Managing rejection to improve gender diversity in talent pipelines

Across multiple economic domains, women appear less likely than men to persist in pursuing an initial goal after being rejected. This paper develops a formal mathematical model to examine the potential gender segregating effects of this mechanism. We ground our model using three empirical cases: executive search, patenting, and crowdfunding. Our analysis yields three important findings. First, the segregating effects of gendered persistence after rejection can be substantial in real-world cases. Second, although the gendered persistence after rejection mechanism operates on the supply-side of the market, its mitigation may more effectively be achieved by intervening on the demand-side of the market via reducing rejection rates. Third, and surprisingly, the currently popular strategy of expanding applicant pools for promoting organizational gender diversity may be perversely counter-productive. Expanded applicant pools must disproportionately increase women’s representation in the applicant pool beyond a threshold value. Below this threshold, even disproportionately female expanded applicant pools will fail to overcome the segregating effects of gendered persistence after rejection. We conclude examining the theoretical and practical implications of our findings.