nep-gen New Economics Papers
on Gender
Issue of 2018‒05‒07
seven papers chosen by
Jan Sauermann
Stockholms universitet

  1. Exposure to more female peers widens the gender gap in STEM participation By Anne Ardila Brenøe; Ulf Zölitz
  2. Does More Female Labor Supply Really Save a Graying Japan? By Ryuta Ray Kato
  3. Gender Diversity and Financial Performance: Evidence for US Real Estate Companies By Liesa Schrand; Claudia Ascherl; Wolfgang Schaefers
  4. A woman's touch? Female migration and economic development in the United States By Lee, Neil; Rodríguez-Pose, Andrés; von Berlepsch, Viola
  5. Gender Biases: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in French Local Elections By Jean-Benoît Eymeoud; Paul Vertier
  6. Women's Empowerment, Gendered Institutions and Economic Opportunity: An Investigative Study for Pakistan By Parlow, Anton
  7. Can Personality Traits Explain Glass Ceilings? By Collischon; Matthias

  1. By: Anne Ardila Brenøe; Ulf Zölitz
    Abstract: This paper investigates how high school gender composition affects students’ participation in STEM college studies. Using Danish administrative data, we exploit idiosyncratic within-school variation in gender composition. We find that having a larger proportion of female peers reduces women’s probability of enrolling in and graduating from STEM programs. Men’s STEM participation increases with more female peers present. In the long run, women exposed to more female peers earn less because they (1) are less likely to work in STEM occupations, and (2) have more children. Our findings show that the school peer environment has lasting effects on occupational sorting and the gender wage gap.
    Keywords: Gender, peer effects, STEM studies
    JEL: I21 J16 J31
    Date: 2018–04
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zur:econwp:285&r=gen
  2. By: Ryuta Ray Kato (International University of Japan)
    Abstract: This paper examines the impact of stimulated female labor supply on the Japanese economy as well as the government fiscal imbalance within a numerical dynamic general equilibrium model with multiple overlapping generations, particularly by paying attention to females' time costs of child rearing and elderly care in a graying Japan. Several numerical results indicate that even complete elimination of females' time costs of child rearing and elderly care stimulates the total GDP only by 1 percent. If complete elimination of time costs occurs in accordance with no gender gap in wage profiles, then the total GDP expands by 4 percent. The results also suggest importance of government policies not only to stimulate female labor force participation but also to improve human capital accumulation of females to reduce a gender gap in wage profiles.
    Keywords: Female Labor Supply, Childcare, Child Allowance, Elderly Care, Public Pension, Long-Term Care Insurance, Population Aging, Japan, Simulation
    JEL: C68 H51 E62 H55 J16
    Date: 2017–09
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iuj:wpaper:ems_2017_04&r=gen
  3. By: Liesa Schrand; Claudia Ascherl; Wolfgang Schaefers
    Abstract: Motivated by the ongoing debates on the underrepresentation of women in top management and increased number of quota-based policy initiatives, this study investigates the relationship between gender diversity in boardrooms and firm performance. The real estate industry, a traditionally male dominated industry, may benefit from group heterogeneity, since a variety of perspectives, knowledge and experiences enhances decision making (Carter et al., 2003). In the context of mandated diversity policies, the North American market remains unregulated. Therefore, this study examines, whether there is a certain critical mass of female board members in the US real estate sector which positively affects firm performance.With a dataset of 116 listed property companies from the USA in the period of 2005-2015, we find evidence for a positive significant relationship between the percentage of women on boards and Tobin’s Q. In detail, balanced boards (40-60%female representation) outperform boards with fewer women. Consequently, adding just one woman to the board has no effect on the performance, a situation which is referred to as tokenism. Additionally, the findings show that the proportion of executive female directors is statistically related to a positive performance. Beyond that, female CEOs improve the market based performance by approximately 20%. The model specifications control for unobserved heterogeneity by using fixed effects regression and mitigate endogeneity concerns by using lagged board variables.This is the first real-estate-based gender diversity study for the US market considering differences between executive and non-executive board members.
    Keywords: accounting based perfomance; board structure; critical mass; gender diversity; Tobins%27 Q
    JEL: R3
    Date: 2017–07–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arz:wpaper:eres2017_48&r=gen
  4. By: Lee, Neil; Rodríguez-Pose, Andrés; von Berlepsch, Viola
    Abstract: Does the economic effect of immigrant women differ from that of immigrants in general? This paper examines if gender has influenced the short- and long-term economic impact of mass migration to the US, using Census microdata from 1880 and 1910. By means of ordinary least squares and instrumental variable estimations, the analysis shows that a greater concentration of immigrant women is significantly associated with lower levels of economic development in US counties. However, immigrant women also shaped economic development positively, albeit indirectly, via their children. Communities with more children born to foreign mothers and that successfully managed to integrate female immigrants experienced greater economic growth than those dominated by children of foreign-born fathers or American-born parents.
    Keywords: Counties; Development; Economic Growth; Gender; migration; US.
    JEL: F22 J16 J61 O15 R23
    Date: 2018–04
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:12878&r=gen
  5. By: Jean-Benoît Eymeoud; Paul Vertier (Département d'économie)
    Abstract: Women are under-represented in politics. In this paper, we test one of the potential explanations for this situation: gender-bias from voters. We use a natural experiment during French local elections in 2015: for the first time in this country, candidates had to run by pairs, which had to be gender-balanced. We argue that this reform confused some voters, who mighthave assumedthat the firstname on theballot representedthe "main" candidate. Since the order of the candidates on the ballot was determined by alphabetical order, the order of appearance of male and female candidates is as-good-as-random, and this setting allows us to isolate gender biases from selection effects. Our main result is that there exists a negative gender bias affecting right-wing candidates, who receive about 1.5 points lower shares of vote when the female candidate appears first on the ballot. The missing votes prevented some pairs of candidates from being elected. Using the fact that the candidates can (but do not have to) report additional information about themselves on the ballot, we show that this discrimination is likely to be statistical, since the most affected women are those running in pairs which do not report any information.
    Keywords: Political Economy; Gender Discrimination; Voting Behavior
    Date: 2018–04
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/3k0m7r593p8gs9njjtpupmlknu&r=gen
  6. By: Parlow, Anton
    Abstract: Increasing female landownership or labor force participation are policies designed to empower women in developing countries. Yet, societies are diverse and I find that across language and ethnic groups not all Pakistani women benefit from these increased economic opportunities in their decision making. I even find negative impacts of labor force participation on empowerment for some groups. This can be explained by different gender expectations along these gendered institutions.
    Keywords: Women's Empowerment, Ethnicity, Identity
    JEL: J0 J01 O12
    Date: 2018–04–23
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:86331&r=gen
  7. By: Collischon; Matthias
    Abstract: This paper investigates whether personality traits can explain glass ceilings (increasing gender wage gaps across the wage distribution). Using longitudinal survey data from Germany, the UK, and Australia, I combine unconditional quantile regressions with wage gap decompositions to identify the effect of personality traits on wage gaps. The results suggest that the impact of personality traits on wage gaps increases across the wage distribution in all countries. Personality traits explain up to 14.5% of the overall gender wage gap. However, controlling for personality traits does not lead to a significant reduction of unexplained wage gaps in most cases.
    Keywords: Non-cognitive skills, personality traits, unconditional quantile regression, gender wage gap, glass ceiling
    JEL: C21 J16 J31
    Date: 2018
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp965&r=gen

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