I only wrote one post in 2019. It was not for lack of inspiration or
important topics, but rather because writing op-eds is a “non-promotable” task for me. Other examples include serving on a committee, speaking on a panel, and talking
to the press about research. So what is “promotable,” you might ask? For an economics professor, it’s research. Actually, not so much the research itself, but publishing said research. (Somewhat tangential, here is a piece on bias in publication in economics and how it relates to promotions.) At some institutions, teaching counts too, as long as you aren’t doing it “too well” or too much, so as to not get pigeon-holed as “teaching faculty.” In the
world outside of academia, non-promotable tasks may include things like organizing
a social event for the firm or serving on a committee. Broadly defined, these are tasks that benefit
the organization but likely don’t contribute to someone’s performance
evaluation and career advancement.
It turns out, women are significantly more likely than men to volunteer and
to be asked to volunteer for such tasks.
Because we see large and persistent gender
gaps in representation at senior levels of the economics profession and in the workplace in general, some scholarly efforts are dedicated to finding ways
to “nudge” women away from engaging in these so-called low-promotable activities.
Let’s take a step back. Tasks where men stereotypically dominate (management,
STEM, working long inflexible hours) are highly rewarded – i.e., they are
defined as promotable. Tasks in which women are stereotyped to excel (communication,
service, care work, and community-building) are defined as non-promotable. But
these tasks are not useless. Per the
definition, they are valuable to the institution and to society, which means
that nudging (forcing?) women not to do these tasks would be detrimental to
well-being. Recognizing this fact, more recent work offers an alternative: men should be forced to “share the burden” and perform these
non-promotable tasks as well (presumably while women are “leaning in”). I agree to a large extent, but what’s with all the forcing! Can we shift
the dialogue to choosing? Economics teaches us that if someone (a woman or a
man) has a comparative advantage in a particular activity which is socially valuable,
it would be optimal to incentivize her or him to pursue it. So why can’t we make
all socially valuable tasks “promotable?”
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Guilty of engaging in a low-promotable task: Speaking on addressing gender stereotypes in STEM fields at the Healthcare Businesswomen's Association leadership event |