Smoking With the Boys May Be Leaving Women Executives Behind
Male smokers are promoted faster than those who do not share this habit with their boss.
(Bloomberg) -- Add the cigarette break to the instances where men may be gaining an advantage over women in the workplace.
Male smokers who transfer to male managers who also smoke are promoted faster than those who do not share this habit with their boss, according to a paper released Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
The results are part of a broader study that showed men benefit from having a male manager, while women have about the same promotion rate regardless of the gender of their boss.
The findings track with earlier research that showed workers with white, male sponsors tend to do better than other groups in getting promoted. It also echoes a study showing people tend to favor proteges who are similar to themselves, benefiting men since women make up just a quarter of the executive ranks.
It’s also similar to research that indicated men benefit from encounters in other male-only spaces, such as locker rooms at the golf club.
The research by Zoe Cullen of Harvard Business School and Ricardo Perez-Truglia of the UCLA Anderson School of Management focused on data from an unidentified large financial institution and studied the effect of manager rotation, controlling for differences in effort and output.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jeff Green in Southfield, Michigan at jgreen16@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Rebecca Greenfield at rgreenfield@bloomberg.net, Marion Dakers, Ambereen Choudhury
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