Abstract
This paper attempts to rigorously analyze the social effects of power inequality and glass ceiling in a society with two populations (e.g. men and women). To this end, we define a mathematical model based on a social network with two populations, in which these phenomena are studied. We define measures for Normalized (or Differential) Power Inequality and Full-Spectrum Glass Ceiling, and formalize the conditions for their existence in terms of three societal parameters, the relative size of the two populations, the level of homophily, and the extent of the “leaky pipeline” phenomenon.
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Notes
- 1.
Much of the discussion in this paper applies also to minorities; however, for simplicity of presentation we will henceforth restrict the discussion to gender, and denote the two sub-populations as the “red” (women) and “blue” (men) communities, R and B.
- 2.
Throughout, we interpret x∕0 = ∞ for x > 0.
- 3.
A poignant variation of this observation is widely known as the Peter Principle.
- 4.
For example, a measure acceptable in the eyes of the law.
- 5.
This is not necessarily true for all plausible models. For example, some natural models might assign more weight to vacations/leaves that take place early in the career.
References
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Acknowledgements
Supported in part by the Israel Science Foundation (grant 1549/13).
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Avin, C., Lotker, Z., Nahum, Y., Peleg, D. (2017). Modeling and Analysis of Glass Ceiling and Power Inequality in Bi-populated Societies. In: Shmueli, E., Barzel, B., Puzis, R. (eds) 3rd International Winter School and Conference on Network Science . NetSci-X 2017. Springer Proceedings in Complexity. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55471-6_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55471-6_6
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