Finance Best Paper Award

11/14/2014 8:54 AM

By Lindsay Anderson

At the International Business Conference in Munich, Germany, this past summer, Dr. Patty Hatfield, Stephens Professor of Risk and Finance at the Foster College of Business, received the Best Paper Award. Her paper was based on her research on the topic: “Are academic women in finance exposed to the same risks as NFL players? Long-term effects of heads hitting the glass ceiling.”

Stemming from various gender studies done in all business disciplines, topics that lead to this research included studies that investigated women publishing less than male counterparts and a sampling of most cited finance authors, 49 being men and only one being a woman.

After some preliminary research, Hatfield, and her co-author, Dr. Shelly Webb, professor of finance at Xavier University, analyzed why there was such a difference in research productivity by gender, reviewing supply-side reasons that included spending more time in the household and greater focuses on teaching, as well as demand reasons that included discrimination.

Furthermore, expanding beyond academia and research, Hatfield and Webb also cited that the popular press is full of articles examining the lack of women in Wall Street. One source reported that only one in eight executive positions is held by a woman in finance in the United States.

“We know it exists on Wall Street, in big banks, and even on some college campuses before women even get to their career,” Hatfield commented. “We want to be part of the solution. If we can start a conversation that helps create change in academia, it would hopefully trickle down to industry.”

Hatfield and Webb’s hope is that this research will not result in just more evidence that there is significant discrimination in finance for women.

 “We hope to learn more about the root of the problem,” Hatfield continued, “and find ways to encourage and support women in finance so they will be attracted to finance and can be as successful as their male counterparts.”

Hatfield cited many highlights as both the research and paper progressed.

 “We did an exploratory study first, just to get an idea of what the results would look like and to see how much interest there would be,” Hatfield said. “The interest level was pretty high at the conference, with a room full of attendees and great discussion after the session. I felt that this was going to be a study that would generate a lot of interest and more importantly, perhaps do something good at the same time.”

In addition to working with Dr. Webb, Hatfield also worked with quantitative analysis graduate student Anna Galstyan.

“Anna has been a tremendous help in collecting the data,” Hatfield said. “It is a very slow process and we have been collecting data for one year now. We still have more to collect, but we are getting to the point that we can run some good analysis later this academic year!”

Hatfield plans to continue her research on this project.

Earlier this week, Hatfield also discussed this same paper and research as the keynote speaker of Bradley University’s Women’s Studies Apple of Knowledge series.