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on Gender |
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Issue of 2024‒07‒15
twelve papers chosen by Jan Sauermann, Institutet för Arbetsmarknads- och Utbildningspolitisk Utvärdering |
| By: | Adamecz, Anna (University College London); Shure, Nikki (University College London) |
| Abstract: | Recent evidence on the gender wage gap shows that it has remained stagnant for those with a university degree and is the largest at the top of the earnings distribution. Many studies have explored institutional factors that contribute to the gender wage gap, but there is little evidence on the role of non-cognitive traits, including overconfidence. This is surprising given its prominence in academic and popular literature. We use a measure of overconfidence captured in adolescence to explain the gender wage gap at age 42. Our results show that overconfidence explains approximately 5.5% of the unconditional gender wage gap. This is driven by women being more underconfident, not men being more overconfident. Furthermore, we find negative wage returns on being underconfident for both men and women. Most of this penalty works via occupational sorting, having lower pre-university educational outcomes, and being less likely to study high-return subjects at university. This has implications for the limitations of workplace-based interventions aimed at boosting women's confidence. |
| Keywords: | gender gaps, gender wage gap, overconfidence, underconfidence |
| JEL: | I24 I26 J24 |
| Date: | 2024–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17033&r= |
| By: | Ian Fillmore (Washington University in St. Louis); Hsuan-Hua Huang (Washington University in St. Louis); Hao-Chung Li (National Chengchi University); Hsien-Ming Lien (National Chengchi University) |
| Abstract: | Across many countries, women enroll in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields less often than men. Using Taiwanese data from 2011–2018, we unpack the drivers of this gap. We find the gap in STEM enrollment largely reflects a gap in STEM applications. Conditional on applying to a STEM program, a female applicant is as or more likely to be admitted as a similar male applicant. We then turn to the gap in STEM applications and find one-third can be explained by math and science scores. We also find important differences between men and women in how test scores predict whether they apply to any STEM programs and how many they apply to. Finally, we find the gender gap in STEM applications differs widely across high schools, suggesting that educational institutions and social factors play a role in determining the number of women who pursue degrees in STEM. |
| Keywords: | college major choice, higher education, Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition |
| JEL: | I23 I26 J16 |
| Date: | 2024–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hka:wpaper:2024-013&r= |
| By: | Magda, Iga (Warsaw School of Economics); Bieliński, Jacek (National Information Processing Institute); Feldy, Marzena (National Information Processing Institute); Knapińska, Anna (National Information Processing Institute) |
| Abstract: | The number of countries that have devoted time and attention to establishing gender equality regulations in academia is increasing. However, various studies indicate that women remain underrepresented among tenured faculty and in senior positions, and that female academic staff earn less than male ones. The reasons for these gaps, in particular those specific to academia, remain unclear. This article analyzes Polish female and male PhD graduates to measure the pay gap between them and its progression over time. The article studies the sources of the pay gap, with a special focus on parenthood. It draws on a dataset that covers the entire population of PhD holders who were awarded their degrees and were hired at any Polish university between 2014 and 2018. The study's results reveal that despite equal pay regulations, a relatively narrow (3–5%) but stable adjusted gender pay gap already exists among early-career academics who do not have children, and that the gap widens considerably when income from outside academia (6–11%) is considered. Basic incomes of mothers in academia are 18–20% lower than those of nonmothers. A substantial fatherhood wage premium (33–37%) arises when all sources of income are considered. Academia is not necessarily an equal workplace. |
| Keywords: | gender pay gap, women in academia, earnings, careers |
| JEL: | J13 J16 |
| Date: | 2024–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17063&r= |
| By: | García-Echalar, Andrés (Universidad de los Andes); Poblete, Sebastián (Northwestern University); Rau, Tomas (Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile) |
| Abstract: | This paper assesses the effect of teachers on the gender gap in student test scores. It combines different empirical strategies from the value-added and labor economics literature to estimate teacher value-added and its contribution to the math and reading gender gaps. We use rich administrative data from Chile, that allows us to follow teachers through different classes in different years. Our main findings indicate that teachers explain up to 18% of student test score variance and help reduce the gender gap in math by 16.9%. The reduction in the math gender gap is greater in voucher schools (16.1%), among students with more educated mothers (24%) and among those with female math teachers (32.2%). We provide evidence supporting a within-class effect instead of sorting (between-class effect). We conduct several tests and robustness checks to assess the reliability of our findings. |
