About

Shelley Correll is the Michelle Mercer and Bruce Golden Family Professor of Women’s Leadership at Stanford University, where she also serves as the Director of the Stanford VMware Women’s Leadership Innovation Lab. She is a professor of sociology and organizational behavior, with her expertise focusing on gender, workplace dynamics, and organizational culture. Correll is dedicated to uncovering and removing biases and barriers that limit women’s full participation in society, with her research addressing issues such as the motherhood penalty and gender stereotypes in organizational practices. Her work has significantly contributed to understanding how motherhood influences workplace evaluations, pay, and job opportunities, and how gender stereotypes and organizational practices hinder the advancement and retention of women in technical fields. Correll has published extensively on these topics and has received numerous awards for her research, including the 2008 Distinguished Article Award from the American Sociological Association and the 2009 Rosabeth Moss Kanter Award for Excellence in Work Family Research. She is also actively involved in designing interventions to promote diversity and inclusion in workplaces, and her research has been profiled in major media outlets. As an educator and mentor, Correll has been recognized with awards such as the SWS Feminist Lecturer and Feminist Mentor Awards, and she teaches in executive education programs at Stanford GSB, including pioneering LGBTQ executive education initiatives. Additionally, she has contributed to improving the climate for women in academia through her leadership roles, notably as Clayman Institute Director, where she helped the institute earn the 2019 President’s Award for Excellence Through Diversity.

Research topics

• Social psychology
• Computer Science
• Political Science
• Sociology
• Psychology
• Applied psychology
• Knowledge management
• Cognitive psychology
• Economics
• Demographic economics
• Law

Selected publications

• Policing Gender Nonconformity: Negative evaluations of people with nonconventional pronouns

  ICPSR Data Holdings · 2026-01-01

  datasetOpen accessSenior author

  This study examines how pronoun sharing affects evaluations of people who use nonconventional pronouns in collaborative settings. Drawing on normative discrimination theory, the investigators tested whether sharing nonconventional pronouns (e.g., they/them, or binary pronouns paired with a gender-incongruent name) leads to negative perceptions of interpersonal qualities and penalties in how a person is evaluated as a potential teammate. The preregistered experiment was conducted in December 2023. It was fielded on Prolific with a national sample of 1,697 U.S. adults, constructed to approximate the U.S. population on binary sex, age, and political affiliation, with an oversample of Black and Hispanic respondents. Participants were randomly assigned to evaluate a fictitious college student profile in which the student's name (Amy, Brian, or Jamie) and pronouns (she/her, he/him, they/them, or no pronouns) were independently varied across twelve conditions. Participants rated the student's perceived warmth, interpersonal demandingness, agenticism, competence, and similarity to themselves, as well as their comfort working with the student and their assessment of the student as a teammate. The survey also collected open-ended responses about participants' impressions of the student and their views on pronoun-sharing practices. We also collected information about participants' gender identity, sex assigned at birth, age, race/ethnicity, education, region, political orientation, political party, prior experience with pronoun-sharing practices, and personal acquaintance with transgender or nonbinary individuals.<br>

  PublisherDOI

• Normative Discrimination and the Gender Binary: Negative Evaluations of People with Nonconventional Pronouns

  Social Psychology Quarterly · 2026-05-11

  articleSenior author

  Pronoun sharing has become a common inclusion practice in U.S. schools and workplaces. Drawing on normative discrimination theories, however, we predict that pronoun sharing can lead to negative evaluations of people who share nonconventional pronouns. In a preregistered survey experiment (N = 1,516), participants rated a fictitious potential teammate whose name and pronouns were varied. Participants reported significantly less comfort working with a person with nonconventional pronouns and perceived them as a significantly worse teammate than someone with either conventional pronouns or no pronouns, effects that were mediated by the perception that people with nonconventional pronouns are less warm and more interpersonally demanding. These negative perceptions were significantly more common among conservative respondents, whereas liberal respondents expressed bias toward people who did not share pronouns. In open responses, gender-minority participants described pronoun-sharing practices as potentially either inclusive or exposing. Our findings point to the importance of ensuring pronoun sharing is voluntary.

