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on Gender |
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Issue of 2026–02–09
five papers chosen by Jan Sauermann, Institutet för Arbetsmarknads- och Utbildningspolitisk Utvärdering |
| By: | Patricia Cortés; Jisoo Hwang; Jessica Pan; Uta Schönberg |
| Abstract: | Despite substantial convergence in men’s and women’s economic roles, gender gaps in labor market outcomes persist across countries. This article provides a unified framework for understanding how gender norms shape economic behavior, distinguishing between internalized norms—preferences and beliefs tied to gender identity—and external norms arising from peer pressure and social coordination. We first document cross-country and within-country variation in gender attitudes, alongside gradual but uneven shifts toward more egalitarian views. We then review empirical evidence on the origins, persistence, and transmission of gender norms, and their effects on human capital accumulation, labor supply, wages, and policy take-up. The review highlights both the durability of gender norms and the mechanisms through which policies, institutions, and media can induce norm change, with implications for the design of effective interventions. |
| JEL: | J16 J22 J24 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34716 |
| By: | Brit Grosskopf (Department of Economics, University of Exeter); Yangfei Lin (School of Economics, Zhejiang University) |
| Abstract: | In a controlled laboratory experiment, we study how leader gender affects both the willingness of group members to contribute ideas and the informational quality of those contributions. Participants are randomly assigned to groups of three, consisting of one merit-based leader and two group members. Group members submit answers to a general knowledge task and report their willingness - on a scale from one to five - to have their answer selected as the group response. In the baseline condition, gender information is not revealed; in the treatment condition, the gender of the leader and group members is disclosed. We find that men become significantly more willing to contribute when led by a female leader, while women’s willingness does not depend on leader gender. However, this increase in male participation is accompanied by a decline in the accuracy threshold at which men are willing to step forward. In contrast, women raise their accuracy threshold under female leadership, contributing only when they are highly confident in the correctness of their answers. As a result, conditional on stating the highest willingness level, men are substantially less accurate under female leadership, whereas women are more accurate. We refer to this asymmetric pattern as a sisterhood effect. We find no corresponding brotherhood effect: men do not exhibit higher conditional accuracy under male leadership relative to the no-gender benchmark. On the selection side, leaders strongly weight stated willingness when choosing whose answer represents the group. When gender is revealed, female leaders are more likely to select female group members, whereas male leaders show no systematic gender-based selection. This selection behaviour mitigates the lower quality of highly willing male contributions under female leadership and preserves group performance. Overall, leader gender shapes collective decision-making not by altering underlying ability, but by changing how private knowledge is translated into expressed willingness and how that willingness is filtered into group choices. |
| Keywords: | leader gender, information aggregation, participation decisions, confidence thresholds, group performance |
| JEL: | C91 D83 J16 |
| Date: | 2026–01–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:exe:wpaper:2601 |
| By: | Kevin André Pineda-Hernández; François Rycx; Mélanie Volral; Alexandre Waroquier |
| Abstract: | While rent-sharing is known to vary according to worker characteristics, the impact of profits on the gender wage gap warrants closer examination. Most studies adopt a single-gender view, neglecting factors tied to bargaining power. Our paper aims to fill this gap by leveraging rich matched employer-employee data covering the Belgian private sector from 1999 to 2016 and by examining whether the relationship between rent-sharing and gender depends on variables reflecting bargaining power, i.e. level of education, field of study, tenure, occupation and type of wage agreement. Accounting for a wide range of individual, job and firm characteristics, and addressing potential endogeneity issues, we find a wage-profit elasticity of 2.8%, which does not differ statistically between women and men. Our results further indicate that firms share more of their profits with workers who have greater bargaining power, as assessed by our moderators. This result holds overall for both women and men, so that the price effect associated with rent-sharing is generally insignificant in explaining the gender wage gap. Conversely, given that women, regardless of their bargaining power, tend to be employed in less profitable firms than their male counterparts, the quantity effect associated with rent-sharing appears to play a non-negligible role. In short, our findings suggest that it is not so much the unequal sharing of profits within companies that fuels the gender pay gap, but rather the segregation of women, particularly those with limited bargaining power, into less profitable companies. |
| Keywords: | Rent-sharing; linked employer-employee data; wage decompositions; instrumental variables; gender wage gap; bargaining power |
| JEL: | C26 J16 J24 J31 |
| Date: | 2026–01–29 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sol:wpaper:2013/402522 |
| By: | Marian Atallah (Cairo University); Marina Hesham (Cairo University and University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne) |
| Abstract: | Using the most recent wave of Egypt Labor Market Panel Survey data from 2023, this paper provides an overview of the gender gap in unpaid care work and how it relates to labor market outcomes. With the inclusion of a 24-hour time use module in ELMPS 2023, we are able to examine women's time use in terms of unpaid care work and paid employment activities relative to their male counterparts, taking into account their socioeconomic profiles. The paper concludes by delving into perceptions and attitudes regarding gender norms, and how they correlate with women’s time use patterns in Egypt. Results show that compared with men, women spent a disproportionate amount of time on unpaid care work in Egyptian households. Marriage and childbearing were associated with longer hours dedicated to unpaid care work activities. Employed women faced a double burden of having to balance their paid and unpaid work commitments, with married women who were wage employed being the most heavily penalized. Finally, our analysis of the correlation between gender norms and time use patterns shows that more egalitarian gender norms did not necessarily translate into a lower gender gap in the actual time spent on unpaid care work.Length: 51 |
| Date: | 2024–11–20 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:erg:wpaper:1755 |
| By: | Scott A. Imberman; Michael F. Lovenheim; Patrick Massey; Kevin M. Stange; Rodney J. Andrews |
| Abstract: | Gender and racial/ethnic gaps in labor market earnings remain large, even among college-goers. Cross-gender and race/ethnic differences in choice of and returns to college major are potentially important contributors. Following Texas public high school graduates for up to 20 years through college and the labor market, we assess gender and racial differences in college major choices and the consequences of these choices. Women and underrepresented minorities are less likely than men, Whites, and Asians to major in high earning fields like business, economics, engineering, and computer science, however we also show that they experience lower returns to these majors. Differences in major-specific returns relative to liberal arts explain about one quarter of the gender, White-Black, and White-Hispanic (but not White-Asian) earnings gaps among four-year college students and become larger contributors to earnings gaps than differential major distributions as workers age. We present suggestive evidence that differences in occupation choices within field are a key driver of the differences in returns across groups. The work shines light on the roles that college major choice and returns by gender and race contribute to inequality. |
| JEL: | I23 I26 J24 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34726 |