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on Gender |
| By: | Diva Dhar; Tarun Jain; Seema Jayachandran |
| Abstract: | Societal norms about gender roles contribute to the economic disadvantages facing women in many developing countries. This paper evaluates an intervention aimed at eroding support for restrictive gender norms, specifically a multi-year school-based intervention in Haryana, India, that engaged adolescents in classroom discussions about gender equality. Using a randomized controlled trial, we find that the intervention increased adolescents' support for gender equality by 0.25 standard deviations, a sizable effect compared to other correlates of their gender attitudes such as their parents' views. Program participants also report more gender-equitable behavior; for example, boys report helping out more with household chores. |
| JEL: | I25 J13 J16 O12 |
| Date: | 2018–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:25331&r=all |
| By: | Cuong Nguyen; Finn Tarp |
| Abstract: | Reducing gender inequality is a critically important development challenge, especially in countries with widespread and deep-rooted prejudices against women. In this study, we use a randomized control trial to examine whether facilitating Vietnamese men to reflect about gender equality can reduce their gender bias. We randomly selected two groups of husbands and requested one group to make comments on gender-related laws and another group to write stories about gender equality. We find that commenting on gender-related laws reduces men’s bias against women slightly, while writing stories has a strong effect on reducing existing prejudice against women. Moreover, writing gender-related stories improves men’s knowledge of gender-related laws. Nonetheless, there is only a small effect of this treatment on doing housework. Changing men’s behaviour in practice requires stronger, more sustained interventions. |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp2018-171&r=all |
| By: | Philipp Bach; Victor Chernozhukov; Martin Spindler |
| Abstract: | In 2016, the majority of full-time employed women in the U.S. earned significantly less than comparable men. The extent to which women were affected by gender inequality in earnings, however, depended greatly on socio-economic characteristics, such as marital status or educational attainment. In this paper, we analyzed data from the 2016 American Community Survey using a high-dimensional wage regression and applying double lasso to quantify heterogeneity in the gender wage gap. We found that the gap varied substantially across women and was driven primarily by marital status, having children at home, race, occupation, industry, and educational attainment. We recommend that policy makers use these insights to design policies that will reduce discrimination and unequal pay more effectively. |
| Date: | 2018–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:1812.04345&r=all |
| By: | Olga Takacs (Center for Economic and Regional Studies, Hungarian Academy of Sciences); Janos Vincze (Center for Economic and Regional Studies, Hungarian Academy of Sciences and Corvinus University of Budapest) |
| Abstract: | Men’s labor income is on average higher than that of women practically everywhere. This gender pay gap can be decomposed into two components: on the one hand men usually work in better paid jobs (the sorting effect), and, on the other, even in the same occupation men get higher wages (the within-job pay gap). In this paper we focus on the second component, by trying to identify those jobs where the gender of the employee matters most. Using Hungarian individual data from a dataset where jobs are identified by their 3-digit employment classification code, we compute three statistical measures that turn out to entail more and more stringent criteria for variable importance. Our simplest measure is significance at the 5 percent in linear regressions. Judging by this criterion the majority of occupations have a gender pay gap. Secondly, we compute a variable importance measure defined for regression analysis, that narrows down the group of jobs where being male seems to carry definite financial advantages. Finally, we apply an alternative methodology, Random Forest regression, and calculate one of the associated variable importance measures. This new indicator reduces our looked for job categories even farther, and gives rather sharp results concerning the type of jobs where the within-job pay gap is definitely detectable. We find that gender has the most clearly distinguishable role in occupations requiring the least education. The broader categories include “Craft and Related Trades Workers”, “Plant and Machine Operators and Assemblers” as well as “Elementary Occupations”. Our results suggest that the vanishing of the overall pay gap in Hungary is partly due to the fact that in higher skilled jobs the occupational pay gap is not so important, whereas it obscures the fact that in lower-paid unskilled jobs it is still very much extant. |
| Keywords: | gender wage gap, wages and education, Random Forest regression |
| JEL: | C16 J31 J79 |
| Date: | 2018–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:has:discpr:1834&r=all |
| By: | Boudreaux, Christopher; Nikolaev, Boris |
| Abstract: | We examine how the institutional context affects the relationship between gender and opportunity entrepreneurship. To do this, we develop a multi-level model that connects feminist theory at the micro-level to institutional theory at the macro-level. It is hypothesized that the gender gap in opportunity entrepreneurship is more pronounced in low-quality institutional contexts and less pronounced in high-quality institutional contexts. Using data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) and regulation data from the economic freedom of the world index (EFW), we test our predictions and find evidence in support of our model. Our findings suggest that, while there is a gender gap in entrepreneurship, these disparities are reduced as the quality of the institutional context improves. |
| Keywords: | female entrepreneurship, gender gaps, opportunity entrepreneurship, institutional context, regulation |
| JEL: | L26 |
| Date: | 2018–11–18 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:90402&r=all |
| By: | Chen, Joyce J.; Crown, Daniel |
| Abstract: | We utilize human resources data from The Ohio State University to assess the gender wage gap. We find a persistent gap of 11% among regular, tenure-track faculty, after accounting for fiscal year, ethnicity, clinical appointments, experience, and department. While the presence of a statistically significant gender wage gap is robust, the magnitude of the gap varies substantially depending on how the sample of interest is defined. In assessing gender wage gaps, researchers and universities must be attentive to issues of attrition and classification. Transparency about how estimates are affected by sample exclusions and variable definitions will yield insight into possible sources of gender bias. |
| Keywords: | Institutional and Behavioral Economics, Labor and Human Capital |
| Date: | 2018–12–20 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:assa19:281165&r=all |
| By: | Xue, Melanie Meng |
| Abstract: | This paper studies a unique historical experiment: the cotton revolution and its impact on the emergence of gender-equitable beliefs. The cotton revolution led to a prolonged phase (1300-1840 AD) of high productivity for women. I hypothesize that a substantial, long-standing increase in relative female income eroded a highly resilient cultural belief: women are less capable than men. I examine a period when economic gains from the cotton revolution faded. Using variation across 1,489 counties in cotton spinning and weaving, I find that the cotton revolution reduces sex selection. This result is supported by survey evidence on gender equitable beliefs. I instrument cotton weaving with the range of relative humidity within which cotton yarn can be smoothly woven into cloth. I document an initial impact of the cotton revolution on widow suicides. To isolate the cultural channel, I examine the effects of the cotton revolution under post-1949 state socialism, where both genders had similar economic opportunities, political and legal rights, and show that pre-1840 cotton weaving predicts a higher probability for the wife to head the household. I document the distinctive role of high-value work in the perception of women. Low-value work performed by women, such as cotton cultivation, does not correct prenatal sex selection. |
| Keywords: | Culture, relative female income, gender-equitable beliefs |
| JEL: | I1 J16 N0 N35 Z1 |
| Date: | 2018–12–19 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:91100&r=all |