  PublisherDOI

• Policing Gender Nonconformity: Negative evaluations of people with nonconventional pronouns

  ICPSR Data Holdings · 2026-01-01

  datasetOpen accessSenior author

  This study examines how pronoun sharing affects evaluations of people who use nonconventional pronouns in collaborative settings. Drawing on normative discrimination theory, the investigators tested whether sharing nonconventional pronouns (e.g., they/them, or binary pronouns paired with a gender-incongruent name) leads to negative perceptions of interpersonal qualities and penalties in how a person is evaluated as a potential teammate. The preregistered experiment was conducted in December 2023. It was fielded on Prolific with a national sample of 1,697 U.S. adults, constructed to approximate the U.S. population on binary sex, age, and political affiliation, with an oversample of Black and Hispanic respondents. Participants were randomly assigned to evaluate a fictitious college student profile in which the student's name (Amy, Brian, or Jamie) and pronouns (she/her, he/him, they/them, or no pronouns) were independently varied across twelve conditions. Participants rated the student's perceived warmth, interpersonal demandingness, agenticism, competence, and similarity to themselves, as well as their comfort working with the student and their assessment of the student as a teammate. The survey also collected open-ended responses about participants' impressions of the student and their views on pronoun-sharing practices. We also collected information about participants' gender identity, sex assigned at birth, age, race/ethnicity, education, region, political orientation, political party, prior experience with pronoun-sharing practices, and personal acquaintance with transgender or nonbinary individuals.<br>

  PublisherDOI

• Making a Business Case for DE&amp;I

  Contexts · 2025-05-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Inside the Black Box of Organizational Life: The Gendered Language of Performance Assessment

  UNC Libraries · 2025-07-15

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Organizations implement formalized procedures to eliminate the biasing effects of gender and other characteristics on evaluations. Prior work shows managers play a key role, but researchers have been unable to observe the thought processes guiding managers&rsquo; evaluations. This article takes a first step in examining managers&rsquo; sensemaking as they interpret and evaluate employee behaviors. Our data include managers&rsquo; written performance reviews and numeric ratings of employees at a Fortune 500 technology company. Our theoretical model&mdash;the Viewing and Valuing Social Cognitive Processing Model&mdash;explains how and when gender beliefs frame managers&rsquo; evaluations, affecting what behaviors managers notice (i.e., view) and rate highly (i.e., value). After conducting a detailed coding of the language in reviews, we assess whether there are gender differences in (1) the language used to describe performance (i.e., viewing differences) and (2) the correlations between that language and numeric ratings (i.e., valuing differences). Our analysis of 88 language attributes reveals where gender frames managers&rsquo; evaluations and where the process instead operates gender-neutrally. For example, men and women are equally likely to be described as having technical ability, while women are viewed as too aggressive and men as too soft. Furthermore, some behaviors, such as &ldquo;taking charge,&rdquo; are more valued for men than for women: &ldquo;taking charge&rdquo; is associated with the highest performance ratings for men but not for women. Overall, our analysis identifies novel ways that gender biases emerge in a process intended to be meritocratic.

  PublisherDOI

• Law’s Normative Influence on Gender Schemas: An Experimental Study on Counteracting Workplace Bias against Mothers and Caregivers

  Law & Social Inquiry · 2023 · 9 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Psychology
  • Social psychology

  Status-based theories of labor market inequality contend that, even when workers have identical qualifications and performance, employers evaluate them differently based on stereotypes about their status group. Gender and parenthood are status characteristics that affect decisions about hiring, pay, and promotion through stereotypes that mothers should not work, fathers should not take leave, and caregivers of either gender are less reliable, committed workers. We contend that family-leave laws mitigate these status effects by conveying a consensus that both men and women can legitimately combine work and family. An experiment testing this theory shows that, when the law is not salient, participants pay mothers (whether or not they take leave) and fathers who take leave less and rate them as less promotable than other identical workers. Participants also rate these employees as less competent, committed, and congenial than other identical workers. By contrast, when participants review family-leave laws before they evaluate employees, they treat mothers and caregivers no worse than other workers. Reviewing an organizational family-leave policy did not reduce the effects of stereotypes as much as reviewing formal law. These findings suggest that making law salient during workplace evaluations can reduce inequality through law’s expressive effects.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Preventing soft skill decay among early-career women in STEM during COVID-19: Evidence from a longitudinal intervention

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2022-08-01 · 8 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  As the workforce shifts to being predominantly hybrid and remote, how can companies help employees—particularly early-career women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields—develop greater confidence in their soft skills, shown to improve organizational retention? We evaluate the effects of an online longitudinal intervention to develop soft skills among early-career women employees at a North American biotechnology company during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Controlling for baseline levels collected immediately prior to nationwide lockdowns, we find that a 6-month online intervention increased early-career women’s assessments of their soft skills at work by an average of 9% ( P &lt; 0.001), compared with a decrease of about 3.5% for a matched control group ( P &lt; 0.05), resulting in an average treatment effect of nearly 13% on the treated group. Furthermore, we find evidence that the intervention led to an increase in manager-assessed performance for early-career women relative to employees not in the intervention, and that overall, increased self-assessments of soft skill competencies were associated with greater odds of retention. Results show how employee soft skill development was affected by the pandemic and provide insights for a feasible and cost-effective method to train and engage a hybrid or fully remote workforce.

