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on Gender |
| By: | Theodoropoulos, Nikolaos (University of Cyprus); Forth, John (Cass Business School); Bryson, Alex (University College London) |
| Abstract: | Using matched employer-employee data from the 2004 and 2011 Workplace Employment Relations Surveys (WERS) for Britain we find a raw gender wage gap (GWG) in hourly wages of around 0.18-0.21 log points. The regression-adjusted gap is around half that. However, the GWG declines substantially with the increasing share of female managers in the workplace. The gap closes because women's wages rise with the share female managers in the workplace while men's wages fall. Panel and instrumental variables estimates suggest the share of female managers in the workplace has a causal impact in reducing the GWG. The role of female managers in closing the GWG is more pronounced when employees are paid for performance, consistent with the proposition that women are more likely to be paid equitably when managers have discretion in the way they reward performance and those managers are women. These findings suggest a stronger presence of women in managerial positions can help tackle the GWG. |
| Keywords: | gender wage gap, female managers, performance pay |
| JEL: | J16 J31 M52 M54 |
| Date: | 2019–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12657&r=all |
| By: | Bizopoulou, Aspasia |
| Abstract: | I provide evidence that task use at work by men and women in the same occupations is significantly different. The observed difference can account for the within-occupational gender-wage gap that is prevalent in many developed countries. Using data for thirteen European countries, I find that women consistently report spending less time than men on specific job tasks. The effect is exacerbated with fertility and selection into the labour force, however neither mechanism can completely account for the observed differences. The difference is also not accounted for by the type of occupations in which women are employed, nor their working hours and it is not driven by measurement error. Similarly to studies for the US and Australia, I find that a large portion of the gender wage-gap is found among individuals employed in the same occupational titles. However, controlling for both occupations and task use in an wage equation accounts for the entirety of the within-occupational gender wage-gap, for all countries in the sample. |
| Keywords: | task approach, gender wage-gap, occupations, Labour markets and education, J16, J24, J31, |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fer:wpaper:124&r=all |
| By: | Nava Ashraf; Alexia Delfino; Edward L. Glaeser |
| Abstract: | Commerce requires trust, but trust is difficult when one group consistently fears expropriation by another. If men have a comparative advantage at violence and there is little rule-of-law, then unequal bargaining power can lead women to segregate into low-return industries and avoid entrepreneurship altogether. In this paper, we present a model of female entrepreneurship and rule of law that predicts that women will only start businesses when they have both formal legal protection and informal bargaining power. The model's predictions are supported both in cross-national data and with a new census of Zambian manufacturers. In Zambia, female entrepreneurs collaborate less, learn less from fellow entrepreneurs, earn less and segregate into industries with more women, but gender differences are ameliorated when women have access to adjudicating institutions, such as Lusaka's “Market Chiefs” who are empowered to adjudicate small commercial disputes. We experimentally induce variation in local institutional quality in an adapted trust game, and find that this also reduces the gender gap in trust and economic activity. |
| JEL: | J16 K40 O15 R12 |
| Date: | 2019–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:26366&r=all |
| By: | Afridi, Farzana (Indian Statistical Institute); Bishnu, Monisankar (Indian Statistical Institute); Mahajan, Kanika (Ashoka University) |
| Abstract: | We highlight the role of home productivity in explaining the gender gap in labor force participation (LFP), and the non-monotonic relationship of women's LFP with their education in developing countries (India) in contrast to the developed economies (United Kingdom, U.K.). We construct a model of couples' time allocation decisions allowing for both market and home productivity to improve with own education. Our theoretical predictions match the data for India at low levels of women's education but over-predict labor supply at higher levels, unlike the U.K.. Incorporating constraints imposed by social norms regarding the gendered division of labor shows that norms can act as a binding constraint, producing much smaller increases in women's labor supply to market work at higher education levels in transition economies. Our analysis suggests that home productivity, along with social norms regarding couples' time allocation, can be critical determinants of women's labor supply in developing countries. |
| Keywords: | women's labor supply, social norms, home production, education, India, U.K. |
| JEL: | E24 J22 J16 |
| Date: | 2019–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12666&r=all |
| By: | Riise, Julie (Department of Economics, University of Bergen); Willage, Barton (Department of Economics, Louisiana State University); Willen, Alexander (Dept. of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration) |
