nep-gen New Economics Papers
on Gender
Issue of 2019‒07‒08
six papers chosen by
Jan Sauermann
Stockholms universitet

  1. DIY or Ask Someone Nice? By Bosworth, Steven J.; Clot, Sophie; Della Giusta, Marina
  2. Dynamics of Female Labor Force Participation and Welfare with Multiple Social Reference Groups By Mihaela Pintea
  3. Are Referees and Editors in Economics Gender Neutral? By David Card; Stefano DellaVigna; Patricia Funk; Nagore Iriberri
  4. Global Influences on Gender Inequality: Evidence from Female Employment in Korea By Jaerim Choi; Theresa Greaney
  5. Does the Early Retirement Policy Really Benefit Women? By Hyun Lee; Kai Zhao; Fei Zou
  6. Identity and Learning: a study on the effect of student-teacher gender interaction on student's learning By Sukanta Bhattacharya; Aparajita Dasgupta; Kumarjit Mandal; Anirban Mukherjee

  1. By: Bosworth, Steven J. (Kiel Institute for the World Economy); Clot, Sophie (University of Reading); Della Giusta, Marina (University of Reading)
    Abstract: We design an experiment to assess the effect of beliefs about gender in selecting oneself or a designated person to carry out a volunteering task. Participants in a volunteering task are given the option of selecting oneself or nominating someone from their group, and the group is described to them in terms of cartoons depicting women and men displaying different emotional states: happy, neutral or unhappy. We introduce a treatment consisting of gender priming, in which we elicit gender views with a set of 12 questions routinely used in social attitudes surveys to determine the degree of sexism of respondents. We find that women offer to volunteer more than men, and that while neither the emotional affect or the gender of the nominated person per se influence designation, men in the unprimed condition are more likely to choose the happy female face. Gender priming reduces designations and increases volunteering for all, but the treatment effect differs across genders: though both women and men are likelier to volunteer when primed, the men nominate fewer women across the spectrum of moods once gender primed, and the effect is stronger for the more sexist men, whilst women are reducing their delegation more uniformly once gender-primed, never nominate the neutral woman, and nominate the happy woman more often the less sexist they are. Our results provide evidence of both stereotyping by men and self-stereotyping by women: men are happy to pick any woman for the volunteering, though they display a preference for the happy woman, whilst women are both more sensitive to the mood displayed and prefer to pick women who might be happy to do it the less sexist they are. When it comes to actually carrying out the volunteering task, we find that, conditional on volunteering, women are more likely to actually follow through than men.
    Keywords: facial emotions, gender priming, stereotyping, volunteering
    JEL: J16 D91 C93 J23
    Date: 2019–06
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12406&r=all
  2. By: Mihaela Pintea (Department of Economics, Florida International University)
    Abstract: I develop a model with status concerns to analyze how different economic factors affect female labor participation and welfare, as well as average household incomes and wages. Reductions in the price of domestic goods and increases in female wages have positive effects on female participation. Increases in male wages have different effects on female participation depending on whether they affect female wages or not. Events that lead to increases in female participation are usually associated with decreases in the welfare of stay-at-home wives but are not necessarily associated with increases in welfare of working wives. Allowing for part-time work can lead to an increase in overall female labor force participation, but some women that would have worked full-time end up working part-time. If female wages are endogenous, an increase in male wages leads to an increase in the female participation rate even if it is not associated with a decrease in the gender wage gap. The positive feedback of increased female participation on their wages can lead to hysteresis of dual equilibria of high and low female labor force participation and a discontinuous transition between these equilibria.
    Keywords: Female Labor Force Participation, Relative Income, Gender Wage Gap
    JEL: D62 E24 J16
    Date: 2019–06
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fiu:wpaper:1901&r=all
  3. By: David Card; Stefano DellaVigna; Patricia Funk; Nagore Iriberri
