Rosie, Take the Wheel: Examining EEOC Actions and Gender Diversity in Frontline Logistics Occupations
Corresponding Author
Lila Al-shwaf
Department of Supply Chain Management, Haslam College of Business, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee, USA
Correspondence:
Lila Al-shwaf ([email protected])
Search for more papers by this authorAlex Scott
Department of Supply Chain Management, Haslam College of Business, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee, USA
Search for more papers by this authorJustin T. Kistler
Department of Supply Chain Management, Haslam College of Business, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee, USA
Search for more papers by this authorCorresponding Author
Lila Al-shwaf
Department of Supply Chain Management, Haslam College of Business, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee, USA
Correspondence:
Lila Al-shwaf ([email protected])
Search for more papers by this authorAlex Scott
Department of Supply Chain Management, Haslam College of Business, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee, USA
Search for more papers by this authorJustin T. Kistler
Department of Supply Chain Management, Haslam College of Business, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee, USA
Search for more papers by this authorABSTRACT
Research studying the effect of lawsuits on corporate gender diversity suggests that legal actions increase the number of women employed by affected firms. However, this has only been studied in professional settings, where the percentage of women in the workforce has significantly increased in recent decades. In frontline occupations, women continue to be vastly underrepresented. We examined whether legal actions against firms that employ truck drivers increase their representation of women drivers. We created a database of legal actions taken by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) against firms that employ truck drivers and matched these with gender composition data of trucking firms. Using a difference-in-differences framework, we find that EEOC actions have little to no effect on the percentage of women truck drivers. While firm size is positively associated with EEOC actions, the effect is small and insignificant, a finding that holds up to robustness tests. A post hoc analysis reveals that firms in our data employing a greater number of female drivers are much more likely to be subjected to these lawsuits. Our findings indicate that lawsuits effective in increasing corporate gender diversity do not similarly impact diversity in frontline roles.
Conflicts of Interest
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
Open Research
Data Availability Statement
The data that supports the findings of this study are available in the Supporting Information of this article.
Supporting Information
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Data S1. Supporting Information. |
Please note: The publisher is not responsible for the content or functionality of any supporting information supplied by the authors. Any queries (other than missing content) should be directed to the corresponding author for the article.
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