Postdoctoral Fellow
Columbia Business School
One stream of my research focuses on hiring practices, specifically how firms determine and extend initial salary offers and how these practices contribute to the persistence of the gender wage gap. We ask two key questions: (1) Is there a gender gap in initial salary offers following an affirmative hiring decision, and if so, why? and (2) Is there a gender wage gap exist among college graduates in their first jobs, and if so, why?
Shiya Wang, and Adina D. Sterling. 2025. “Setting Up the Gap? Gender Differences in Initial Salary Offers in Hiring.” Organization Science. In Press.
Adina D. Sterling, Marissa Thompson, Shiya Wang, Abisola Kusimo, Shannon Gil-martin, and Sheri Sheppard. 2020. “The Confidence Gap Predicts the Gender Pay Gap Among STEM Graduates.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(48): 30303–30308.
On the Basis of Leverage: What the Salary History Ban Reveals About Offer-Setting. Preparing for Submission.
Another stream of research examines how the evolving nature of work and workplaces shapes women’s and men’s career trajectories, outcomes, and experiences. We investigate how new work arrangements challenge and reshape prevailing stereotypes and norms around working parents and their competing responsibilities at home. We also explore the factors influencing differences in informal support networks—specifically, grandparents’ involvement in childcare—available to and mobilized by working parents, and their consequences for working mothers’ labor market participation and well-being.
Realizing You Are in the Same Boat: How a Forced Reveal Diminished Flexibility Stigma in Workplaces With Parent Collectives. (With Debra Rowcroft, Alexandra Feldberg, and Julie DiBenigno) R&R at Organization Science.
The Role of Grandparents in Working Mothers’ Labor Market Participation and Well-Being (With Hannah Bowles and Alicia Modestino)
Dual-Earner Couple Decision-Making: Gender, Charitable Giving, and Marriage (With Matthew Perrigino)
Most recently, I have begun to study the antecedents and consequences of local entrepreneurship—community-based brick-and-mortar businesses. We investigate how neighborhoods spur local businesses and how, in return, these small, neighborhood-embedded businesses serve as vital engines not only of economic growth, but also of the stability, cohesion, and overall well-being of their communities.
How Social Contexts and Tacit Knowledge Shape Local Entrepreneurship (With Jorge Guzman, Mario Small, and Dan Wang)
Local Entrepreneurship and Neighborhood Inequality (With Jorge Guzman, Mario Small, and Dan Wang)
Power Brokers and the Making of Neighborhood Entrepreneurship (With Jorge Guzman, Mario Small, and Dan Wang)