Leaning in: Is higher confidence the key to women's career advancement?

Abstract

Women’s lack of confidence is commonly regarded as a key reason why women lag behind men’s career outcomes. This paper interrogates this claim by examining the empirical link between an individual’s confidence and job promotion prospects through a gender lens. We use nationally-representative data for 7533 individuals collected in the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey in 2013. Confidence is captured by a psychometric survey instrument, Achievement Motivation, which is dually comprised of ‘hope for success’ and ‘fear of failure’. Using Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition, we detect that higher hope for success is linked to a higher likelihood of job promotion, but only amongst men. This finding provides no evidence to support the widespread advice commonly given to women that they need to ‘lean in’ and show more confidence as the mechanism to close gender gaps in the workplace.

JEL Codes: J16 (Economics of Gender; Non-labour Discrimination); J710 (Labour
Discrimination); M5 (Personnel Economics: Firm Employment Decisions; Promotions)