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Journal Articles
A journey through time: the story behind ‘eight decades of changes in occupational tasks, computerization and the gender pay gap’
Industry and Innovation, 31
In this interview article, we embark on a fascinating journey through time alongside the winners of the 2023 DRUID Best Paper Award. DRUID, an annual research conference renowned as the […]
In this interview article, we embark on a fascinating journey through time alongside the winners of the 2023 DRUID Best Paper Award. DRUID, an annual research conference renowned as the hub of cutting-edge research on innovation and the dynamics of structural, institutional, and geographic change, bestows this award on the most innovative and exceptional conference submission. As longstanding allies of DRUID, Industry and Innovation offers an exclusive peek behind the curtains, unveiling the untold stories that underlie award-winning research.
In 2023, this coveted DRUID prize was awarded to a paper by Ljubica Nedelkoska, Shreyas Gadgin Matha, James McNerney, Andre Assumpcao, Dario Diodato, and Frank Neffke. Their work stands out through an impressive data collection effort and the exploration of a compelling and urgent research question – how technological change has impacted the gender pay gap. Throughout this interview, the author team takes us down memory lane, retelling the story behind their research project. On this journey through time, we trace the genesis of the authors’ innovative ideas and the intricate pathways they navigated in their quest to understand the past as a means of unravelling the future of work and its implications for gender inequality in the labour market. This journey not only takes us back in time but also points to potential avenues for future research and open questions that lie ahead.
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Working Papers
Career dynamics and gender gaps among employees in the microfinance sector
While microfinance institutions (MFIs) are increasingly important as employers in the developing world, there is little micro-level evidence on gender differences among MFI employees and MFIs’ relation to economic development. […]
While microfinance institutions (MFIs) are increasingly important as employers in the developing world, there is little micro-level evidence on gender differences among MFI employees and MFIs’ relation to economic development.
We use a unique panel dataset of employees from Latin America’s largest MFI to show that gender gaps favouring men for promotion exist primarily in the sales division, while there is a significant gender wage gap in the administrative division. Among loan officers in the sales division, the gender gap in promotion and wages reverses.
Finally, female employees tend to work with clients with better loan terms and a history of loans with the institution.
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Book Chapter
Career Dynamics and Gender Gaps among Employees in the Microfinance Sector
Towards Gender Equity and Development, 192-216.
Microfinance institutions (MFIs) are commonly identified as empowering women and making them key actors in generating social change and economic development. Yet little is known about the gender parity among […]
Microfinance institutions (MFIs) are commonly identified as empowering women and making them key actors in generating social change and economic development. Yet little is known about the gender parity among employees within the lending institutions themselves and how this can impact development. While MFIs are increasingly important as employers in the developing world, there is little micro-level evidence about gender differences among MFI employees and MFIs’ relation to economic development. We use a unique panel dataset of employees from Latin America’s largest MFI to show that gender gaps favouring men for promotion exist primarily in the sales division, while there is a significant gender wage gap in the administrative division. Among loan officers in the sales division, the gender gap in promotion and wages reverses. Finally, female employees tend to work with clients with better loan terms and a history of loans with the institution.
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Working Papers
Closing the Gender Gap in Education: Does it Foretell the Closing of the Employment, Marriage, and Motherhood Gaps?
In this paper, we examine several dimensions of gender disparity for a sample of 40 countries using micro-level data. We start by documenting the reversal of the gender education gap […]In this paper, we examine several dimensions of gender disparity for a sample of 40 countries using micro-level data. We start by documenting the reversal of the gender education gap and ranking countries by the year in which it reversed. Then we turn to an analysis of the state of other gaps facing women: we compare men and women’s labor force participation (the labor force participation gap), married and single women’s labor force participation (the marriage gap), and mothers’ and non-mother’s labor force participation (the motherhood gap). We show that gaps still exist in these spheres in many countries, though there is significant heterogeneity among countries in terms of the size of and the speed at which these gaps are changing. We also show the relationship between the gaps and ask how much the participation gap would be reduced if the gaps in other spheres were eliminated. In general, we show that while there seems to be a relationship between the decline of the education gap and the reduction of the other gaps, the link is rather weak and highly heterogeneous across countries. -
Journal Articles
Closing the gender gap in education: What is the state of gaps in labour force participation for women, wives and mothers?
International Labor Review, 153, 173-207.
