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on Gender |
| By: | Carlos F. Avenancio-León; Leslie Sheng Shen |
| Abstract: | We propose an "asset channel of inequality" that contributes to gender inequities. We establish that industries with low (high) gender pay gaps have high (low) shares of tangible assets. Because asset tangibility determines firms' ability to collateralize assets and borrow, credit conditions affect industries differently. We show that credit expansions further reduce the pay gap in low-pay-gap industries while leaving it unaffected in high-pay-gap industries, making low-pay-gap industries more appealing for women. Consequently, gender sorting across industries increases, which then cements gender roles and accentuates workplace gender bias. Ultimately, credit expansions help women "swim upstream" but also reinforce glass ceilings. |
| Keywords: | Gender Pay Gap; Credit Markets; Asset Tangibility; Equitable Finance |
| JEL: | J71 O16 |
| Date: | 2021–08–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedgif:1322&r= |
| By: | Farré, Lídia (University of Barcelona); Ortega, Francesc (Queens College, CUNY) |
| Abstract: | This paper provides new evidence supporting that gender differences in post-graduate educational choices contribute to the glass ceiling in the labor market. We study the decision to pursue an advanced degree form an internationally renowned institution, which greatly facilitates access to top jobs. Relying on a unique dataset on applications to a highly selective program that provides merit-based graduate fellowships to Spanish students, we show that women apply for the fellowships at lower rates than observationally equivalent male graduates. We also implemented a large-scale survey on current college students and show that female college graduates have stronger family ties than males, which restricts their geographical mobility and has a negative effect on their educational aspirations. Importantly, the previous pattern is reversed in STEM fields: female graduates in STEM participate in the fellowship program at equal or higher rates than comparable males. In fact, we show that female STEM students originate from more educated families, have higher academic ability, and higher educational and earnings aspirations than women in other fields. |
| Keywords: | gender, post-graduate, fellowships, family ties, geographic mobility |
| JEL: | J3 J7 |
| Date: | 2021–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp14561&r= |
| By: | Afridi, Farzana (Indian Statistical Institute); Mahajan, Kanika (Ashoka University); Sangwan, Nikita (Indian Statistical Institute) |
| Abstract: | Climate change has increased rainfall uncertainty, leading to greater production risks in agriculture. We examine the gender-differentiated labor impacts of droughts resulting from lower precipitation using unique individual-level panel data for agricultural households in India over half a decade. Accounting for unobserved heterogeneity in individual responses, we find that women's workdays fall by 11% more than men's when a drought occurs, driven by former's lack of diversification to the non-farm sector. Women are less likely to work outside their village and migrate relative to men in response to droughts, and are consequently unable to cope fully with the adverse agricultural productivity shock. Our findings can be explained by social costs emanating from gender norms that constrain women's access to non-farm work opportunities. The results highlight the gendered impact of climate change, potentially exacerbating extant gender gaps in the labor market. |
| Keywords: | climate, drought, agriculture, labor, gender |
| JEL: | Q54 J16 J43 J60 |
| Date: | 2021–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp14568&r= |
| By: | Jonas Jessen |
| Abstract: | This paper examines how culture impacts within-couple gender inequality. Exploiting the setting of Germany's division and reunification, I compare child penalties of couples socialised in a more gender-egalitarian culture (East Germany) to those in a gender-traditional culture (West Germany). Using a household panel, I show that the long-run child penalty on the female income share is 26.9 percentage points in West German couples, compared to 15.5 in East German couples. I additionally show that among women in West Germany the arrival of a child leads to a greater increase in housework and a larger share of child care responsibilities than among women in the East. A battery of robustness checks confirms that differences between East and West socialised couples are not driven by current location, economic factors, day care availability or other smooth regional gradients. I add to the main findings by using time-use diary data from the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and reunified Germany, comparing parents with childless couples of similar age. This provides a rare insight into gender inequality in the GDR and allows to compare the effect of children in the GDR to the effects in East and West Germany after reunification. Lastly, I show that attitudes towards maternal employment are more egalitarian among East Germans, but that the arrival of children leads to more traditional attitudes for both East and West Germans. The findings confirm that socialisation has a strong impact on child penalties and thus on gender inequality as a whole. |
| Keywords: | cultural norms, gender inequality, child penalty |
| JEL: | J16 J22 D1 |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp1957&r= |
| By: | Federico Huneeus; Conrad Miller; Christopher Neilson; Seth Zimmerman |