| Keywords: | teacher value-added, test scores gender gap, between and within class variation |
| JEL: | I21 I24 J16 |
| Date: | 2024–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17054&r= |
| By: | Elena Ashtari Tafti; Mimosa Distefano; Tetyana Surovtseva |
| Abstract: | We use Italian Social Security data to study how the gender composition of a worker's professional network influences their career development. By exploiting variation within firms, occupations, and labor market entry cohorts, we find that young women starting their careers alongside a higher share of female peers experience lower wage growth, fewer promotions and increased transitions into non-employment. In contrast, male workers appear unaffected. The analysis reveals that these gender-specific effects are largely driven by structural differences in the networks of men and women. Networks predominantly composed of women appear to be less effective in the labor market. Women, who experience higher attrition and lower promotion rates, have fewer connections to employment opportunities, and their connections tend to be less valuable. When accounting for these differences, we find that connections among female peers offer a crucial safety net during adverse employment shocks. Our findings highlight the critical role of early-career peers and provide a new perspective on the barriers to career advancement for women |
| Keywords: | gender peer effects, networks, labor market entrants, career progression |
| Date: | 2024–06–14 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp2008&r= |
| By: | Dang, Hai-Anh H.; Salehi-Isfahani, Djavad; Do, Minh N. N. |
| Abstract: | While female labor force participation (LFP) in Iran is among the lowest in the world, there is hardly any study on the COVID-19 pandemic effects on the country's female LFP. We find that female LFP decreased during the pandemic years by around 1 percentage point in 2021 and 2022. When controlling for excess mortality rates, the declines could increase to between 3.9 and 8.7 percentage points, with the larger impacts occurring in late 2021 and early 2022. Compared to modest, pre-pandemic female LFP rates, these figures translate into 5 percent and 18-40 percent decreases, respectively. Heterogeneity exists, with more educated individuals being more likely to work. Compared to married individuals, divorcees were more likely to work while those that were divorced or never married were less likely to work. Our results offer relevant inputs for labor policy, particularly those aimed at reducing gender inequalities. |
| Keywords: | COVID-19, employment, women's labor force participation, differences-in-differences, triple differences, labor force survey, Iran |
| JEL: | E24 I30 J21 O12 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:1440&r= |
| By: | Mehrzad B. Baktash; John S. Heywood; Uwe Jirjahn |
| Abstract: | Using German survey data, we show that performance pay is associated with a substantially lower gender hours gap. While performance pay increases the work hours of both men and women, the increase is much larger for women than for men. This finding persists in worker fixed effects estimates. We argue our finding likely reflects differences in household production and specialization by gender. Thus, we show that performance pay is not associated with hours increasing for men with children in the household. Yet, performance pay is associated with a very large increase in hours for women with children in the household. |
| Keywords: | Performance Pay, Contracted Hours, Actual Hours, Gender |
| JEL: | D10 J22 J33 M52 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:trr:wpaper:202408&r= |
| By: | Aleksandr Arsenev (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Meryem Gökten (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Philipp Heimberger (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Andreas Lichtenberger (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Bernhard Schütz (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw) |
| Abstract: | This paper analyses (age-adjusted) employment rates by gender and education. We find that male female gender gaps and high-low education gaps in employment vary markedly across European Union (EU) countries and regions, with larger gaps existing in Eastern and Southern Europe than in Nordic and Continental EU countries. We estimate that closing existing education gaps in employment between high and lower education levels would raise the employment rate in the EU for the year 2022 by 10.6 percentage points, whereas closing the gender gaps between men and women would lead to an increase of 2.5 percentage points. At the same time, closing both the gender and education gaps would raise the EU employment rate from 76% to 89% of the population. Furthermore, we provide new evidence on the cyclical behaviour of employment gaps, finding that gender gaps are procyclical. While female employment rates tend to be more resilient than male employment rates during economic downturns, male employment rates tend to grow at a faster pace than female employment rates during upswings. In contrast, education gaps are more countercyclical, as employment risks are more strongly concentrated where education is low. |
| Keywords: | Full employment, unemployment, employment gaps, gender, education, EU, business cycle |
| JEL: | E24 E32 E6 J63 J64 |
| Date: | 2024–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wii:wpaper:251&r= |
