Gender stereotyping and wage discrimination among Italian graduates

14

Tab. 6 - Gender pay gap in self employment and employees

5.2 - Context in which the assessment of productivity is negligible, less important and less
accurate (executive jobs and temporary contracts)

An area in which stereotypes are more likely to exert an influence consists of situations in which the
perceiver is not motivated to make accurate judgments, as in executive jobs. In lower-level
occupations, characterized by purely executive tasks, the criteria used to assess individual
productivity are often unspecified. In the absence of concrete criteria, inference is required to draw
implications from performance information, and expectations based on stereotypes tend to dominate
in the structuring of judgments, allowing for an orderly, if not necessarily accurate, judgment
process (Heilman 2001; Nieva and Gutek 1980).

These conditions create the fuel for gender-based decision-making, because evaluators rely on their
stereotypes when deciding whom to hire or promote, or what an appropriate salary increase will be.
In our data (Tab. 7), the unexplained component of the gender pay gap is lower in intellectual
professions, scientific and highly specialized occupations than in executive, low-level occupations.

Tab. 7 - Gender pay gap between intellectual professions, technical professions and executive
professions (total employment).

Another context in which stereotypes are more likely to operate because the employer is less
motivate to make accurate judgments is that of temporary work. Firms may use fixed term contracts

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