Bringing the Boss’s Politics In: Supervisor Political Ideology and the Gender Gap in Earnings

The gender gap in earnings and rewards remains persistent across many professional and managerial work contexts. In these settings, where there are few objective criteria for performance and organizational mechanisms are weak, we propose that political values reflecting stable beliefs about social inequality and justice, can serve as a powerful influence on whether supervisors reduce or enhance inequalities in performance-based rewards. Combining internal personnel and billings data with publicly-available political donation records in a large law firm, we examine the effect of political beliefs among supervising law firm partners on subordinate lawyers’ performance-based bonuses. We find the male-female gender gap in performance-based pay is reduced for professional workers tied to liberal supervisors, relative to conservative supervisors. We further find this political ideology effect increases for workers with greater seniority in the organization. Our findings contribute to an understanding of the determinants of the gender earnings gap, suggesting that in settings where managers have leeway over rewards and careers, their personal political beliefs have an important influence on outcomes for male and female workers.