nep-gen New Economics Papers
on Gender
Issue of 2018‒10‒15
nine papers chosen by
Jan Sauermann
Stockholms universitet

  1. Gender and Dynastic Political Recruitment By Folke, Olle; Rickne, Johanna; Smith, Daniel M.
  2. Gender Wage Gap in Online Gig Economy and Gender Differences in Job Preferences By Chen Liang; Yili Hong; Bin Gu; Jing Peng
  3. Two Worlds of Female Labour: Gender Wage Inequality in Western Europe, 1300-1800 By Alexandra M. de Pleijt; Jan Luiten van Zanden
  4. Labor Market Effects of Reducing the Gender Gap in Parental Leave Entitlements By Elena Del Rey; Maria Racionero; Jose I. Silva
  5. Is gender in the eye of the beholder? Identifying cultural attitudes with art auction prices By Adams, Renée; Kräussl, Roman; Navone, Marco; Verwijmeren, Patrick
  6. TEAMWORK, LEADERSHIP AND GENDER By Maria De Paola; Francesca Gioia; Vincenzo Scoppa
  7. Why do young people make atypical gender-related study choices? An analysis of French master’s graduates By Magali Jaoul-Grammare
  8. Gender Identity, Co-Working Spouses and Relative Income within Households By Zinovyeva, Natalia; Tverdostup, Maryna
  9. Transitioning towards more equality? Wealth gender differences and the changing role of explanatory factors over time By Sierminska, Eva; Piazzalunga, Daniela; Grabka, Markus M.

