Glass Ceilings and Productivity: The Effects of Ethnicity and Sex in the Presence of Agreed-upon Productivity Measures among Collegiate Basketball Coaches

Abstract

Workers from traditionally disadvantaged groups sometimes find their career paths blocked by glass ceilings that prevent them from acquiring top jobs. In the presence of clear and agreed-upon measures of productivity, however, employers should be able to set aside stereotypical proxies of productivity that may favor white male workers and hire the most productive candidates regardless of ethnicity and sex. In this paper, I utilize bivariate probit analyses of 3,642 managerial workers in an industry (collegiate basketball) with readily available and agreed-upon measures of productivity to examine whether glass ceilings persist under such conditions. Results suggest that women supervising women experience no disadvantage in achieving top jobs, but minority workers experience a glass ceiling. In addition, groups receive different returns to their productivity.