Why and When Does the Gender Gap Reverse? Diversity Goals and the Pay Premium for High Potential Women
研究发现，在组织普遍追求多元化的背景下，高潜力女性因被认为更有助于实现多元化目标而获得薪酬溢价，这挑战了女性普遍薪酬较低的假设。
Abundant research has documented a gender pay gap; women earn less than men, all else being equal. Against the backdrop of an overall female penalty, we propose that the widespread adoption of diversity goals in organizations creates a female premium for certain women. We integrate the economic principle of supply and demand with theory from the field of strategic human resource management and theorize that individuals perceive high-potential women—who have the abilities needed to reach the upper echelons of organizations, where women remain underrepresented—as more valuable for achieving organizational diversity goals than high-potential men and, in turn, reward them with higher pay. Two field studies (Studies 1 and 3) and two laboratory experiments (Studies 2 and 4) reveal a female premium that is unique to high-potential women (Studies 1 and 2), driven by perceptions that high-potential women have more diversity value than high-potential men (Studies 2 and 4), and larger in contexts where diversity goals are stronger (Studies 3 and 4). Our theory and findings challenge the assumption that the gender pay gap uniformly disadvantages women and offer new insight into why and when the female penalty reverses and becomes a female premium.