Shelley Correll's call to move from 'knowing' to 'doing'

Faculty spotlight

Long before she led Stanford’s VMware Women’s Leadership Innovation Lab or served as president of the American Sociological Association, Shelley Correll taught AP and honors high school chemistry.

By the end of her first year of teaching, she had noticed a pattern: the boys often believed they were “good at chemistry” even when they were struggling, while the girls, despite generally performing better on tests, seemed to require stronger evidence before making the same claim, often attributing their success to hard work. 

“I couldn’t imagine the girls saying ‘I’m really good at chemistry,’” Correll said in a recent interview. “It’s very hard for women to be arrogant. They are less likely to verbalize it.”

The observation stayed with her when she entered Stanford Sociology’s doctoral program. As a graduate student, she developed a theory about how stereotypes shape people’s judgments of their own abilities and, ultimately, their career choices. 

She argued that when a field is culturally coded as masculine, women and men apply different standards when deciding whether they are “good enough.” 

That insight became the foundation for her dissertation and her 2001 paper in the American Journal of Sociology, “Gender and the Career Choice Process: The Role of Biased Self-Assessments.” 

After teaching at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Cornell University, Correll joined Stanford’s sociology faculty in 2008. Her research has strengthened our understanding of how gender stereotypes shape opportunity. From the “motherhood penalty” in hiring,  pay recommendations, and workplace evaluations to the organizational practices that influence women’s advancement and retention. 

Still, she sensed that identifying the problem was not enough. She started to realize that sociologists seeking real-world change needed to move beyond understanding social problems and become more actively involved in addressing them. 

“To make a difference, we have to move from knowing to doing,” she said.

A small wins approach

Correll’s research expanded beyond documenting inequality to examining how organizations can reduce it. Her “small wins” model, for example, offers an incremental approach to organizational change. Researchers work directly with managers and organizational leaders to identify specific problems, develop practical interventions, and evaluate results. Because these change efforts focus on improving workplace evaluation processes and measuring concrete outcomes, they can reduce bias in workplace evaluations and hiring while building momentum for broader change. In other words, small wins lead to larger ones. 

Correll introduced the model in “Reducing Gender Biases in Modern Workplaces: A Small Wins Approach to Organizational Change,” published in Gender and Society in 2017. 

This emphasis on evidence-based solutions also became the foundation of her presidential address at the American Sociological Association’s annual meeting in August. 

Her call for a more solution-oriented sociology reflects the department’s own “Open and Engaged’ approach led by Chair David Grusky. 

“It’s not that Shelley doesn’t love and cherish basic science. She’s a basic-science superstar!“ Grusky said. “But her basic-science contributions weren’t dreamt up in an armchair … they were built in the trenches while taking on pressing social problems. In these extraordinary times, Shelley has developed a new type of trench-warfare sociology, an invention that very much meets the moment.”  

In these extraordinary times, Shelley has developed a new type of trench-warfare sociology, an invention that very much meets the moment. 

Correll talks about gender equality with the precision of a researcher and the optimism of someone convinced that institutions can evolve. She greets visitors with the easy warmth and a genuine enjoyment of conversation.  

In her McClatchy Hall office, bookcases are packed with texts and journals on social problems and inequality. Among the academic volumes, however, two shelves display miniature baseball helmets, bobbleheads, and other San Francisco Giants memorabilia. Near her phone sit framed photographs of Ellie, her partner since they were undergraduates at Texas A&M. And across the room, perched on a metal filing cabinet, is a photograph of three former students. 

The importance of mentoring

“Shelley totally changed the course of my career with her teaching and mentorship,” said Claire Daviss, who graduated from Stanford Sociology’s doctoral program in 2025 and is now a tenure-track assistant professor of organizational behavior and sociology at Cornell University. 

Daviss said she took Correll’s gender course her first quarter of graduate school and described it as a “mind-blowing” experience that sparked her interest in building on the literature. Correll later encouraged Daviss to pursue hard-to-access data for her second-year paper and dissertation research—projects that proved foundational to her academic career.

“(Shelley) reviewed innumerable works in progress for me,” Daviss said. “She has taught me to write and think more carefully. I always ask myself what Shelley would say when I write now.”

Daviss remembers Correll’s support through the sometimes inevitable disappointments and setbacks of graduate school. 

“What surely helped me get through them was Shelley’s relentless encouragement,” Daviss said. “She urges her students to face challenges with bravery, humor, and persistence to dust yourself off and get back on the horse. She celebrates every win, however small, right alongside you.”

For Correll, mentoring is another way to move from “knowing” to “doing” by helping a new generation of sociologists turn ideas into meaningful work. Students enter doctoral programs because they want to make a difference in the world, she said, and “we are here to help them realize their dreams.”

David Mechanic (’59) grew up the son of a garment piece worker and went on to change how the world thinks about illness. While at Stanford, he introduced “illness behavior,” the idea that whether people seek care depends as much on culture, class, and perception as on symptoms. His work in medical sociology still shapes how doctors, researchers, and policymakers understand health and health care. 

Explore his story

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