Female managers make fairer pay decisions than male counterparts, study finds

If you want a fairer pay packet, you have a better chance of getting it with a female manager, according to new research.

When given the task of deciding how much to compensate employees for a set task, male managers chose to keep more for themselves than their female counterparts, according to the findings of researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.

“Various studies observe that women make more selfless and moral decisions than men,” political economy researcher and the report’s author, Nora Szech, said on Thursday. “However, we were shocked at how drastic the discrepancy was here.”

The study found that both male and female managers took advantage of opportunities to enrich themselves by paying lower wages, when circumstances allowed this. But women were in general less likely “to be selfish” than men and generally awarded about 13% more than managers on average, the research showed.

“Male managers react stronger to incentives schemes than females. Female managers exhibit a more consistent behavior which seems to be more robust to the opportunity to be selfish,” the study found.

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The findings come as European countries tighten quotas for diversity in the boardroom, with the region’s largest economies all introducing some form of mandate to ensure women get at least a third of directorships. The policies target not only inequality within companies, but are intended to boost performance.