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on Gender |
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Issue of 2025–12–01
four papers chosen by Jan Sauermann, Institutet för Arbetsmarknads- och Utbildningspolitisk Utvärdering |
| By: | Beugelsdijk, Sjoerd; Gelfand, Michele J.; Kleinhempel, Johannes |
| Abstract: | The last century has seen significant gains in women’s agency and status, declining gender gaps in labor force participation, education, and wages, and ‘a rising tide’ of increasingly gender egalitarian societies. Many expected this process to continue. Yet, unexpectedly, progress towards gender equality has started to stall in many countries. We can even observe a clear backlash against gender equality in some countries. The optimistic predictions of gender convergence as suggested by modernization theory have not materialized. Moreover, counterintuitively, the most gender egalitarian societies (e.g., Denmark and Sweden) have the highest level of gender segregation in jobs and educational fields, a phenomenon also known as the gender-equality paradox. In these countries, women are less likely to major in STEM and more likely to major in the humanities, with generally important consequences for the gender gap in wages. These observations matter for the field of international business (IB), which has studied cross-country differences in gender equality and the implications for management practices across the world. Our theories in IB cannot explain the gender-equality paradox or the backlash against gender equality observed across countries. The good news is that new theorizing is emerging in sociology and political science, with tremendous opportunities for IB. The purpose of our editorial is to describe how these insights can propel IB research, and to chart an exciting way forward. |
| Keywords: | Gender equality, gender inequality, international business, comparative country studies |
| JEL: | M16 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:126842 |
| By: | Abarike, Mercy Apuswin; Liebenehm, Sabine; Weyori, Alirah Emmanuel; Akuriba, Margaret Atosina; Dittoh, Saa; Kasei, Raymond Abudu |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we explore whether and to what extent there are disparities in vegetable productivity among female and male farmers practicing small-scale irrigation systems in the Upper East Region of Ghana, and what factors seem to drive the disparities. To do so, we use a cross-sectional data set that comprises 58 women and 192 men from 24 communities, gathered between September 2022 and February 2023 and employ Ordinary Least Square regression with community fixed effects, Oaxaca-Blinder and Recentered Influence Function decomposition analyses. Results show a statistically significant gender gap across the entire productivity distribution, except for the 80th and 90th productivity percentile, whereby the gender difference ranges between 56.9% to even 103.3% to the detriment of women producers. On average, this disadvantage amounts to approximately $987.42 per ha. The decomposition analyses further suggest that the gender gap is rather due to differences in the level than in the returns to resources. The gender gap could, hence, be significantly reduced if women would be able to operate the same size of cultivated land as men. Furthermore, overcoming structural disadvantages in terms of labor, knowledge, and liquidity may help women generate the same returns from the factors as men. |
| Keywords: | Productivity Analysis |
| Date: | 2024–08–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iaae24:344281 |
| By: | Masato Oikawa (Faculty of Education and Integrated Arts and Sciences, Waseda University); Takumi Toyono (WISH, Tokyo, Japan); Haruko Noguchi (Faculty of Political Science and Economics, Waseda University; WISH, Tokyo, Japan); Akira Kawamura (Faculty of Human Sciences, Waseda University; WISH, Tokyo, Japan) |
| Abstract: | This study examines how gender-specific labor market opportunities affect child welfare, focusing on fatal child maltreatment. Using Japan’s comprehensive vital statistics and a shift-share identification strategy exploiting differential regional exposure to national industry employment shocks (2005-2018), we find striking opposite effects by gender. A 0.5% point increase in male employment growth increases child abuse deaths by 116%, while the same increase in female employment growth reduces these deaths by 93%. We identify maternal mental health as a key mechanism, with male employment growth correlating with deteriorating maternal well-being, while female employment opportunities improve women’s psychological health. Effects are most pronounced among the vulnerable with lower socioeconomic status — precisely those most susceptible to economic shocks. Our findings reveal that aggregate employment policies can mask offsetting gender-specific effects with profound consequences for child welfare. The results suggest that targeted interventions enhancing women’s economic opportunities could simultaneously reduce child maltreatment and advance gender equality. More broadly, this research demonstrates the critical importance of gender-disaggregated analysis in economic policy design, as standard employment measures may conceal significant distributional effects on family welfare. |
| Keywords: | child fatal maltreatment, gender-specific employment shocks, shift-share research design, maternal mental health |
| JEL: | I10 J12 J13 J16 J23 R23 |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wap:wpaper:2523 |
| By: | Checchi, Daniele (University of Milan); Kreisman, Daniel (Georgia State University); García-Peñalosa, Cecilia (CNRS) |
| Abstract: | We consider the contribution of the intensive margin of labor supply (hours worked above zero) to the gender wage gap across four economies (Germany, France, US, UK) over a long time-horizon. We first build a model in which firms offer two wage contracts – one that pays a fixed wage but allows workers to choose their preferred number of hours up to “full time”, and a second in which wages are relative to imperfectly observable productivity but hours can be limitless. The former includes part- and full-time work, while the latter represents a class of workers who often must supply very long hours but who can then earn potentially unlimited remuneration. We then apply a Oaxaca decomposition for part-, full-, and over-time workers to observe the relative contribution of sorting and remuneration across these hours “regimes” over time and across countries. Through this, we show that while female employment in over-time work increased and the gender wage decreased, this was not driven by increasing selection but rather by a decrease in the unexplained portion of the wage gap over time. We conclude by considering the contribution of unions and labor market flexibility to these cross-country differences. |
| Keywords: | over-time work, gender wage gap, labor supply, Oaxaca decomposition |
| JEL: | J01 J16 J31 |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18265 |