| Abstract: | A growing body of evidence shows that differences in firm-specific pay premiums account for a large share of the gender pay gap. This paper asks how a common form of pre-labor market skill specialization, college major, mediates access to high-paying firms, and what this means for the gender earnings gap. Using employer-employee tax data from Chile matched to educational records, we show that differences in college major account for more than two-thirds of the firm contribution to the gender earnings gap among college admits. Degrees in Technology, which are numerous, male-dominated, and associated with high firm premiums, drive these effects. |
| Date: | 2021–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:chb:bcchwp:917&r= |
| By: | Peter J. Kuhn; Kailing Shen |
| Abstract: | When employers’ explicit gender requests were unexpectedly removed from a Chinese job board overnight, pools of successful applicants became more integrated: women’s (men’s) share of call-backs to jobs that had requested men (women) rose by 63 (146) percent. The removal ‘worked’ in this sense because it generated a large increase in gender-mismatched applications, and because those applications were treated surprisingly well by employers. The removal had little or no effect on aggregate matching frictions. The job titles that were integrated however, were not the most gendered ones, and were disproportionately lower-wage jobs. |
| JEL: | J16 J63 J71 |
| Date: | 2021–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:29116&r= |
| By: | Zhang, Lin; Shang, Yuanyuan; HUANG, Ying; Sivertsen, Gunnar |
| Abstract: | Peer review of scientific manuscripts before publication is essential in scholarly publishing, and most active researchers hold relationships with a number of journals as both an author and a reviewer. There have been several studies focusing on gender balance in academic research and authorship, but fewer studies on our role as reviewers. Publons is a commercial website run by Clarivate Analytics that allows researchers to track and verify their peer review activities and be recognized for it. The platform features over 2 million researchers and 6.9 million reviews for more than 5,000 partnered journals, listing the most active reviewers as “top reviewers”. Our study focuses on gender representation in this ‘top reviewer’ group while also looking at the countries, regions and research fields they represent, as well as the relationship between their roles as authors and reviewers. The results show that male reviewers dominate in almost all countries, regions, and research fields. Male reviewers generally contribute to review work more frequently than females; however, female reviewers write longer reviews. The correlations between reviewing activity and research activity are generally weak overall and within specific research fields. This may reflect that active reviewers are not necessarily the most productive researchers in their fields. What clearly emerges from our results is the need for more concern over gender representation in the quality assurance and gatekeeping functions of scholarly publishing. |
| Date: | 2021–08–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:4z6w8&r= |
| By: | Mireia Borrell-Porta; Valentina Contreras; Joan Costa-i-Font |
| Abstract: | Does employment during motherhood change peoples preferences? We study whether the experience of employment during motherhood exerts an effect on attitudes towards gender norms, and more specifically, attitudes towards the impact of women’s employment on children’s wellbeing (which proxy traditional gender attitudes). Drawing on a large, representative and longitudinal data and an instrumental variable (IV) strategy that exploits a Bartik instrument for employment, we find that, that non-mothers who work and mothers who do not work are more likely to agree that pre-school children suffer if mothers work, which we proxy as having more traditional views. However, this is not the case when women experience both working and motherhood it does not significantly change women's attitudes. These results suggest that exogenous changes in employment during motherhood confirm individuals priors, and point towards the critical role of early life value formation. That is, employment during motherhood is not a “value changing experience” but rather a “value preserving experience”. Hence, the so-called ‘motherhood penalty’ cannot be fully explained by a change in attitudes after employment during motherhood. |
| Keywords: | attitude formation, value changing experiences, confirmation bias, women employment attitudes, women employment after maternity, later life attitudes, children |
| JEL: | Z10 J22 |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_9222&r= |
| By: | Karla Cordova; Markus M. Grabka; Eva Sierminska |
| Abstract: | We examine the gender wealth gap with a focus on pension wealth and statutory pension rights. By taking into account employment characteristics of women and men, we are able and identify the extent to which the redistributive effect of pension rights reduces the gap. The empirical basis of this examination is the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), which is one of the few datasets where information on wealth as well as on pension entitlements is collected at the individual level. Pension wealth data is available for 2012 only. Individual level wealth data allows to analyze the gender wealth gap between women and men across all households. Due to the longitudinal character of the underlying data, detailed information on employment trajectories and family related events (such as childbirth, marriage, divorce, widowhood, etc.), which can have an effect on (public) pension entitlements are considered. |
| Keywords: | Gender Wealth Gap, pension entitlements, Germany, redistribution, SOEP |
| JEL: | H55 D31 J16 |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp1141&r= |