|
on Gender |
|
Issue of 2025–07–14
nine papers chosen by Jan Sauermann, Institutet för Arbetsmarknads- och Utbildningspolitisk Utvärdering |
| By: | Daniel Reiter (University of Graz, Austria); Stefania Rossi (University of Graz, Austria); Leonita Mazrekaj (Haxhi Zeka University, Kosovo) |
| Abstract: | Despite ongoing progress, women continue to show lower entrepreneurial activity compared to men, highlighting the need for further efforts to close the gender gap and enhance women's economic participation. This study examines the drivers of gender differences in Total Early-Stage Entrepreneurial Activity (TEA), with a focus on the roles of self-perceived abilities and educational attainment. Using a unique dataset of 399, 114 observations from 64 countries (2013-2017), we employ Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) to explore how an entrepreneurial mindset - defined as self-perceived entrepreneurial abilities - mediates the gender gap in entrepreneurship. The analysis incorporates the moderating effect of educational attainment and controls for micro-level characteristics as well as economic and socio-political variables. Our results confirm that women engage in TEA at lower rates than men. However, this gap narrows significantly when accounting for an entrepreneurial mindset, particularly among individuals with lower educational attainment. Among the highly educated, the mediating effect is weaker, suggesting that structural factors - such as access to networks and resources - may play a more prominent role. These findings deepen our understanding of gender disparities in entrepreneurship and offer valuable implications for policy interventions aimed at promoting more inclusive entrepreneurial environments and greater female economic participation. |
| Keywords: | Total Early-Stage Entrepreneurial Activity (TEA), Gender, Self-Perceived Abilities, Educational Attainment, Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM), Moderated Mediation Analysis |
| JEL: | L26 E24 J24 J16 C30 J28 |
| Date: | 2025–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:grz:wpaper:2025-09 |
| By: | Sevrin Waights |
| Abstract: | I use the universe of tax returns in Germany and a regression kink design to estimate the impacts of mothers' parental leave benefit amounts on couple earnings inequality. I make use of a benefits cap to estimate the causal impacts for high-earning women; a group for which earnings inequality is particularly large. A lower mothers' benefit amount results in a reduced gender gap in earnings that persists beyond the benefit period for at least nine years after the birth. The longer-term impacts are driven by couples where the mother earned more than her partner pre-birth. Simulations suggest that a 10% reduction in the benefit amount could reduce long-run child penalties in sample couples from 63 to 43%. |
| Keywords: | Child penalties, gender inequality in earnings, high-earning women, social norms, parental leave policy, regression kink design |
| JEL: | D63 H31 J13 J16 K31 M52 Z13 |
| Date: | 2025–06–17 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bdp:dpaper:0067 |
| By: | Camille Hebert; Emmanuel Yimfor; Heather Tookes |
| Abstract: | What is the role of gender in the serial founding of VC-backed startups? Despite robust evidence linking serial entrepreneurship to startup success, women comprise 13.3% of VC-backed founders but only 4% of those founding three or more startups. Using a novel design comparing men and women cofounders of the same startup, we estimate substantial gender gaps in subsequent funding outcomes on average and following failure or success of the current startup. We find these at both the extensive and intensive margins. For example, following failure, women are 22.5% less likely to found another VC-backed startup compared to their cofounders who are men. Among those who do found another VC-backed firm, women raise 53.3% less capital following failure of the current venture and 24.6% less capital following success. These gaps contribute to the well-documented gender gap in VC funding. Lower interest of women in founding new firms can only partially explain our findings. We find no evidence of gender differences in founder quality or of statistical updating by investors. Instead, consistent with unequal treatment of women, we find that women serial founders are penalized with smaller VC deals following failures of their prior startups but they are not rewarded with larger deal sizes following past successes. By contrast, men are rewarded for their prior experiences as founders, regardless of whether their startups were failures or successes. In line with theories of stereotyping and confirmation bias, we also find striking negative spillovers from unrelated women-founded failures within investors’ portfolios (and no positive spillovers from their successes). |
| JEL: | G0 G24 G30 |
| Date: | 2025–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33943 |
| By: | Grönqvist, Erik (Department of Medical Sciences, Health Economics, Centre for Health Economic Research (HEFUU) and Uppsala Center for Labor Studies (UCLS), Uppsala University.); Okuyama, Yoko (Department of Economics, UCLS, and Uppsala Center for Fiscal Studies (UCFS), Uppsala University); Hensvik, Lena (Department of Economics and UCLS, Uppsala University); Thoresson, Anna (Reykjavik University, Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy (IFAU) and UCLS, Uppsala University.) |
| Abstract: | We study how changes in couples’ relative wages affect the division of childcare. Using a nationwide wage reform that raised pay in the female-dominated teaching profession, we find that closing 25% of the earnings gap between female teachers and their male spouses led to a 12% reduction in the childcare time gap. This result holds when we extend the analysis to major pay raises for women at the population level. Data support the mechanism that women reduce their childcare time when the spouse can step in by working more from home. Policies that address female pay can foster household equality if men have access to flexible work arrangements. |
| Keywords: | Household behavior; Childcare responsibility; Gender gaps; Working from home |
| JEL: | D13 J16 J22 |
| Date: | 2025–06–27 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ifauwp:2025_011 |
| By: | Margherita Negri; Alessio Romarri |
