Putting "Cogs in the Machine" in Context: Effect of Female Supervisors on Gender Wage Gaps Within Workgroups

Women’s representation in managerial positions is a common metric for gender equity in organizations. Whether female managers improve gender equity among their subordinates is, however, less clear. Drawing on rich longitudinal personnel data from a large Korean food company, we provide new insight into this question by focusing attention on key micro-contexts for interaction and relational politics within organizations: workgroups. Building on social-psychological theories about in-group preference and value threats, we theorize that workgroup gender composition conditions the relationship between supervisor gender and gender earnings differentials with them. Results from regression models with workgroup fixed effects confirm this insight. Female supervisors are associated with smaller gender earnings gaps when workgroups are male-dominated, but widen gender wage gaps in strongly female-dominated teams.