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on Gender |
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Issue of 2024‒05‒20
six papers chosen by Jan Sauermann, Institutet för Arbetsmarknads- och Utbildningspolitisk Utvärdering |
| By: | Belinda Archibong; Peter Blair Henry |
| Abstract: | Using data from the largest online job portal in Nigeria, we document: (a) gender differences in salary offers for jobs, and (b) the response of (a) to recessions. Jobs in industries where the number of job applicants skews female, offer lower starting salaries than jobs in industries where applicants skew male. During Nigeria’s 2016 recession, overall job applications rose, but applications to jobs in industries that skew male increased more than applications to jobs in industries that skew female. Salary offers fell sharply for jobs in male-skewed industries compared to female-skewed industries. In accordance with this relative shift in applications, in 2016, the salary-offer gender gap almost disappeared. |
| JEL: | J16 J64 J71 J78 L86 O12 |
| Date: | 2024–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32366&r=gen |
| By: | Ingrid Haegele |
| Abstract: | Addressing female underrepresentation in leadership positions has become a key policy objective. However, little is known about the extent to which leadership appeals differently to women. Collecting new data from a large firm, I document that women are substantially less likely to apply for early-career promotions. Realized application patterns and large-scale surveys reveal the role of an understudied feature of promotions -- having to assume responsibility over a team -- which is less appealing to women. This gender difference is not accounted for by standard explanations, such as success likelihood or confidence, but is rather a product of common design features of leadership positions. |
| Date: | 2024–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2404.07750&r=gen |
| By: | Olga Alonso-Villar; Coral del Río |
| Abstract: | By building an entire counterfactual income distribution in which married/cohabiting male and female same-sex couple families and married/cohabiting different-sex couple families have the same composition in terms of education, race, age, presence of children, and geographical variables, we determine the differential effect of these factors to explain the position of each family type within the income distribution. We also explore the income sources from which intergroup income differences arise. This approach enables us to integrate the position of individuals in the labor market and their wellbeing in terms of family income (once the effects of the above variables are accounted for). Our analysis suggests that the sexual orientation wage disadvantage that men in same-sex couples experience coexists with a family income advantage (in both the actual and the counterfactual economy), which arises from the higher probability of two-earner couples among male same-sex couples and their gender wage advantage. However, these two features are not enough to protect male couples in the low tail of the income distribution, who have lower conditional earnings than married different-sex couple families do. As for female same-sex couple families, their position in the counterfactual income distribution seems to be strongly limited by the gender wage gap these women experience, which is not outweighed by the sexual orientation wage advantage they have and the higher probability of two-earner couples among these families. |
| Keywords: | Income distribution, same-sex couples, sexual minorities, LGBTQ+ |
| JEL: | D31 D63 J12 J15 J16 |
| Date: | 2024–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:vig:wpaper:2401&r=gen |
| By: | Stefan C. Wolter; Thea Zoellner |
| Abstract: | Despite numerous measures intended to enhance gender equality, gender-specific study and career choices remain a persistent concern for policymakers and academics globally. We contribute to the literature on gendered career choices by focusing on explicitly stated parental preferences for their children's occupations, using a large-scale randomized survey experiment with adults (N=5940) in Switzerland. The focus on parents (and hypothetical parents) is motivated by the observation that adolescents consistently mention their parents as the single most important factor influencing their career choices. The surveyed adults are presented with a realistic choice situation, in which their hypothetical daughter or son has been proposed two different training occupations. The pair of occupations presented to the adults is drawn from a random sample of 105 pairs of occupations, and the respondents are not informed about the gender distribution of the two occupations. Results show that adults are gender-neutral when advising a daughter but have a pronounced preference for male- dominated occupations when advising sons. Preferences are almost identical for parents and non-parents and across age cohorts of adults. |
| Keywords: | Gender, Occupational choice, Career advice, Vocational Education |
| JEL: | J24 J16 |
| Date: | 2024–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iso:educat:0216&r=gen |
| By: | Martina Zanella (Department of Economics, Trinity College Dublin) |
| Abstract: | Women are still under-represented and struggling to establish careers in traditionally male-dominated fields. Does minority status in and of itself create a barrier to women's success? Experiments suggest that under-representation exacerbates the detrimental effect of the negative stereotypes that often characterize women's ability in these fields. However, in real-world environments, these results might not hold. While lab experiments typically shut down the selection channel altogether, the choice to enter male-dominated fields is endogenous, and may in part be motivated by challenging these stereotypes. This paper assesses how minority status affects performance when selection is endogenous by studying the performance of 14, 000 students at an elite university across 16 departments, in a real-world setting that combines a choice with well-defined stereotypes - university major - with exogenous variation in peer identity - quasi-random allocation of students across class groups within the same course. The evidence indicates that those who go against stereotypes (e.g. women in math) do not suffer from being in the minority, but they impose negative externalities on those who select on stereotypes (e.g. men in math). In line with social identity considerations being incorporated into educational choices, the evidence points towards ex-ante "sensitivity" to social norms and preferences to engage with same-gender peers inducing students to select different majors and then reacting to the composition of the environment in a self-fulfilling way. |
| Keywords: | Occupational choices; gender stereotypes; minority status; peer effects in education |
| JEL: | D91 I24 J15 J16 J24 |
| Date: | 2024–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tcd:tcduee:tep0224&r=gen |
| By: | Christine L. Exley; Raymond Fisman; Judd B. Kessler; Louis-Pierre Lepage; Xiaomeng Li; Corinne Low; Xiaoyue Shan; Mattie Toma; Basit Zafar |
| Abstract: | We analyze data from two universities that allowed students to conceal grades from their transcripts during the Covid-19 pandemic. Across both institutions, we observe a significant and substantial gender concealment gap: women are less likely than men to conceal grades that would harm their GPA. We explore the robustness, drivers, and consequences of the concealment gap via rich data on student traits and course-level characteristics as well as complementary data from an experiment with real employers and a survey of impacted students. Our findings highlight how information-optional policies can create unexpected and potentially undesirable disparities. |
| JEL: | D82 J16 J71 |
| Date: | 2024–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32350&r=gen |