| Abstract: | We use random assignment of general practitioners (GPs) to provide the first evidence on the effects of female role models in childhood on the long-run educational outcomes of girls. We find that girls who are exposed to female GPs in childhood are significantly more likely to sort into traditionally male-dominated education programs in high school, most notably STEMM. These effects persist as females enter college and select majors. We also find strong positive effects on educational performance throughout their academic careers, suggesting that female role models in childhood improve education matches of girls. The effects we identify are significantly larger for high-ability girls with low educated parents, suggesting that female role models may improve intergenerational mobility and narrow the gifted gap for disadvantaged girls. |
| Keywords: | Role Models; STEMM; Gender Gap |
| JEL: | I20 I24 J24 |
| Date: | 2019–10–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:nhheco:2019_018&r=all |
| By: | Schran, Felix (University of Bonn and IZA) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates to what extent changes in the returns to occupational skill and declining occupational segregation have reduced wage inequality between men and women. As a first pass, I find that roughly 65% of the decline in the gender wage gap between 1985 and 2010 can be explained by a reduction in occupational segregation between the genders. The remaining 35% are explained by shifts in occupational wages which increased within occupations important for female employment, and declined in many occupations important for male employment such as producing occupations. Motivated by the central of Böhm et al. (2019) that average wages do not move as much as skill prices, I reestimate the part of the declining wage gap attributed to changes in (selection corrected) skill prices. The impact of movements in skill prices on the reduction in gender wage inequality was roughly 13 percentage points larger than the impact of changes in average wages alone. Similar findings hold when decomposing the rise in the proportion of women at higher percentiles of the wage distribution and vice versa for lower percentiles. This underscores the importance of accounting for selection effects in decompositions. |
| Keywords: | gender wage gap, inequality, Roy model, returns to skill, occupational choice |
| JEL: | J16 J31 J24 |
| Date: | 2019–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12661&r=all |
| By: | Datta, Sandip (City Montessori School); Kingdon, Geeta G. (University College London) |
| Abstract: | This paper asks whether gender bias in education expenditure in rural India fell over the two-decade period from 1995 to 2014. We find that instead of falling over time, the channel through which gender bias is practiced changed dramatically over the 20 years. Secondly, the paper demonstrates the usefulness of distinguishing between the two potential channels of gender bias, namely bias in the school enrolment decision, and bias in the conditional educational expenditure decision, rather than in the single unconditional education expenditure decision; this distinction is shown to be important because gender bias in the enrolment decision has greatly fallen but bias in the conditional expenditure decision has significantly risen over time. Thirdly, we find that individual child level data has much greater power to detect gender bias in education spending, compared to household level data. Lastly, household fixed effects analysis shows that the observed gender biases in education spending are a within-household phenomenon in rural India. |
| Keywords: | gender bias, education expenditure, education and gender, India |
| JEL: | I24 I24 |
| Date: | 2019–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12671&r=all |
| By: | Azam, Mehtabul (Oklahoma State University); Han, Luyi (Oklahoma State University) |
| Abstract: | Although, the male labor force participation rate is comparable in China and India, female labor force participation rate remains very low in India. In this paper, we examine the factors responsible for the difference in female labor force participation rate between the two countries by carrying out decomposition exercise at three points of time covering two decades. We find that the differences in female labor force participation rate are not explained by the differences in characteristics across the two countries in each of the three year studied. The differences in returns to these characteristics explain most of the differences in participation rate. |
| Keywords: | female labor force, China, India, oaxaca-blinder decomposition |
| JEL: | J16 J82 |
| Date: | 2019–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12681&r=all |
| By: | Diederik Boertien; Philipp M. Lersch |
| Abstract: | Objective: To document gender differences in how economic wealth changes following the dissolution of marriage and cohabitation in Germany. Background: Wealth can be an important resource to deal with the adverse economic consequences of union dissolution. Marital property regimes usually ensure that both partners receive a share of the couples’ wealth following a divorce. The dissolution of cohabiting unions is not governed by such rules in most countries, including Germany, which may lead to a more unequal division of wealth following the dissolution of cohabitation as compared to marriage. Method: The analysis consists of multivariable fixed-effects regression models based on longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (N = 6,388 individuals) for the years 2002 to 2017. Results: Changes in wealth are relatively similar for men and women after the dissolution of marriage. The dissolution of cohabiting unions is related to losses in wealth for women, but not for men. Controlling for post-dissolution processes, gender inequality increases after the dissolution of cohabitations. Conclusion: Union dissolution is associated with wealth losses. The legal protection of the economically weaker spouse in marriage prevents gender inequality in these wealth losses. Lacking such legal protection, cohabitation is associated with gender inequality in the consequences of dissolution. |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp1054&r=all |