004). Thus, ERA ratification may symbolize a general climate of gender equity,
particularly in terms of women’s opportunities for advancement into historically more accessible
lower-level managerial positions.
551
552
KMEC/SKAGGS
We observe no relationship between the presence of state-level policies that expand federal
sexual harassment protections and women’s presence in lower management. As with upper management positions, it is possible that formal efforts to reduce sexual harassment are too “distant”
from the dynamics surrounding selection into management.
Controls
We glean several interesting insights from controls in both models, some of which we discuss
here. The first of which is that federal contractor establishments employ significantly fewer women
in upper-level management than their nonfederal contractor counterparts (federal contractor
status is not significantly associated with women’s presence in lower management). This finding
squares with those of Kevin Stainback and Donald Tomaskovic-Devey (2012) who found that regulation by the OFCCP increased employment segregation between most women and men. Indeed,
they concluded that federal contractors have become increasingly segregated along sex lines since
1990. Further, Alexandra Kalev and Frank Dobbin (2006) concluded that by the 1990s, OFCCP
regulation had no impact on managerial gender diversity. The lack of OFCCP regulation effects
may be due to the monitoring focus of OFCCP; the agency tends to scrutinize whether or not
a woman is hired, not for what occupation she is hired or promoted into (Hirsh 2009). This likely
allows managerial sex segregation to remain relatively high (and unsanctioned) in OFCCPregulated workplaces.
Establishment headquarter status is significantly and negatively related to women’s presence
in upper management, but positively associated with women’s share of lower management.
Given that headquarters may be where upper managers work, we are not surprised by the former
finding. That is, since women are less likely to be in upper-level management than men, a much
lower presence of women than men in the actual establishments that employ upper-level managers is somewhat expected.
Finally, establishments located in liberal federal appellate court circuits employ more women
as upper-level managers than those in conservative jurisdictions, a result consistent with Douglas
Guthrie and Louise M. Roth (1999a) who found a positive association between establishment location in a liberal federal circuit and having a female CEO. We suspect these federal circuits’ rulings—
mostly supportive of gender equity—set the tone for an institutional environment conducive to
supporting women in management positions (see Edelman 1990, 1992; Skaggs 2008).
Conclusions
Scholars interested in the organization of work have increasingly sought to identify the factors
related to managerial gender diversity (see Huffman 2012). Until now, few have considered the
association between state-level EEO laws and women’s presence in upper- and lower-level managerial positions. This article brings greater insight to this issue by drawing on a unique database of
state equal employment laws and measures of private establishments’ managerial sex composition
from 2010 EEO-1 reports, reports that differentiate between upper and lower management.
While data do not permit us to examine the mechanism driving the association between state
EEO statutes and managerial gender diversity, the most plausible mechanism is that state EEO
statutes influence employers’ hiring and promotion practices (see Albiston 2007). Data on the
actual work policies in establishments across states is required to test this explanation and is certainly an area of consideration for future research. Another possibility is that state laws impact
women’s application behavior to managerial jobs. If women believe that their state has generous
EEO protections and equate those with greater legal recourse in the event of perceived sex-based
discrimination, they may apply for managerial jobs at greater rates in establishments within those
states. Data on the gender composition of managerial applicants in establishments across states is
necessary to test this possible explanation.
Equal Employment Opportunity Law and Managerial Gender Diversity
State laws have a nontrivial association with managerial gender diversity and can play
a potentially influential role in creating environments that promote fair employment.
Women’s representation in top management can be anywhere from 2 to 9 percent greater in
states with the highest levels of sex-based EEO statutes versus those with the lowest levels (see
Table 4). For this reason, state retreat from EEO mandates, like what recently occurred in
Wisconsin when Governor Walker repealed the state’s 2009 Equal Pay Enforcement Act, may
have long-term negative implications for women’s workplace advancement. Furthermore,
state retreat from EEO mandates may impact a state’s future business activity because of the
entrée of business owners into the public policy-making arena. For example, business owners
both in favor of and opposed to same sex marriage rights recently attempted, through monetary donations and social media efforts, to shape state legislative outcomes (Bingham 2012).
State laws and regulations that fail to impact the business environment in ways that promote
gender diversity may become the target of unwelcome attention by business owners that
support gender equality at work. What is more, as women’s employment and education levels
increase and they become an even larger share of the labor pool competing for managerial
positions, business owners may not locate in states that do not fully support women’s workplace rights.
We would be remiss if we did not discuss the data limitations of our analysis. First, we analyze
cross-sectional data; without data on the timing of state policy adoption and time-varying data
on establishment attributes, we cannot draw causal inferences between policies and managerial
gender diversity. Unfortunately, EEO-1 reports before 2007 combined upper- and lower-level
management into one occupation, precluding over-time analyses of gender diversity in two managerial levels. Second, our data come from 2010, a year at the tail end of a severe economic recession. If workplace sex segregation fluctuates with economic climate, we must exercise caution in
generalizing our results to gender diversity in different economic climates. However, given that
women and men with at least a bachelor’s degree (those who we suspect comprise most of our
managerial sample) had virtually the same levels of unemployment in 2010 (4.7 percent for
women and 4.8 percent for men), we are confident that high male unemployment rates characteristic of the recent recession do not drive our findings (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2012; U.S.
Department of Labor 2012b). However, we may be observing the “glass cliff” phenomenon; the
propensity for establishments to promote or hire women into managerial positions when an
establishment is performing poorly or operating in crisis mode (see Cook and Glass 2008; Ryan
and Haslam 2005, 2007). Although we would need establishment performance data to test the
“glass cliff” theory, it stands to reason that establishment economic performance was not at its
highest in the second year of the most recent recession and that management positions were
precarious at the time.
