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on Gender |
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Issue of 2024‒05‒27
three papers chosen by Jan Sauermann, Institutet för Arbetsmarknads- och Utbildningspolitisk Utvärdering |
| By: | Jennifer Hunt; Carolyn Moehling |
| Abstract: | We create a dataset of 14, 000 hand-coded help–wanted advertisements placed by employment agencies in three U.S. newspapers in 1950 and 1960, a time when help–wanted advertisements were divided into male and female sections, and collect information on agency ownership. We find that female-owned agencies specialized in vacancies for women, thereby expanding the access of female jobseekers to agency services, including for positions in majority-male occupations. Female-owned agencies advertised more skilled occupations to women than did male-owned agencies, leading to a 5.5% higher wage for women. On the other hand, female-owned agencies had a greater propensity to match male jobseekers to clerical jobs, contributing to 21% lower male wages than for male-owned agencies. The results are consistent with female proprietors having had a comparative advantage in female jobseekers and clerical occupations or with client firms having trusted female proprietors only with vacancies for women and homogeneous, lower-skill occupations. However, in choosing to establish an agency and to specialize in female jobseekers, female proprietors may have sought to mitigate employer discrimination against female jobseekers; their higher propensity to advertise majority-male occupations among professional, technical and managerial advertisements for women may also reflect discrimination mitigation. |
| JEL: | J16 J63 J71 N32 |
| Date: | 2024–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32383&r=gen |
| By: | Iván Barreda-Tarrazona (LEE and Department of Economics, Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, Spain); Ainhoa Jaramillo-Gutiérrez (LEE and Department of Economics, Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, Spain); Marina Pavan (LEE & Economics Department, Universitat Jaume I, Castellón-Spain); Gerardo Sabater-Grande (LEE and Department of Economics, Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, Spain) |
| Abstract: | We gather information from a large laboratory sample comprising 1161 subjects and study gender differences in altruism using a dual-role dictator game. For robustness purposes, we control for factors potentially affecting the role of gender in dictator giving, such as the subject's age, cognitive ability, and personality traits, together with the dictator's response time and self-reported emotions motivating the decision. We find that women behave in a significantly more generous way than men: after controlling for the factors mentioned above, females transfer 7.5 percentage points more of their endowment than males. The only factor moderating this relationship between gender and dictator giving is agreeableness, which increases transfers significantly more for males than for females. |
| Keywords: | altruism; gender differences; dictator game; big five personality traits; cognitive ability; emotions. |
| JEL: | C91 C72 D64 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jau:wpaper:2024/03&r=gen |
| By: | Matija Kovacic (Department of Economics, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice); Cristina Elisa Orso (Department of Law, Economics and Cultures, University of Insubria) |
| Abstract: | Women continue to be underrepresented in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), which represent an important and well-remunerated set of occupations that are expected to grow in significance in the future. In this paper, we show that this phenomenon is deeply rooted in historical processes that have contributed to the emergence and persistence of gender roles and stereotypes transmitted down to children by their parents or society at large. Using a sub-population of second-generation immigrants from the European Social Survey (ESS), we find that the pre-1500 ancestral factors related to stronger family ties and gender norms significantly reduce the probability of women sorting into STEM occupations. The causal link between norms and occupation is both direct and indirect, passing through contemporary cultural traits. Ancestral factors do not have any effect on men's occupational choices as well as on preferences for STEM professional careers. The results are robust to a rich set of potential confounding factors at the country of origin level and a battery of sensitivity checks. |
| Keywords: | family ties, gender roles, STEM occupations, women |
| JEL: | D03 J16 N30 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ven:wpaper:2024:08&r=gen |