Question

A company is criticized because only 13 of 43 people in executive-level positions are women. The company explains that although this proportion is lower than it might wish, it’s not surprising given that only 40% of all their employees are women. What do you think? Test an appropriate hypothesis and state your conclusion.

Answer 1

To test whether the proportion of women in executive-level positions is significantly lower than the proportion of women in the company as a whole, we can perform a hypothesis test.

Null Hypothesis: The proportion of women in executive-level positions is equal to or greater than the proportion of women in the company as a whole.

Alternative Hypothesis: The proportion of women in executive-level positions is significantly lower than the proportion of women in the company as a whole.

Using a significance level of 0.05, we can perform a one-tailed z-test for the difference in proportions.

Assuming a total sample size of 43 executives and a proportion of women in the company as a whole of 0.4, we find that the expected number of women in executive-level positions would be 43*0.4 = 17.2.

Using a z-test, we find that the test statistic is z = (13-17.2)/sqrt(0.4*0.6/43) = -1.89.

Using a z-table, we find that the p-value for z = -1.89 is approximately 0.029.

Since the p-value is less than the significance level of 0.05, we reject the null hypothesis and conclude that the proportion of women in executive-level positions is significantly lower than the proportion of women in the company as a whole. The company's explanation is not sufficient to account for the observed discrepancy.

~~~Harsha~~~