nep-gen New Economics Papers
on Gender
Issue of 2017‒04‒02
eight papers chosen by
Jan Sauermann
Stockholms universitet

  1. Does the age difference between partners influence the career achievements of women? By Anna Oksuzyan; Angela Carollo; Sven Drefahl; Carlo G. Camarda; Kaare Christensen; Alyson A. van Raalte
  2. Gender Discrimination, Gender Disparities in Obesity and Human Development By Ferretti, Fabrizio; Mariani, Michele
  3. Do Significant Labour Market Events Change Who Does the Laundry? Work, chore allocation, and power in Australian households By Gigi Foster; Leslie Stratton
  4. Teacher assessments versus standardized tests: is acting ?girly? an advantage? By A. Di Liberto; L. Casula
  5. Is there a Glass Ceiling or Sticky Floor in India? Examining the Wage Gap across the Wage Distribution By Smrutirekha Singhari; S.Madheswaran
  6. Negotiating the Gender Wage Gap By Stevens, Katrien; Whelan, Stephen
  7. When Harry Fired Sally: The Double Standard in Punishing Misconduct By Mark L. Egan; Gregor Matvos; Amit Seru
  8. Gender Gaps in Time Use and Earnings: What's Norms Got to Do With It? By Nan L. Maxwell; Nathan Wozny

