|
on Gender |
|
Issue of 2023‒10‒16
six papers chosen by Jan Sauermann, Institutet för Arbetsmarknads- och Utbildningspolitisk Utvärdering |
| By: | Sergiu Burlacu; Dominique Cappelletti; Sonia Marzadro; Alessandro Tondini |
| Abstract: | Through a vignette study in Italian, we show that using the feminine job title negatively impacts how female lawyers are perceived by other professionals. 227 respondents were presented with hypothetical legal issues and shown several realistic profiles of male and female lawyers, with varying professional characteristics, and then asked to indicate how likely they would be to contact each of the given profiles for assistance with the legal issue. We randomly varied whether all the profiles of female lawyers for a given respondent were presented with the predominantly used masculine term - avvocato - or with the feminine term - avvocata. We find that, ceteris paribus, female profiles with the feminine term get lower scores by 0.36 (out of 10, -5%, -0.16SD). The downgrade is stronger among women respondents. The magnitude of the effect is large relative to the effect of other characteristics varied randomly in the profiles, such as work experience or other quality signals. |
| Keywords: | gender language, gender markedness, job titles, vignette study |
| JEL: | J16 C93 J44 |
| Date: | 2023–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fbk:wpaper:2023-06&r=gen |
| By: | Chaza Abou Daher; Erica M. Field; Kendal M. Swanson; Kate H. Vyborny |
| Abstract: | Billions of women still face legal barriers to economic inclusion, yet it is unclear whether lifting these barriers is sufficient to enhance their economic participation. We conduct a field experiment to quantify the impact of a major legal reform - the lifting of the Saudi women's driving ban - on women's employment by randomizing rationed spaces in driver's training. Two years later, women in the treatment group are 61% more likely to drive, 19% more likely to leave the house unchaperoned, and 35% more likely to be employed. However, they are also 19% more likely to require permission to make purchases. These patterns vary systematically with marital status: although physical mobility increases for all women, treatment effects on employment are only observed among never-married and widowed women, who negotiate employment with their fathers. Married and divorced women with children, over whom husbands and ex-husbands have leverage, actually exit the labor force and experience decreased spending autonomy. We posit that these patterns reflect differences in male family members' support for women's employment. They provide evidence that men's resistance to wives' employment poses a binding constraint to female labor force participation when legal restrictions are relaxed, but also that men are more open to granting their daughters economic rights, as has been posited in the literature. The results underscore the importance of intra-household responses to gender reforms, which have the potential to counteract legal gains in women's freedoms, and help explain why potential economic gains from lifting discriminatory laws often go unrealized. |
| JEL: | J12 J16 J22 |
| Date: | 2023–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:31715&r=gen |
| By: | Tani, Massimiliano (University of New South Wales); Wen, Xin (University of New South Wales); Cheng, Zhiming (University of New South Wales) |
| Abstract: | We explore the link between child gender and household financial decisions within a cultural environment that strongly favours having a son. Using data from the China Household Finance Survey (CHFS), we find that the presence of a daughter is associated with a lower saving rate. This is consistent with the hypothesis that such families, facing a less competitive marriage market thanks to the relative under-supply of unmarried women, have lower incentives to raise their female heirs' marital prospects by accumulating bigger asset pools. The negative correlation becomes more pronounced as the daughter approaches marriageable age. This study expands existing research by examining the impact of child gender on financial decisions while controlling for unobserved time-invariant heterogeneity thanks to the panel nature of the CHFS. |
| Keywords: | daughter, household savings, marriage market |
| JEL: | D14 D10 J12 J16 |
| Date: | 2023–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16440&r=gen |
| By: | Süß, Karolin |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the effect of inheritance customs for agricultural land on household formation and gender disparities. Under partible inheritance, agricultural land is split equally among all siblings. Under impartible inheritance, only one descendant inherits the entire land. Using a spatial regression discontinuity design, I find that partible inheritance has a persistent negative effect on household size but not fertility. It has a positive impact on today's female political representation and a negative effect on the gender gap in employment. Fathers also have a lower probability of making use of parental leave benefits but receive them for a longer time. |
| Keywords: | Inheritance, agriculture, gender disparities |
| JEL: | J16 N53 R23 |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:rwirep:1038&r=gen |
| By: | Jan‐luca Hennig (AMSE - Aix-Marseille Sciences Economiques - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - ECM - École Centrale de Marseille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Balazs Stadler (OCDE - Organisation de Coopération et de Développement Economiques = Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) |
| Abstract: | We study how firm premia influence the gender wage gap for 21 European countries. We use a quadrennial harmonized matched employer-employee dataset to estimate gender-specific firm premia. Subsequently, we decompose the firm-specific wage premia differential into withinand between-firm components. On average, the former accounts mainly for the decline in the pay gap between 2002 and 2014. We pay particular attention to the development of each component by age group, and find that the between-firm component is associated with an increase in the gender pay gap over age. The decomposition of firm premia allows us to investigate how institutional settings relate to each component. We associate the within-firm component with collective bargaining at the national and firm levels, and the between-firm component with family policies. Decentralized wage bargaining is associated with a larger within-firm pay gap, whereas family policies incentivizing women to return to employment after family formation are linked to a smaller between-firm component. |
| Date: | 2023–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04171877&r=gen |
| By: | Maximilian Späth (University of Potsdam); Daniel Goller (Centre for Research in Economics of Education, University of Bern, Swiss Institute for Empirical Economic Research, University of St. Gallen) |
| Abstract: | Economic agents often irrationally base their decision-making on irrelevant information. This research analyzes whether men and women react to futile information about past outcomes. For this purpose, we run a laboratory experiment (Study 1) and use field data (Study 2). In both studies, the behavior of men is consistent with falsely assumed negative autocorrelation, often referred to as gambler’s fallacy Women’s behavior aligns with falsely assumed positive autocorrelation, a notion of the hot hand fallacy. On the aggregate, the two fallacies cancel out. Even when individuals are, on average, rational, the biases in the decision-making of subgroups might cause inefficient outcomes. In a mediation analysis, we find that a) the agents stated perceived probabilities of future outcomes are not blurred by irrelevant information and b) about 40 % of the observed biases are driven by differences in the perceived attractiveness of available choices caused by the irrelevant information. |
| Keywords: | hot hand fallacy, gambler’s fallacy, gender, irrelevant information |
| JEL: | D81 J16 C91 |
| Date: | 2023–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pot:cepadp:67&r=gen |