    Abstract: We study the role of gender in the evaluation of economic research using submissions to four leading journals. We find that referee gender has no effect on the relative assessment of female- versus male-authored papers, suggesting that any differential biases of male referees are negligible. To determine whether referees as a whole impose different standards for female authors, we compare citations for female and male-authored papers, holding constant referee evaluations and other characteristics. We find that female-authored papers receive about 25% more citations than observably similar male-authored papers. Editors largely follow the referees, resulting in a 6 percentage point lower probability of a revise and resubmit verdict for female-authored papers relative to a citation-maximizing benchmark. In their desk rejection decisions, editors treat female authors more favorably, though they still impose a higher bar than would be implied by citation-maximization. We find no differences in the informativeness of female versus male referees, or in the weight that editors place on the recommendations of female versus male referees. We also find no differences in editorial delays for female versus male-authored papers.
    JEL: J16
    Date: 2019–06
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:25967&r=all
  4. By: Jaerim Choi (University of Hawaii at Manoa); Theresa Greaney (University of Hawaii at Manoa)
    Abstract: Do multinational enterprises (MNEs) from more gender-equal countries bring gender-equal employment practices with them or do they adopt the gender norms of a less gender-equal host country as part of their assimilation strategy? Using firm-level panel data for Korea, a country with low gender equality, we find suggestive evidence that MNEs from more gender-equal countries have higher female shares of employment and a higher likelihood of a female CEO of their Korean affiliate. Then, using difference-in-differences and nearest-neighbor matching techniques, we uncover causal evidence that MNEs bring their country of origin’s gender norms in employment with them. Firms that switch from Korean to foreign ownership report 2 to 12 percentage points higher female shares of permanent main-task workers at firm headquarters compared with firms that remain under domestic ownership. Lastly, we quantify that 1 to 7 percent of the increase in firm-level total factor productivity caused by foreign acquisition can be attributed to workforce reorganization that may reduce gender-based misallocations of talent.
    Keywords: Gender inequality, Foreign ownership
    JEL: J16 F23
    Date: 2019–06
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hai:wpaper:201908&r=all
  5. By: Hyun Lee (University of Connecticut); Kai Zhao (University of Connecticut); Fei Zou (University of Connecticut)
    Abstract: China’s mandatory retirement policy requires most female workers to retire five years earlier than their male counterparts. The conventional wisdom behind this policy is that it benefits women by relieving them from work earlier and providing them with more years of public pension benefits than men. However, is the early retirement policy really welfare-improving for women? In this paper, we quantitatively evaluate the welfare consequence of China’s gender-specific mandatory retirement policy using a calibrated Overlapping-Generation model with heterogeneous agents and incomplete markets. We find that the early mandatory retirement reduces welfare for women. An important reason behind this welfare result is that China’s public pension benefits are only partially indexed to growth, and therefore women who retire earlier also benefit less from economic growth than men. Our quantitative results suggest that equalizing the retirement age across gender can generate a welfare gain for both men and women.
    Keywords: Social Security, China, Mandatary Retirement, Gender
    JEL: E20 E60 H30
    Date: 2019–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uct:uconnp:2019-12&r=all
  6. By: Sukanta Bhattacharya (Department of Economics, Ashoka University); Aparajita Dasgupta (Department of Economics, Ashoka University); Kumarjit Mandal (Department of Economics, Ashoka University); Anirban Mukherjee (Department of Economics, Ashoka University)
    Abstract: In this paper we examine whether students' and teachers' social identity play any role in the learning outcome of the students. More importantly, we ask if a student bene fits by learning from a teacher of the same gender. Unlike the existing literature which explains such interaction in terms of role model based effect, we explain such interaction in terms of gender based sorting across private and public schools. Our results are driven by two critical difference between male and female members. For male and female teachers, the difference comes from their differential opportunity costs of teaching in schools at remote locations. For students, the difference between male and female members comes from the differential return to their human capital investment by parents - where for girls, a lower fraction of the return comes to their parental families after they are married following patriarchal norm. These factors create a sorting pattern which leads to an impact of gender matching. We then test our theoretical results using survey data collected from Andhra Pradesh.
    Keywords: education; gender; learning; student-teacher interaction; identity
    Date: 2019–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ash:wpaper:1021&r=all

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