  1. By: Anna Oksuzyan (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany); Angela Carollo (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany); Sven Drefahl (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany); Carlo G. Camarda (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany); Kaare Christensen; Alyson A. van Raalte (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany)
    Abstract: Women earn less than men at most career stages, and they also tend to partner with older men. This study investigates whether being the younger partner in a marriage reduces a woman’s incentive to pursue an independent career. We hypothesize that the income gender gap might be partially explained by the age differences between spouses. Using both a within-twin (n = 4716) and pooled-twin (n = 13354) design to more readily account for differences in early household environments, we investigated for Denmark whether the age gap between a female twin and her partner has any influence on her income. The hypothesis could not be confirmed, as the age gap between partners did not appear to be associated with women’s earnings. The finding that women’s wages were generally unaffected by partnering with an older man could be a result of heterogeneous groups of women entering men-older partnerships. Future research should explore this question further by using the number of promotions to assess the career success of women, and should extend this work to countries with different social welfare systems and less egalitarian gender norms.
    JEL: J1 Z0
    Date: 2017–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dem:wpaper:wp-2017-008&r=gen
  2. By: Ferretti, Fabrizio; Mariani, Michele
    Abstract: Measuring gender inequality and women’s empowerment is essential to understand the determinants of gender gaps, evaluate policies and monitor countries’ progress. With this aim, over the past two decades, research has mainly been directed towards the development of composite indices. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a new and interdisciplinary perspective to the current debate on measuring gender inequality in human development. As a starting point, we develop a simple macroeconomic model of the interdependence between human development and gender inequality. We then introduce a biometric indicator, based on the ratio of female to male body mass index, to measure women’s empowerment at the country level. Finally, by using the latest available data, we examine the ability of this biometric indicator to capture countries’ performance in achieving gender equality. We obtain five main results: 1) we provide a theoretical framework to explain the joint determination of human development and gender inequality; 2) we show how to use this framework to simulate the impact of exogenous shocks or policy changes; 3) we demonstrate that exogenous changes have a direct and a multiplier effect on human development and gender inequality; 4) we find that the distribution of obesity between the female and male populations represents a useful proxy variable for measuring gender equality at the country level; 5) finally, we use these results to integrate and develop existing knowledge on the ‘ecological’ approach to the overweight and obesity pandemic.
    Keywords: Arab spring, Economic growth, Gender discrimination, Gender obesity ratio, Human development, Obesity pandemic,
    JEL: I15 J16
    Date: 2017–03–15
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:77728&r=gen
  3. By: Gigi Foster (School of Economics, UNSW Business School, UNSW); Leslie Stratton (Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA)
    Abstract: In this paper, we examine how men and women in mixed-gender unions change their allocation of time to housework in response to promotions and terminations in the labour market. Operating much like raises, such events have the potential to alter power dynamics within the household, as well as labour force commitments. Using Australian panel data on married and cohabiting couples, we first show evidence that promotions and terminations are plausibly exogenous to housework time allocations, then estimate gender and couple-specific fixed effects models of housework time as a function of both own and partner’s labour market events. Of the four types of labour market events we examine – male and female promotion, and male and female termination – female promotion is the strongest predictor of housework time allocation adjustments. These adjustments are in part due to concurrent changes in paid work time, but gender power relations also appear to play a role. Further results indicate that although large gender gaps in housework time exist regardless of labour market activity, households holding more liberal gender role attitudes, and those that are less time-constrained, are those most likely to adjust their housework time allocations after female promotion events. Power dynamics cannot, however, explain all the results. Supporting the sociological theory that partners may ‘do gender’ ( i.e., try to compensate behaviourally for phenomena that run contrary to gender stereotypes), we find that in households with more traditional gender role attitudes that experience a male termination event, his housework time falls while hers rises.
    Keywords: Intra-household allocation, Time use, Gender, Housework
    JEL: J16 J22 D79
    Date: 2017–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:swe:wpaper:2017-06&r=gen
  4. By: A. Di Liberto; L. Casula
    Abstract: We study if Italian teachers do apply gender discrimination when judging students. To this aim, we use a difference-in-differences approach that exploits the availability of both teachers (non-blind) and standardized test (blind) scores in math and language that Italian students receive during the school year. Using data for all sixth graders, descriptives show that in both scores girls are better than boys in language, while in math boys perform better than girls in the blind test. Moreover, our analysis suggest that boys are always discriminated by teachers in both subjects. This result holds also when we control for class fixed effects, students noncognitive skills, gender specific-attitude towards cheating and possible cultural differences towards gender attitudes in math or language.
    Keywords: Gender stereotypes,discrimination,schooling outcomes
    Date: 2017
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cns:cnscwp:201701&r=gen
  5. By: Smrutirekha Singhari; S.Madheswaran
    Abstract: The motivation of the study is to answer the following questions: Is there any significant wage gap across gender, caste and religious groups in regular and casual labour market in India? Does ‘Glass Ceiling’ or ‘Sticky Floor’ exist in labour market? Why such phenomenon occurs? The Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition method and Machado Mata Melly decomposition method The findings show a declining trend of gender wage gap from 2004-05 to 2011-12. The decline in endowment difference has largely contributed to decline in raw wage differentials. The gender discrimination is widening over the years, because the percentage contribution of coefficients to the raw wage difference is showing an increasing trend. We observe evidence of ‘sticky floor’ in both regular and casual labour market in India. The evidence of sticky floor implies that women at the lower end of the overall wage distribution experience larger wage gaps compared to women at the upper end. The wage gap between Scheduled Caste and Non Scheduled Caste casual workers is increasing throughout the wage distribution and it is more at the upper tail. The workers from lower caste groups experience ‘glass ceiling’ in casual labour market. It is due to occupational segregation in labour market. The Scheduled Caste workers are still confined to traditional caste occupations or occupations with low returns. The policy should be in favor of breaking this hierarchy of occupation in labour market. As far as caste based discrimination is concerned, we found that the percentage contribution of characteristics (endowment) to raw wage difference has increased over the years, except in casual worker’s lower wage distribution. It is important to note that the large endowment difference implies prevalence of pre-market discriminatory practices in India. The average earnings of Muslims are comparatively lower than that of NonMuslims in regular labour market. Out of total raw wage gap between Muslim and NonMuslim wage gap in regular labour market, almost 70 percent is on account of endowment difference. There is a need for continued government policies aimed at education and skill building for the Scheduled Castes and Muslim people.
    Keywords: India, Labor market issues, Developing countries
    Date: 2015–07–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ekd:008007:8345&r=gen
  6. By: Stevens, Katrien; Whelan, Stephen
    Abstract: There is some evidence that gender differences exist in the propensity to negotiate and outcomes from negotiation. Evidence from the psychology and management literatures suggest that relative to males, females are less likely to initiate negotiation and in the event of negotiation, ask for and receive less. This paper examines the propensity of males and females to negotiate over pay, the wage outcomes resulting from negotiation and its impact on the gender wage gap in a non-experimental setting. Using a unique Australian dataset we find evidence that females are less likely than males to have the opportunity to negotiate over pay in their jobs. However, conditional on the opportunity to negotiate, they are no less likely to actually negotiate their pay. Further, while negotiation is associated with higher wage outcomes, females do not fare worse than males in the event of negotiation.
    Keywords: negotiation; gender; wage differentials; labor market
    Date: 2016–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:syd:wpaper:2016-19&r=gen
  7. By: Mark L. Egan; Gregor Matvos; Amit Seru
    Abstract: We examine gender discrimination in the financial advisory industry. We study a less salient mechanism for discrimination, firm discipline following missteps. There are substantial differences in the punishment of misconduct across genders. Although both female and male advisers are disciplined for misconduct, female advisers are punished more severely. Following an incidence of misconduct, female advisers are 20% more likely to lose their jobs, and 30% less likely to find new jobs relative to male advisers. Females face harsher punishment despite engaging in less costly misconduct and despite a lower propensity towards repeat offenses. Evidence suggests that the observed behavior is not driven by productivity differences across advisers. Rather, we find supporting evidence for taste-based discrimination. For females, a disproportionate share of misconduct complaints is initiated by the firm, instead of customers or regulators. Moreover, there is significant heterogeneity among firms. Firms with a greater percentage of male executives/owners at a given branch, tend to punish female advisers more severely following misconduct, and also tend to hire fewer female advisers with past record of misconduct.
    JEL: D18 G24 G28 J71
    Date: 2017–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23242&r=gen
  8. By: Nan L. Maxwell; Nathan Wozny
    Abstract: This research assesses the extent to which norms related to behaviors at home and work and to parenting might affect gender differences in time allocation, earnings, and employment.
    Keywords: norms, earnings, employment, time use, gender differentials
    JEL: J
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mpr:mprres:38f127bf7f494794807db7a3ac395da3&r=gen

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