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1. A colleague of the author has commented in a lower thread that 12 years was the size of the data set available. 2. If n is very small in a several-year peri
by qiqing 12y ago
1. A colleague of the author has commented in a lower thread that 12 years was the size of the data set available.
2. If n is very small in a several-year period, you wouldn't be able to do meaningful analyses on that period. How many women CEO's were there in the Fortune 1000 in the 80's? 90's? I'm going to guess epsilonically few.
3. Possible explanation that isn't hand-waving: selection bias, somewhat akin to the immigration effect. Because it's more challenging for women to get on a career path that eventually leads them to become a CEO, only the most determined/resourceful/hardworking will get there and be measured in the sample, whereas fewer men get weeded out. (e.g., IQ scores of H1B recipients from Asia is not representative of Asia as a continent, where IQ is a standin for whatever measurable trait you want here; and overall Asia and North America may well be quite comparable along most dimensions.)
- facepalm 12y agoSo suppose they had done the study, and found no improved performance for women. Would they have published it? I guess the chance to get a result was roughly 50% (since stocks tend to go up or down, and the sample set of women-ceo-companies is probably small). As to your explanation 3: that's just the kind of thing people want to believe who cherish such studies. At the same time there were also women who failed as CEOs (as the article said). Sure, it's a valid hypothesis, but there would be many ways to test it. For starters, there must already be studies correlating IQ to CEO success. What do they say?