Women Have to Enter the Leadership Race to Win: Using Random Selection to Increase the Supply of Women into Senior Positions

Arbeitspapier

The supply of women into senior management has changed little despite well-intentioned efforts. We argue that the biggest effect is from supply-side factors that inhibit females' decision to enter competitions: Women are under-confident about winning, men are over-confident; women are more risk averse than men in some settings; and, most importantly, women shy away from competition. In order to change the conditions under which this is the case, this paper proposes a radical idea. It is to use a particular form of random selection of candidates to increase the supply of women into management positions. We argue that selective randomness would encourage women to enter tournaments; offer women 'rejection insurance'; ensure equality over time; raise the standard of candidates; reduce homophily to improve diversity of people and ideas; and lessen 'the chosen one' factor. We also demonstrate, using Jensen's inequality from applied mathematics, that random selection can improve organizational efficiency.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 9331

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft
• Subject: leadership ; women ; diversity ; random selection

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Goodall, Amanda H. ; Osterloh, Margit
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
• (where): Bonn
• (when): 2015

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/120984
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:42 AM CET