The educational gender gap has closed or reversed in many countries. But what of gendered labour market inequalities? Using micro‐level census data for some 40 countries, the authors examine the […]The educational gender gap has closed or reversed in many countries. But what of gendered labour market inequalities? Using micro‐level census data for some 40 countries, the authors examine the labour force participation gap between men and women, the “marriage gap” between married and single women’s participation, and the “motherhood gap” between mothers’ and non‐mothers’ participation. They find significant heterogeneity among countries in terms of the size of these gaps, the speed at which they are changing, and the relationships between them and the educational gap. But counterfactual regression analysis shows that the labour force participation gap remains largely unexplained by the other gaps.
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Journal Articles
Closing the gender gap in education: What is the state of gaps in labour force participation for women, wives and mothers?
International Labor Review, 153, 173-207.
The educational gender gap has closed or reversed in many countries. But what of gendered labour market inequalities? Using micro‐level census data for some 40 countries, the authors examine the […]The educational gender gap has closed or reversed in many countries. But what of gendered labour market inequalities? Using micro‐level census data for some 40 countries, the authors examine the labour force participation gap between men and women, the “marriage gap” between married and single women’s participation, and the “motherhood gap” between mothers’ and non‐mothers’ participation. They find significant heterogeneity among countries in terms of the size of these gaps, the speed at which they are changing, and the relationships between them and the educational gap. But counterfactual regression analysis shows that the labour force participation gap remains largely unexplained by the other gaps.
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Working Papers
Eight Decades of Changes in Occupational Tasks, Computerization and the Gender Pay Gap
New research from Ljubica Nedelkoska, Shreyas Gadgin Matha, and others finds that computerization had two counteracting effects on the pay gap – it simultaneously reduced it by attracting more women into better-paying occupations, and increased it through higher returns to computer use among men.
We build a new longitudinal dataset of job tasks and technologies by transforming the U.S. Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT, 1939 -1991) and four books documenting occupational use of tools and technologies in the 1940s, into a database akin to, and comparable with its digital successor, the O*NET (1998 -today). After creating a single occupational classification stretching between 1939 and 2019, we connect all DOT waves and the decennial O*NET databases into a single dataset, and we connect these with the U.S. Decennial Census data at the level of 585 occupational groups. We use the new dataset to study how technology changed the gender pay gap in the United States since the 1940s. We find that computerization had two counteracting effects on the pay gap -it simultaneously reduced it by attracting more women into better-paying occupations, and increased it through higher returns to computer use among men. The first effect closed the pay gap by 3.3 pp, but the second increased it by 5.8 pp, leading to a net widening of the pay gap. -
Briefs
Female Labor in Jordan: A Systematic Approach to the Exclusion Puzzle
Women in Jordan are excluded from labor market opportunities at among the highest rates in the world. Previous efforts to explain this outcome have focused on specific, isolated aspects of […]Women in Jordan are excluded from labor market opportunities at among the highest rates in the world. Previous efforts to explain this outcome have focused on specific, isolated aspects of the problem and have not exploited available datasets to test across causal explanations. We develop a comprehensive framework to analyze the drivers of low female employment rates in Jordan and systematically test their validity, using micro-level data from Employment and Unemployment Surveys (2008-2018) and the Jordanian Labor Market Panel Survey (2010-2016). We find that the nature of low female inclusion in Jordan’s labor market varies significantly with educational attainment, and identify evidence for different factors affecting different educational groups. Among women with high school education or less, we observe extremely low participation levels and find the strongest evidence for this phenomenon tracing to traditional social norms and poor public transportation. On the higher end of the education spectrum – university graduates and above – we find that the problem is not one of participation, but rather of unemployment, which we attribute to a small and undiversified private sector that is unable to accommodate women’s needs for work and work-family balance.
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Working Papers
Gender Differences in Professional Career Dynamics: New Evidence from a Global Law Firm
We examine gender gaps in career dynamics in the legal sector using rich panel data from one of the largest global law firms in the world. The law firm studied […]We examine gender gaps in career dynamics in the legal sector using rich panel data from one of the largest global law firms in the world. The law firm studied is representative of multinational law firms and operates in 23 countries. The sample includes countries at different stages of development. We document the cross-country variation in gender gaps and how these gaps have changed over time. We show that while there is gender parity at the entry level in most countries by the end of the period examined, there are persistent raw gender gaps at the top of the organization across all countries. We observe significant heterogeneity among countries in terms of gender gaps in promotions and wages, but the gaps that exist appear to be declining over the period studied. We also observe that women are more likely to report exiting the firm for family and work-life balance reasons, while men report leaving for career advancement. Finally, we show that various measures of national institutions and culture appear to play a role in the differential labor-market outcomes of men and women.
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Reports
The Dynamics of the Gender Gap: How do Countries rank in terms of making Marriage and Motherhood compatible with Work?
The Global Gender Gap Report 2009