  PublisherDOI

• Inside the Black Box of Organizational Life: The Gendered Language of Performance Assessment

  American Sociological Review · 2020 · 123 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Sociology
  • Psychology

  Organizations implement formalized procedures to eliminate the biasing effects of gender and other characteristics on evaluations. Prior work shows managers play a key role, but researchers have been unable to observe the thought processes guiding managers’ evaluations. This article takes a first step in examining managers’ sensemaking as they interpret and evaluate employee behaviors. Our data include managers’ written performance reviews and numeric ratings of employees at a Fortune 500 technology company. Our theoretical model—the Viewing and Valuing Social Cognitive Processing Model—explains how and when gender beliefs frame managers’ evaluations, affecting what behaviors managers notice (i.e., view) and rate highly (i.e., value). After conducting a detailed coding of the language in reviews, we assess whether there are gender differences in (1) the language used to describe performance (i.e., viewing differences) and (2) the correlations between that language and numeric ratings (i.e., valuing differences). Our analysis of 88 language attributes reveals where gender frames managers’ evaluations and where the process instead operates gender-neutrally. For example, men and women are equally likely to be described as having technical ability, while women are viewed as too aggressive and men as too soft. Furthermore, some behaviors, such as “taking charge,” are more valued for men than for women: “taking charge” is associated with the highest performance ratings for men but not for women. Overall, our analysis identifies novel ways that gender biases emerge in a process intended to be meritocratic.

  PublisherDOI

• Why Are Women Penalized in Product Markets?

  Socius Sociological Research for a Dynamic World · 2019-01-01 · 3 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Previous research using data from eBay found that women receive lower prices than men when selling the exact same products. The current project explores why this gender gap obtains and why some products have larger gender price gaps than others. To answer these questions, we exploit the variation in the gender price gap across products found in the earlier eBay data together with new survey data on the perceptions people have about seemingly male-typed and female-typed products and about people’s uncertainty about the prices of products. We show that women are penalized more for selling products that are perceived to be typically owned by men compared to products that are perceived to be typically owned by women. We further demonstrate that the effects of gender stereotypes are greater when buyers’ uncertainty increases: when buyers are uncertain about their willingness to pay for a product or about its market price, women sellers are penalized more.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Men Set Their Own Cites High: Gender and Self-citation across Fields and over Time

  OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints) · 2018-04-10 · 355 citations

  article

  How common is self-citation in scholarly publication, and does the practice vary by gender? Using novel methods and a data set of 1.5 million research papers in the scholarly database JSTOR published between 1779 and 2011, the authors find that nearly 10 percent of references are self-citations by a paper’s authors. The findings also show that between 1779 and 2011, men cited their own papers 56 percent more than did women. In the last two decades of data, men self-cited 70 percent more than women. Women are also more than 10 percentage points more likely than men to not cite their own previous work at all. While these patterns could result from differences in the number of papers that men and women authors have published rather than gender-specific patterns of self-citation behavior, this gender gap in self-citation rates has remained stable over the last 50 years, despite increased representation of women in academia. The authors break down self-citation patterns by academic field and number of authors and comment on potential mechanisms behind these observations. These findings have important implications for scholarly visibility and cumulative advantage in academic careers.

  Publisher

Frequent coauthors

• Stephen Benard

  Indiana University Bloomington

  10 shared

• Catherine R. Albiston

  University of California, Berkeley

  7 shared

• Cecilia L. Ridgeway

  Stanford University

  7 shared

• Carl T. Bergstrom

  University of Washington

  6 shared

• In Paik

  National Assembly

  5 shared

• Jevin D. West

  5 shared

• Molly M. King

  Santa Clara University

  5 shared

• Jennifer Jacquet

  University of Miami

  5 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Sociology

  Stanford University

  1990

• M.A., Sociology

  Stanford University

  1985

• B.A., Sociology

  University of California, Santa Barbara

  1982

Awards & honors

• 2008 Distinguished Article Award, Sex and Gender section, Am…
• 2009 Rosabeth Moss Kanter Award for Excellence in Work Famil…
• Recognition for Extraordinary Contribution to Work Family Re…
• SWS Feminist Lecturer Award (2016)
• SWS Feminist Mentor Award (2017)