The finding
In the recent research, conducted in The Review of Economic Studies, researchers combined Danish employer database with managerial family information, and focused only on the companies that had one manager, i.e., a person who was responsible for all the decisions regarding employment and promotions. The findings show that when a male manager got a daughter, he began to hire women more often – by 2.9% after the birth of a first-born daughter. And here is another important point – not just any woman, but those who were well-educated and high-paid.
The importance of methodology over the percentage figure
In the study, the important fact lies in the methodology and not the statistic of 2.9%. The researchers assumed the birth of the firstborn daughter as a 'plausibly exogenous shock'. This is simply a fancy way of saying that they considered this as an unpredictable event which was independent of other characteristics of the managers. It allows them to claim the causation rather than mere correlation between the two events. A manager that hires more female employees might just be a progressive manager. But, if he hires more females right after the birth of his daughter then it is evident that the daughter must have had some effect on his behavior.
What it really says about bias
In one interpretation, it's a touching story of fatherhood broadening a man’s horizons for those worth consideration. More clinically, it is an illustration of the capricious nature of equality in the office. Whatever qualifications the women hired because of the birth of the daughter possessed before her birth, there would have been none different from what they have now. It is the unfortunate reality that, in such instances, their chances increased simply because something personal has happened to the person making the decision.
