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The Effect of Gender on Awards in Employment Arbitration Cases: The Experience in the Securities Industry
Author(s) -
Lipsky David B.,
Ryan Lamare J.,
Gupta Abhishek
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
industrial relations: a journal of economy and society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.61
H-Index - 57
eISSN - 1468-232X
pISSN - 0019-8676
DOI - 10.1111/irel.12005
Subject(s) - arbitration , respondent , plaintiff , business , law , demographic economics , accounting , political science , economics
In this article we analyze the outcomes of nearly 3200 awards issued in employment disputes settled by arbitration in the securities industry over the period 1986–2008. The large amount of litigation in the securities industry alleging discrimination by securities firms against the women they employ led us to hypothesize that women would do less well than men in these arbitration cases. Regression analysis reveals that the gender of the complainant and the complainant's attorney (but not the gender of the respondent's attorney or the arbitrator) had significant effects on the size of the awards. Regardless of the definition of the dependent variable, female complainants did less well than male complainants in these employment arbitration cases. In most estimates, the gender of the attorney representing the complainant also affected the size of the award: male attorneys obtained larger awards than female attorneys. We conclude that these gender differentials are more likely to be the consequence of employment conditions in the securities industry rather than biases in the arbitration process.