  1. By: Folke, Olle (Department of Government); Rickne, Johanna (SOFI, Stockholm University); Smith, Daniel M. (Department of Government)
    Abstract: Throughout history and across countries, women appear more likely than men to enter politics at the heels of a close relative or spouse. We provide a theoretical explanation for this dynastic bias in gender representation that integrates political selection with informational inequalities across social groups. Legislator-level data from twelve democracies and candidate-level data from Ireland and Sweden support the idea that dynastic ties help women overcome a vote disadvantage in elections, and that the quality of predecessors may be more relevant in the recruitment of female successors than their male counterparts. Moreover, the role of informational inequalities in explaining the dynastic bias in gender representation is empirically supported by a declining gap over time, and following the introduction of a gender quota in Sweden.
    Keywords: Dynasties; Gender representation; Gender quota; Sweden; Ireland
    JEL: D72
    Date: 2018–09–17
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:1233&r=gen
  2. By: Chen Liang (Department of Information Systems, W.P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University, USA); Yili Hong (Department of Information Systems, W.P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University, USA); Bin Gu (Department of Information Systems, W.P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University, USA); Jing Peng (Department of Operations and Information Management (OPIM), School of Business, University of Connecticut, USA)
    Abstract: We explore whether there is a gender wage gap in the gig economy and examine to what degree gender differences in job application strategy could account for the gap. With a large-scale dataset from a leading online labor market, we show that females only earn around 81.4% of the hourly wage of their male counterparts. We further investigate three main aspects of job application strategy, namely bid timing, job selection, and avoidance of monitoring. After matching males with females using the propensity score matching method, we find that females tend to bid later and prefer jobs with a lower budget. In particular, the observed gender difference in bid timing can explain 7.6% of the difference in hourly wage, which could account for 41% of the gender wage gap (i.e. 18.6%) observed by us. Moreover, taking advantage of a natural experiment wherein the platform rolled out the monitoring system, we find that females are less willing to bid for monitored jobs than males. To further quantify the economic value of the gender difference in avoidance of monitoring, we run a field experiment on Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT), which suggests that females tend to have a higher willingness to pay (WTP) for the avoidance of monitoring. The gender difference in WTP for the avoidance of monitoring can explain 8.1% of the difference in hourly wage, namely, 44% of the observed gender wage gap. Overall, our study reveals the important role of job application strategies in the persistent gender wage gap.
    Keywords: gender wage gap; job application strategy; gig economy; quasi-natural experiment
    JEL: J16 J31 J24 D31
    Date: 2018–09
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:net:wpaper:1803&r=gen
  3. By: Alexandra M. de Pleijt (University of Oxford, Department of Economics); Jan Luiten van Zanden (Utrecht University)
    Abstract: It is generally acknowledged that the degree to which women participate in labour markets and how they are remunerated are important determinants of female autonomy that may also affect their demographic behaviour. Such links have been discussed in the literature about the “European Marriage Pattern” (EMP). In order to bring about the conditions for female autonomy of the EMP (in which women have a large say in the decision when and with whom they marry), women should have had access to the labour market and have earned a decent wage. This is clearly affected by the gender wage gap and the possibility that women earn their own living and have the option to remain single. But so far no attempt has been made to compare the wages of women across Europe over the long run. In this paper we therefore provide evidence on the wages of unskilled women for seven European countries between 1300 and 1800. Our evidence shows that there were two worlds of female labour. In the South of Europe women earned about 50% of the wage of unskilled male labourers. In the Northern and Western parts of Europe this gap was much smaller during late Medieval Period, but it increased dramatically between about 1500 and 1800.
    Keywords: Living standards, labour market, gender inequality, pre-industrial development
    JEL: N13 N33 J16
    Date: 2018–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hes:wpaper:0138&r=gen
  4. By: Elena Del Rey; Maria Racionero; Jose I. Silva
    Abstract: We explore the effect of parental leave entitlements for mothers and fathers on wages and unemployment rates. To do so we extend the labour search and matching model in Del Rey, Racionero and Silva (2017) to include two types of workers, males and females, who compete for the same jobs. We show that an increase in leave duration has an ambiguous effect both on job creation and wages. We identify the mechanisms underlying this ambiguity. Given the variety of possible final effects we calibrate the model for several countries (Denmark, France, Italy and Portugal) and simulate policy changes. In all countries considered an increase in the duration of either leave negatively affects job creation and the wage of the directly affected worker. As a result, both wages fall while unemployment rates increase in equilibrium. Finally, we explore the effect of closing the gender gap in leave duration and show that, since fathers tend to take the leave less often, increasing the duration of the male-specifc leave is less effective in closing the wage and unemployment gaps than decreasing the female-specific one.
    JEL: E24 J38
    Date: 2018–09
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:acb:cbeeco:2018-663&r=gen
  5. By: Adams, Renée; Kräussl, Roman; Navone, Marco; Verwijmeren, Patrick
    Abstract: In the secondary art market, artists play no active role. This allows us to isolate cultural influences on the demand for female artists' work from supply-side factors. Using 1.5 million auction transactions in 45 countries, we document a 47.6% gender discount in auction prices for paintings. The discount is higher in countries with greater gender inequality. In experiments, participants are unable to guess the gender of an artist simply by looking at a painting and they vary in their preferences for paintings associated with female artists. Women's art appears to sell for less because it is made by women.
    Keywords: Art,Auction,Gender,Culture,Bias
    JEL: Z11 J16 D44
    Date: 2018
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:cfswop:595&r=gen
  6. By: Maria De Paola; Francesca Gioia; Vincenzo Scoppa (Dipartimento di Economia, Statistica e Finanza "Giovanni Anania" - DESF, Università della Calabria)
    Abstract: We ran a field experiment to investigate whether individual performance in teams depends on the gender of the leader. About 430 students from an Italian University took an intermediate exam that was partly evaluated on the basis of teamwork. Students were randomly matched in teams of three and in each team we randomly chose a leader with the task of coordinating the work of the team. We find a positive and significant effect of female leadership on team performance. This effect is driven by the higher performance of team members in female led teams rather than due to an improvement in the leader’s performance. We also find that, in spite of the higher performance of female led teams, male members tend to evaluate female leaders as less effective, whereas female members are more sympathetic towards them.
    Keywords: Team, Leadership, Gender, Stereotypes, Randomized Experiment
    JEL: J16 M12 M54 C93
    Date: 2018–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:clb:wpaper:201801&r=gen
  7. By: Magali Jaoul-Grammare
    Abstract: Despite laws and educational reforms in favour of gender equality, in France both training courses and professions remain highly gendered. The educational system and the labour market continue to conform to stereotypes, and both girls and boys continue to base their educational choices on what society assigns their genders as areas of competence. However, about 10% of master’s graduates make atypical study choices, in the sense that they chose an orientation standardly chosen by the opposite gender. This paper proposes an empirical analysis of these ‘atypical’ students. Our results show that these individuals do not have specific profiles, either in terms of schooling background or social origin. By estimating a logistic regression, we highlight the importance of the expected returns and of the professional project in the atypical study choice. We also underline that although the unconventional choice allows a more rapid integration on the labour market and appears as a cost-effective solution for girls, it does not erase the wage inequalities between men and women.
    Keywords: Educational return, Gender-related study choice, Labour market integration.
    JEL: C25 I24 J24
    Date: 2018
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulp:sbbeta:2018-39&r=gen
  8. By: Zinovyeva, Natalia (Aalto University); Tverdostup, Maryna (University of Innsbruck)
    Abstract: Bertrand, Kamenica and Pan (2015) document that in the U.S. there is a sharp discontinuity to the right of 1/2 in the distribution of households according to the share of income earned by the wife, which they attribute to the existence of a gender identity norm postulating that a wife should earn less than her husband. We propose an alternative explanation for the existence of this discontinuity. We argue that any force that pushes some spouses towards equalizing their earnings, such as family businesses and co-working of spouses, creates a similar discontinuity. Using linked employer-employee data from Finland, we document the existence of a discontinuity of the same magnitude as in the U.S. and show that it can be fully explained by the earnings convergence of spouses who start working together. We also provide evidence suggesting that co-working spouses play an important role in explaining the discontinuity observed in the U.S.
    Keywords: co-working spouses, gender identity norms, spouses' relative earnings
    JEL: D10 J16 J21
    Date: 2018–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp11757&r=gen
  9. By: Sierminska, Eva; Piazzalunga, Daniela; Grabka, Markus M.
    Abstract: We investigate the explanatory factors that have contributed to changing wealth levels and the gender wealth gap in Germany over the period 2002-2012. In particular, we analyze the role of changes in labor supply, permanent income, portfolio composition, and marital status on wealth accumulation. Using individual level micro data from the German Socio-Economic Panel results show that real mean wealth levels for the working age population have been decreasing for both women and men since 2002 and that the wealth gap has decreased by 13.5% to 30.700€. We show that the increased participation of women in the labor market and their occupational structure had an increasing positive role on women’s wealth accumulation. Making use of the panel dimension in the data and of Oaxaca-Blinder and Firpo, Fortin, Lemieux decompositions, in comparison to previous analyses, a diminishing role of permanent income is observed, due both to a reduction in the gender difference in permanent income and in gender differences in its returns. Overall, the evidence points to more equal wealth accumulation both in terms of characteristics and returns.
    Keywords: Wealth differences,Gender,SOEP,decomposition,labor supply,occupations
    JEL: D31 D13
    Date: 2018
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:252&r=gen

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