| By: | Michelle Escobar Carías (The University of Melbourne, Department of Economics); Nicole Black (Monash University, Monash Business School, Centre for Health Economics); David Johnston (Monash University, Monash Business School, Centre for Health Economics); Rohan Sweeney (Monash University, Monash Business School, Centre for Health Economics); Fiona S. Barker (Monash University, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences); Rosnaena (RISE Program Indonesia); Syaidah Syamsul (RISE Program Indonesia); Taniela Waka (RISE Program Fiji) |
| Abstract: | We document gender differences in children’s time investments in education, labour, and leisure in an understudied population of children living in urban informal settlements. Using within-settlement and within-sibling comparisons, we find that boys spend significantly less time than girls on schooling and homework and more time on leisure activities. We also find that caregivers invest less time in helping their sons with reading and homework than their daughters. One possible explanation is that girls spend more time on domestic work. As a result, as the share of girls in the household increases, primary caregivers spend less time on domestic work and more time on other activities such as teaching children. We find that the gender gaps in time use are more pronounced among children whose parents have lower schooling and more financial constraints. |
| Keywords: | Gender gap, Time Use, Education, Informal Settlements |
| JEL: | I24 I25 I30 J22 |
| Date: | 2024–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mhe:chemon:2024-10&r= |
| By: | Marchingiglio, Riccardo (Northwestern University); Poyker, Mikhail (University of Texas Austin and University of Nottingham) |
| Abstract: | Using full count U.S. census data, we study the impact of early 20th-century state-industry-specific minimum wage laws that primarily targeted female employees. Our triple-difference estimates suggest a null impact of the minimum wage laws, potentially reflecting disemployment effects and the positive selection bias of the workers remaining in the labor force. When comparing county-industry trends between counties straddling state borders, female employment is lower by around 3.1% in affected county-industry cells. We further investigate the implications for own-wage elasticity of labor demand as a function of cross-industry concentration, the channels of substitution between men and women, and heterogeneity by marital status. |
| Keywords: | minimum wage, labor demand, gender gap, labor markets |
| JEL: | J16 J23 N32 |
| Date: | 2024–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17016&r= |
| By: | Matías Ciaschi (CEDLAS-IIE-FCE-UNLP & CONICET); Johanna Fajardo-Gonzalez (The World Bank); Mariana Viollaz (CEDLAS-IIE-FCE-UNLP & IZA) |
| Abstract: | This study analyzes the adjustment in time allocation to school support activities by mothers and fathers during the pandemic across 22 Latin American and Caribbean countries, exploring the repercussions on labor market outcomes and children’s learning losses. Our analysis reveals that mothers experienced a disproportionate increase in time dedicated to children’s educational support compared to fathers, particularly when mothers could work from home. The results suggest that these effects were more pronounced in countries with stringent school closure measures and limited access to in-person instruction. Even as mobility restrictions eased and schools reopened, the additional responsibilities taken on by mothers remained above pre-pandemic levels. Mothers also significantly increased the time spent on non-educational childcare, though to a lesser extent than educational support. We also show evidence indicating a decline in maternal labor force participation and a rise in flexible labor arrangements as mothers allocated more hours to child-related duties. Our study also provides descriptive evidence that children’s learning losses were less severe in countries where the gender disparity in pandemicrelated school support was greater. |
| JEL: | I1 J13 J21 |
| Date: | 2024–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dls:wpaper:0332&r= |
| By: | Agan, Amanda (Cornell University); Cowgill, Bo (Columbia Business School); Gee, Laura Katherine (Tufts University) |
| Abstract: | This study investigates whether the success of salary history bans could be limited by job-seekers volunteering their salaries unprompted. We survey American workers in 2019 and 2021 about their recent job searches, distinguishing when candidates were asked about salary history from when they were not. Historically well-paid workers may have an incentive to disclose, and employers who are aware of this could infer that non-disclosing workers are concealing low salaries. Through this mechanism, all workers could face pressure to avoid the stigma of silence. Our data shows a large percentage of workers (28%) volunteer salary history, even when a ban prevents employers from asking. An additional 47% will disclose if enough other job candidates disclose. Men are more likely than women to disclose their salaries unprompted, especially if they believe other candidates are disclosing. Over our 1.5-year sample covering jurisdictions with (and without) bans, unprompted volunteering of salary histories increased by about 6-8 percentage points. |
| Keywords: | voluntary disclosure, information economics, organizations, hiring, compensation, inequality, salary history bans, statistical discrimination |
| JEL: | D8 M51 J71 |
| Date: | 2024–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17065&r= |