| Abstract: | We analyze the effect of increased women representation in politics on gender attitudes within the adult UK population, combining 2002-2019 local election results in England with survey responses from Understanding Society and the British Household Panel Survey. Our Regression Discontinuity analysis shows that the election of a female councillor generates a shift towards more conservative gender attitudes in the population. This backlash effect is entirely driven by male respondents and by those more affected by economic insecurity, i.e. unemployed individuals and those more exposed to the import competition with China. Additionally, we find suggestive evidence that the backlash mainly affects attitudes related to the private sphere, rather than views about society at large. The effect on female respondents is very limited, but our results show that the election of a woman raises their support for work-family policies. Importantly, given the context of our analysis, our results are unlikely to be driven by gender differences in policymaking. |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:baf:cbafwp:cbafwp25253 |
| By: | Elena Lagomarsino (University of Genoa); Francesco Trevisan (Ca' Foscari University of Venice) |
| Abstract: | This paper quantifies how intra-household economic violence—financial control that restricts a partner’s labour-market choices—affects women’s labour supply. Extending the collective household model, we treat women in same-sex (SS) couples as an unconstrained benchmark and compare them with observationally similar women in opposite-sex (OS) couples. Using the 2023 American Community Survey PUMS and nearest-neighbour propensity-score matching on individual, partner and household characteristics (including a proxy for bargaining power), we find that SS women work about 1.5 hours more per week than matched OS women. Heterogeneity tests show the gap is larger for married couples (1.5 h) than for unmarried couples and twice as large in Republican-leaning states (2.3 h) as in Democratic states, consistent with stronger gender norms and financial interdependence intensifying economic violence. Replicating the analysis for 2019–2022 yields stable, significant effects, confirming temporal robustness. The findings highlight economic violence as an important, and policy-relevant, mechanism behind persistent gender disparities in labour supply. |
| Keywords: | intra-household allocation; propensity score matching; female labor market outcomes |
| JEL: | J16 J22 C21 D13 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ven:wpaper:2025:07 |
| By: | Banerjee, Archis; Kumar, Neha; Quisumbing, Agnes R. |
| Abstract: | There is growing evidence that gender disparities in the distribution of paid and unpaid work impose constraints on women’s well-being and livelihoods, reducing access to paid employment, and time for education, leisure, and social activities. Yet, gender disparities in unpaid work often go undiagnosed by traditional household surveys. While time-use surveys are well-suited for measuring unpaid work, they are often expensive to administer and take substantial amounts of survey time, leading to respondent fatigue, particularly in multi-topic surveys where other outcomes are also being collected. In this paper, we compare data collected using the task allocation module in the Transforming Agrifood Systems in South Asia (TAFSSA) integrated household survey and the time-use module in the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) survey. We begin by describing the methods used to collect the data in each of the surveys. We present an overview of the characteristics of the study sites in the TAFSSA integrated survey and sites in the same countries where the WEAI data were collected. We then present comparable data from each of the two methods. The findings confirm the gendered patterns in involvement in different activities as measured by both survey modules. While women’s participation in agricultural activities is high across Bangladesh, India, and Nepal, the amount of time they spend on agricultural activities is less than that spent by men. Both survey tools confirm that women undertake most of the food preparation-related activities, and men contribute through shopping/purchasing food. |
| Keywords: | time use patterns; households; gender; unpaid work; women's empowerment; surveys; gender norms; Bangladesh; India; Nepal; Southern Asia; Asia |
| Date: | 2024–09–19 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fpr:gsspwp:152347 |
| By: | Carole Bonnet; Léa Dubreuil (CREST-ENSAE); Bertrand Garbinti (CREST-ENSAE-Institut Polytechnique Paris, and CEPR); Pierre Pora |
| Abstract: | Using a rich administrative dataset representative of the French population, we study the causal impact of the first childbirth on the within-couple inequality in France. We find that women’s contribution to total household income 5 years after the birth of their first child is 16% lower than what it would have been absent children. Both partners experience an income loss after childbirth, driven by a decline in working hours. However, the drop is much larger for women: 23% for women and 4% for men five years after childbirth. The drop in woman’s contribution to total household income after childbirth is more pronounced for women with a higher contribution to couple’s income before childbirth. This is both because the child penalty is higher for these women compared to others, and because their partners experience the largest increase in income following childbirth compared to other partners. Moreover, heterogeneous responses across couples reshape the entire distribution of withincouple inequality, notably through a sharp decline in the share of egalitarian couples, while the share of female-breadwinner couples slightly decreases but remains closed to its already low level. |
| Keywords: | child penalty, gender inequality, within-couple inequality, gender norms, marital specialization. |
| JEL: | J12 J13 J16 J22 J71 |
| Date: | 2025–06–15 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crs:wpaper:2025-08 |
| By: | Michaela Kreyenfeld; Sarah Schmauk; Katharina Wrohlich; Daniel Brüggmann |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the gendered impact of divorce on earnings and the role of the social policy context in shaping this relationship. In particular, it focuses on a policy reform enacted in Germany in 2008 that overturned previous ex-spousal support rules. Data come from the administrative records of the German Public Pension Fund. Drawing on a fixed- effects model, we study the behaviour of women and men who separated between 2004 and 2011 (n=21, 617 divorces). We find that women's earnings increased throughout the divorce process. This effect was slightly more pronounced after the reform than before. In contrast to women's earnings, men's earnings declined throughout the divorce process. The reform seems to have somewhat mitigated this negative divorce effect. The paper also shows heterogeneous effects across regions. While divorce had strong effects on women's and men's earnings in West Germany, it did not change the earning patterns of East German men and women either before or after the reform. The paper concludes by discussing avenues for post- separation policies from a gender perspective. |
| Keywords: | Divorce, earnings, employment, gender, policy reform |
| JEL: | J12 J22 K36 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp2125 |