Despite the limitations, the findings are foremost a direct call for researchers to expand the
focus of the institutional context for equal employment beyond the federal level to the state level.
The findings also suggest important directions for EEO policy adoption in states, particularly policies that focus on lower management. Not that states’ efforts to diversify top management are
without merit, but laws that target women’s presence in lower management may be more feasible
for states given the especially strong gender-based dynamics surrounding entry into top management. We also empirically demonstrate that women’s presence in lower management is positively
associated with their presence at the top. Thus, efforts to implement state equal pay laws and
family responsibility discrimination legislation, for instance, could yield greater managerial gender
diversity.
Lastly, because our study focuses on the relationship between state-level EEO law and managerial gender diversity, we are unable to assess how internal establishment-level policies may influence women’s presence in top and lower-level managerial roles. We encourage research that
explores the interplay between internal workplace policies and state laws and regulation. This line
of inquiry is an important next step to increase women’s presence in top positions where they
continue to remain few and far between.
553
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KMEC/SKAGGS
Appendix • Missing Data
We have missing data on our outcome because not all establishments reported managerial
sex composition. To minimize the extent of missing data, we substituted missing managerial sex
composition data in 2010 with values of managerial sex composition in 2009 (obtained from the
establishment’s 2009 EEO-1 report) because management sex composition does not likely fluctuate a great amount from year to year. Panel A in TableA1 reveals that this substitution increases
the analytic sample size, but does not significantly change the reports of sex composition. Panel
A also shows how average sex composition values increase substantially when we substituted
values of 0 percent women in management with the value 1/2Nj. Not surprisingly, substituting
a zero value with a nonzero value increases the average, especially in reports of women’s share
of upper management where zero values are more common.
Panel B compares attributes of establishments with and without missing data on women’s
presence in upper (columns 1 and 2) and lower (columns 3 and 4) management. Those with
missing data on upper-level management are located in states with fewer sexual harassment
protections than those without missing data. These establishments have fewer women in nonmanagement (45 percent) compared to those without missing data (49 percent). Compared to establishments without missing data on women’s share of upper management, those with missing data are
slightly larger and more likely to be the headquarters (30 versus 25 percent).
Looking to differences in establishments with and without reports of women’s share of lower
management, we see that establishments missing these data are located in states with greater family and medical leave coverage and have more women in nonmanagement (39 percent versus
35 percent) and upper management (53 versus 48 percent). The establishments are not as
frequently located in industries dominated by men but are in states with slightly higher 2009 unemployment rates, are smaller, and less likely to be a federal contractor. Establishments with and
without missing data on the sex composition of lower management are virtually the same in
terms of location in states with sexual harassment coverage, sex discrimination laws, posting requirements, family responsibility discrimination laws, equal pay statues, and past ERA ratification.
In summary, with two exceptions (location in states with sexual harassment coverage and
family and medical leave coverage), we observe no major differences in the primary independent
variables in establishments with and without missing managerial sex composition data. Thus,
missing data likely has a limited impact on substantive findings.
Table A1 • Missing Data Patterns
Panel A
Mean Percent Female
Upper Mgmt
Mean Percent Female
Lower Mgmt
25.07
38.31
24.89
38.18
35.60
40.22
Original, no missing data substitutions or 0
value transformations
Missing 2010 values replaced with 2009
values
Substituted 0 percent female with 1/2Nj
percent female
Panel B
Missing Female
Upper Mgmt
Not Missing
Female Upper
Mgmt
Missing Female
Lower Mgmt
Not Missing
Female Lower
Mgmt
Sexual harrassment (SH) coverage scale
Family and medical leave coverage scale
Prohibited practices (percent)
.20 (.41)
.44 (.36)
81
.27 (.41)
.44 (.36)
82
.28 (.41)
.49 (.36)
82
.27 (.41)
.44 (.36)
82
Equal Employment Opportunity Law and Managerial Gender Diversity
Table A1 • Missing Data Patterns (Continued)
Panel A
Required posting of sex discrimination law
(percent)
Equal pay law (percent)
Family responsibility discrimination law
(percent)
ERA ratified (percent)
Ln # full-time employees (2010)
Federal contractor (percent)
Headquarter establishment (percent)
Industries with lowest levels of female
employment (percent)
Percent women upper management
Percent women lower management
Percent women nonmanagement
Liberal circuit (percent)
State unemployment rate (2009)
State government ideology scale
State citizen ideology scale
State level women’s $ as percent of men’s
(2009)
State corporate gender inequality scale
State percent with advanced degrees (2009)
Mean Percent Female
Upper Mgmt
Mean Percent Female
Lower Mgmt
82
82
82
82
80
5
80
6
80
6
80
6
62
4.89 (.78)
41
30
43
63
4.85 (.78)
38
25
40
63
4.55 (.56)
30
17
33
63
4.88 (.80)
39
26
41
–
39.16 (28.66)
44.84 (24.36)
32
8.68 (1.88)
47.17 (26.93)
51.74 (10.84)
78.03 (3.72)
30.73 (29.99)
40.36 (27.94)
48.71 (25.46)
32
8.71 (1.89)
47.53 (27.05)
52.12 (10.95)
78.14 (3.66)
52.81 (23.85)
–
38.75 (27.26)
34
8.75 (1.90)
48.09 (27.33)
52.13 (10.887)
78.20 (3.70)
47.82 (25.84)
39.17 (29.29)
35.41 (27.23)
32
8.70 (1.89)
47.42 (27.01)
52.15 (10.94)
78.12 (3.66)
15.10 (.40)
10.24 (2.33)
15.10 (.39)
10.33 (2.37)
15.10 (.40)
10.31 (2.33)
15.10 (.39)
10.32 (2.37)
Notes: Standard deviations in parentheses.
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