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on Gender |
| By: | Kevin Boudreau; Nilam Kaushik |
| Abstract: | Many technology companies struggle to fill all their positions and to achieve gender parity in their ranks. One explanation for gender disparities is the possibility that men and women differ in their willingness to work under competitive organizational environments of tech firms. To investigate this question, this paper reports on a large platform-based field experiment in which 97,696 U.S. university-educated individuals were given the opportunity to join a tech-related product development activity. Individuals were randomly assigned to treatments emphasizing either competitive or collaborative interactions with other participants. We find that (1) in non-STEM fields, the competition treatment leads to a 27% drop in participation for females in comparison to males. However, in our main finding, (2) in STEM fields, we find no statistical differences in men and women’s responses to competition. The patterns are consistent with (3) men in non-STEM fields exhibiting overconfidence in their likelihood of succeeding under competition. We also find that, while participation in highest in STEM fields, (4) the ratio of female to male participation in a field is better predicted by whether the field is male- or female-dominated, than it is by whether it is a STEM field or not. We discuss theoretical interpretations and implications for organizations. |
| JEL: | C9 D2 J16 J2 J71 O3 |
| Date: | 2020–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:27154&r=all |
| By: | Alix-Garcia, Jennifer; Schechter, Laura; Valencia Caicedo, Felipe; Zhu, Jessica |
| Abstract: | Skewed sex ratios often result from conflict, disease, and migration, yet their long term impact remains less understood. The War of the Triple Alliance (1864-1870) in South America killed up to 70% of the Paraguayan male population. According to Paraguayan national lore, the skewed sex ratios resulting from the confliict are the cause of present-day low marriage rates, high rates of out-of-wedlock births and a generally male chauvinist culture. We collate historical and modern data to test this conventional wisdom in the short and the long run. We examine both cross-border and within-country variation in child-rearing, education and labor force participation in Paraguay over a 150 year period. We find that more skewed post-war sex ratios are associated with higher out-of-wedlock births, more female-headed households, and better female educational outcomes, even after the first returned to normal. Cross-country comparisons suggest that Paraguayan women are less likely to be employed than those in neighboring districts in Argentina and Brazil, but that within Paraguay, they are more likely to be employed where the sex ratio shock was more severe. The impacts of the war persist into the present, and are seemingly unaffected by variation in economic openness, uncertainty, or traditional norms. |
| Keywords: | conflict; Education; Female Labor Force Participation; Gender; History; Illegitimacy; Latin America; Paraguay; Persistence |
| JEL: | D74 I25 J16 J21 N16 |
| Date: | 2020–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:14752&r=all |
| By: | Jones, Melanie (Cardiff Business School); Kaya, Ezgi (Cardiff Business School) |
| Abstract: | Northern Ireland forms an important outlier to the established international pattern of a pronounced gender pay gap in favour of men. Using contemporary data from the Quarterly Labour Force Survey we provide a comprehensive analysis of the gender pay gap in Northern Ireland and make comparisons to the rest of the UK. Despite the relatively common institutional and policy context, the gender pay gap in Northern Ireland is found to be far smaller than in the rest of the UK. This can largely be attributed to the superior productivity-related characteristics of women relative to men in Northern Ireland, which partially offset the influence of gender differences in the returns to these characteristics. Our analysis highlights the importance of occupation Ð both in terms of occupational allocation and the returns to occupations Ð in explaining the cross-country differential. This is reinforced by the impact of lower earnings inequality in Northern Ireland. |
| Keywords: | consumption; citizenship; informality; (un)documented immigrants; work permit |
| JEL: | D12 E21 F22 |
| Date: | 2020–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdf:wpaper:2020/9&r=all |
| By: | Hupkau, Claudia; Petrongolo, Barbara |
| Abstract: | The Covid-19 crisis has especially hit service sectors with frequent social interactions, in which women are over-represented. At the same time, if not directly subject to the lock-down, women are more likely to hold jobs that can be performed from home. Survey evidence for the UK shows that women are more likely to report job losses than men during Covid-19, suggesting that remote work opportunities only partially offset the differential exposure of men and women to the lockdown. Following the closure of nurseries and schools, women are also likely to take over a larger share of increased childcare needs. However, in about 20% of households, in which women work in critical sectors and men stay at home, one would expect a reversal of usual childcare gaps, with potential consequences on the evolution of gender roles and comparative advantages. Furthermore, valuable lessons may be learned from current remote working patterns, possibly feeding into more flexible working solutions for the long-run. |
| Keywords: | coronavirus; Covid-19 |
| JEL: | R14 J01 |
| Date: | 2020–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:104674&r=all |
| By: | Ashwini Deshpande (Ashoka University) |
| Abstract: | Based on national-level panel data from Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE)’s Consumer Pyramids Household Survey (CPHS) database, this paper investigates the first effects of Covid-19 induced lockdown on employment. Examining the employment status of 37,000 individuals before and after the lockdown, we find that individuals were 12.8 percentage points less likely to be employed post-lockdown. On a pre-lockdown base of 38.9 percent employment, this translates into a 33 precent reduction in the likelihood of being employed. The decline in employment is not gender and caste neutral. Men are more likely to be employed overall, and drop in male employment is greater in absolute terms. However, women who were employed in the pre-lockdown phase were 23.5 percentage points less likely to be employed in the post lockdown phase, compared to men. Male heads of household were 11.3 percentage points more likely to be employed post-lockdown, compared to female heads of household. Caste differences are not as sharp as gender differences, but the we find that lockdown affected employment of the disadvantaged caste groups relatively more adversely than the higher ranked group of castes. |
| Keywords: | Covid-19, Lockdown, Employment, Gender, Caste, India |
| Date: | 2020–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ash:wpaper:30&r=all |
| By: | Marc Henry; Romuald Meango; Ismael Mourifié (University of Toronto) |
| Abstract: | We derive sharp bounds on the non consumption utility component in an extended Roy model of sector selection. We interpret this non consumption utility component as a compensating wage differential. The bounds are derived under the assumption that potential wages in each sector are (jointly) stochastically monotone with respect to an observed selection shifter. The lower bound can also be interpreted as the minimum cost subsidy necessary to change sector choices and make them observationally indistinguishable from choices made under the classical Roy model of sorting on potential wages only. The research is motivated by the analysis of women's choice of university major and their under-representation in mathematics intensive fields. With data from a German graduate survey, and using the proportion of women on the STEM faculty at the time of major choice as our selection shifter, we find high costs of choosing the STEM sector for women from the former West Germany, especially for low realized incomes and low proportion of women on the STEM faculty, interpreted as a scarce presence of role models. |
| Keywords: | Roy model, partial identification, stochastic monotonicity, women in STEM |
| JEL: | C31 C34 I21 J24 |
| Date: | 2020–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hka:wpaper:2020-035&r=all |