Tamar Kricheli-Katz

Intersecting Cultural Beliefs in Social Relations Gender, Race, and Class Binds and Freedoms

We develop an evidence-based theoretical account of how widely shared cultural beliefs about gender, race, and class intersect in interpersonal and other social relational contexts in the United States to create characteristic cultural “binds” and freedoms for actors in those contexts. We treat gender, race, and class as systems of inequality that are culturally constructed as distinct but implicitly overlap through their defining beliefs, which reflect the perspectives of dominant groups in society. We cite evidence for the contextually contingent interactional “binds” and freedoms this creates for people such as Asian men, Black women, and poor whites who are not prototypical of images embedded in cultural gender, race, and class beliefs. All forms of unprototypicality create “binds,” but freedoms result from being unprototypical of disadvantaging rather than advantaging statuses.

How many cents on the dollar? Women and men in product markets

Women sellers receive about 80 cents for every dollar a man receives when selling identical new products on eBay. Gender inequality in contemporary U.S. society is a well-documented, widespread phenomenon. However, little is known about gender disparities in product markets. This study is the first to use actual market data to study the behavior of women and men as sellers and buyers and differences in market outcomes. We analyze a unique and large data set containing all eBay auction transactions of most popular products by private sellers between the years 2009 and 2012. Women sellers received a smaller number of bids and lower final prices than did equally qualified men sellers of the exact same product. On average, women sellers received about 80 cents for every dollar a man received when selling the identical new product and 97 cents when selling the same used product. These findings held even after controlling for the sentiments that appear in the text of the sellers’ listings. Nonetheless, it is worth noting that this gap varied by the type of the product being sold. As a policy, eBay does not reveal the gender of users. We attribute the price differences to the ability of buyers to discern the gender of the seller. We present results from an experiment that shows that people accurately identify the gender of sellers on the basis of typical information provided in postings. We supplement the analysis with an additional off-eBay experiment showing that, in a controlled setting, people are willing to pay less for money-value gift cards when they are sold by women rather than men.

Choice‐Based Discrimination: Labor‐Force‐Type Discrimination Against Gay Men, the Obese, and Mothers

Do perceptions of controllability and choice affect the nature and magnitude of discrimination? Many groups of people, who hold seemingly controllable devalued traits, including gay men, the obese, and mothers, are discriminated against both in the labor force and in other areas of life. In this article, I show that perceptions of choice and controllability generate discrimination against individuals with seemingly controllable stigmatized traits. I use a hiring experiment in a highly controlled setting to assess this argument. The results provide strong evidence for a causal relationship between perceptions of choice and labor�?force�?type discrimination against gay men, obese men, and mothers. When the traits were presented as voluntary, gay men, obese men, and mothers were penalized when compared to their equally qualified counterparts in terms of hiring, salary recommendations, and competence evaluations.

The Human Mind and Human Rights: A Call for an Integrative Study of the Mechanisms Generating Employment Discrimination Across Different Social Categories

Abstract The paper highlights how our knowledge about the manner the human mind works and people behave in social interactions may contribute to our understanding of employment discrimination and provide effective ways to address it. It calls for a rigorous empirical study of the mechanisms generating different forms of discrimination against disadvantaged groups and the implications that follow for law and policy. The paper’s focus is theoretical, criticizing the current state of research on employment discrimination and calling for an integrative approach to the research in this area. In particular, the paper criticizes the lack of mutual communication among the various disciplines that study discrimination. Over-reliance on one type of methodology limits scholars’ ability to address nuances of most discriminatory settings. We criticize the “one policy fits all” approach, in which discrimination against all types of disadvantaged groups is viewed as capturing all types of discrimination as well as the lack of truly accounting for the interplay between deliberative and automatic modes of reasoning. The paper suggests that adopting an integrative perspective would raise awareness among policy-makers and employers to variations in the effects of social categories on hiring, promotion, and firing practices.

Competence, Desert and Trust — Why Are Women Penalized in Online Product Market Interactions?

Abstract Why do women sellers in product markets receive lower prices than men sellers when selling the same identical products? This Article investigates the effects of cultural beliefs about competence, desert and trust on market interactions with women and men sellers. We use an experimental approach to show that the prices people are willing to pay for the exact same product (a

Are All Types of Discrimination Created Equal

100 Amazon gift card) are affected by cultural beliefs about gender; when a woman sells a gift card, she is likely to receive five percent less for it, compared to when a man does. Our analysis further suggests that it is beliefs about women’s relative competence and moral entitlement that drive the gender price gap in product markets. When the participants in the experiment were presented with information that suggested that the woman seller was a competent or entitled seller, no gender price differences were found between such women sellers and their equally qualified male counterparts. Nonetheless, information about the trustworthiness of sellers did not decrease the gap between women and men sellers. This suggests that price gaps between women and men in product markets are not generated by beliefs about the trustworthiness of women and men.

Does the Motherhood Wage Penalty Differ by Individual Skill and Country Family Policy?: A Longitudinal Study of Ten European Countries

Are all types of discrimination created equal? This project takes an experimental approach to disentangle the different mechanisms generating discrimination. We let a large random sample of the Israeli Jewish population play four games with fictitious partners who belong to one of the following social groups: Women, Arabs, ultra-Orthodox Jews, Mizrahi Jews, and Ashkenazi Jews. A ‘dictator game’ was used to investigate negative emotions of dislike; a ‘trust game’ was used to explore mistrust; a ‘competence game’ was used to explore beliefs about competence and intelligence; and a ‘donation game’ was used to investigate beliefs about moral entitlement. Above and beyond of all of the other social groups, Arabs were found to be the most discriminated against group, across all of the domains measured in the different games. Ultra-Orthodox Jews were discriminated against in the dictator game, but were favored in the trust game, suggesting that they are disliked but viewed as trustworthy. Women were generally favored, compared to men, across all games. Mizrahi Jews were not discriminated against in the dictator game, but were given less money by Jewish men in the trust game. This suggests that Mizrahi Jews are not disliked, but are rather viewed as not trustworthy by Jewish men. Our findings suggest that although in many countries, anti-discrimination laws apply a unified approach to eliminate all forms of ethnic, gender, and religious-based discrimination, in reality, because each form of discrimination is generated by different mechanisms, no one policy fits all. Thus, our project makes two main contributions to the empirical study of anti-discrimination law: First, we offer an innovative methodology to disentangle the different mechanisms generating discrimination that could enable policymakers to design more accurate anti-discrimination laws. Second, we document differences in the types of discrimination targeted at different social groups in Israel – a poster child of heterogeneous and segmented societies.