Published in American Economic Review: Papers & Proceedings 2017
A low-promotability task is one that benefits the organization but is given relatively little weight in performance evaluations and promotion decisions, such as service tasks in a research-oriented university.
Previous research has found that women spend more time than men on low-promotability tasks, which are tasks that benefit all group members but that each group member prefers someone else completes. This paper builds on prior studies and explores the effect backlash may have on these gender differences. We examine whether gender differences in who is asked and who agrees to requests to perform these tasks are exacerbated by the prospect of penalties for declining to do the task. We replicate previous findings (Babcock et al. 2017) that women receive more requests than men to do low-promotability tasks. However, this gender difference is unaffected by the prospect of a penalty for non-compliance. We also replicate the finding that women respond more favorably than men to a request, although again this gender difference is not influenced by the prospect of a penalty.
