Inhalt: To obtain a more complete understanding of the persisting gender earnings gap in Germany, this paper investigates both the cross-sectional and biographical dimension of gender inequalities. Using an Oaxaca Blinder decomposition, we show that the gender gap in annual earnings is largely driven by women’s lower work experience and intensive margin of labor supply. Based on a dynamic microsimulation model, we then estimate how gender differences accumulate over work lives to account for the biographical dimension of the gender gap. We observe an average gender lifetime earnings gap of 51.5 percent for birth cohorts 1964-1972. We show that this unadjusted gender lifetime earnings gap increases strongly with the number of children, ranging from 17.8 percent for childless women to 68.0 percent for women with three or more children. However, using a counterfactual analysis we find that the adjusted gender lifetime earnings gap of 10 percent differs only slightly by women’s family background.
Free to Be Me? Evolving Gender Expression and the Dynamic Interplay between Authenticity and the Desire to Be Accepted at Work
Autor/in:
Hennekam, Sophie; Ladge, Jamie J.
Quelle: AMJ (Academy of Management Journal), (2022)
Inhalt: This study examines how the gender expression of transgender individuals evolves as they transition in the context of work. We draw from interviews with 25 transgender employees conducted at four points in time over a two-year period as they initiate, perform, and continue their gender transition. Contributing to the literature on authenticity and identity transitions, our findings challenge the assumptions that individuals know how to express an authentic self and that authenticity has an endpoint by pointing to the evolving and relational nature of authenticity that involves a trial-and-error approach in which transgender individuals learn to become authentic as they engage in various forms of gender performativity. Further, we position authenticity as a continuum, as individuals may temper their gender expression to elicit acceptance and express a gender that feels “authentic enough” as they contend with the impact of prevailing gender norms and expectations in the workplace. Finally, the findings suggest that the identity transition process evolves in a non-linear way and involves a dynamic interplay between the desire to express one’s gender in a way that feels authentic and the desire to feel accepted by others.
Schlagwörter:gender identity; non-binary; trans people
Inhalt: A question asking for respondents’ sex is one of the standard sociodemographic characteristics collected in a survey. Until now, it typically consisted of a simple question (e.g., “Are you…?”) with two answer categories (“male” and “female”). In 2019, Germany implemented the additional sex designation divers for intersex people. In survey methodology, this has led to an ongoing discussion how to include a third category in questionnaires. We investigate respondents’ understanding of the third category, and whether introducing it affects data quality. Moreover, we investigate the understanding of the German term Geschlecht for sex and gender. To answer our research questions, we implemented different question wordings asking for sex/gender in a non-probability-based online panel in Germany and combined them with open-ended questions. Findings and implications for surveys are discussed.
Can Wage Transparency Alleviate Gender Sorting in the Labor Market?
Autor/in:
Bamieh, Omar; Ziegler, Lennart
Quelle: IZA Discussion Paper, 15363 (2022)
Inhalt: Wage decompositions suggest that a large share of the gender wage gap can be explained by differences in occupation and employer choices. If female workers are not well informed about these pay differences, increasing wage transparency might alleviate the gender gap. We test this hypothesis by examining the impact of the 2011 Pay Transparency Law in Austria, which requires companies to state a wage figure in job advertisements. For the analysis, we combine vacancy postings from the largest Austrian job board with social security spells that record the gender of new hires. To compare the pay level of vacancies before and after the reform, we predict wage postings using detailed occupation-employer cells, which explain about 75 percent of the variation in posted wages. While we estimate a substantial gender wage gap of 15 log points, pay transparency did not affect gender sorting into better-paid occupation and firms. To study job transitions, we focus on a subsample of workers whose previous employment is also observed. Our estimates show that switching occupations is common, and it often entails significant wage changes. Yet, in line with our main estimates, we do not find that women become more likely to switch to better-paid jobs. We interpret the absence of effects as evidence that limited transparency does not explain the persistence of gender sorting in the labor market.
Inhalt: We study the presence and the extent of gender differences in reference letters for graduate students in economics and how these may affect the start of young researchers' careers. To these ends, we build a novel rich dataset covering ten cohorts of academic job market applicants to two top institutions hiring on the international market. We collect information from the application packages and conduct text analysis of reference letters using Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques in order to measure gender differences in the style and content of the letters. We then combine the resulting measures with information on the applicants’ subsequent labor market outcomes as extrapolated from the main online repositories. Our results reveal that male and female candidates receive different support from their sponsors and are described in systematically different terms. While female advisors talk more about personal characteristics, only male advisors do so at a different extent for male and female candidates. Such differences in how candidates are talked about affect subsequent career outcomes and explain a non-negligible part (5 to 8% approximately) of the observed gender gaps.
Inhalt: Women academics earn less than men, even after controlling for a range of productivity-related covariates. However, the latter usually do not include direct measures of research productivity. This paper uses data from the Higher Education Statistical Authority (HESA) confirming the existence of unconditional and conditional gender wage gaps. Data separately collected for the recent 2021 Research Excellence Framework (REF) shows men are more research productive but that after controlling for academic grade there is no gender productivity gap. For both wage and productivity gaps, there are barriers for women to achieve the research productivity needed to be promoted, and reducing these would go a long way to eliminating such gaps.
Harris und Maté-Sanchez-Val (2022) finden heraus, dass Frauen weniger Zugang zu Ressourcen haben um ihre Prouktivität in der Forschung zu erhöhen und sich dies negativ auf die Verringerung der Gehaltsunterschiede auswirkt.
Technological Progress, Occupational Structure and Gender Gaps in the German Labour Market
Autor/in:
Bachmann, Ronald; Gonschor, Myrielle
Quelle: IZA Discussion Paper, 15419 (2022)
Inhalt: We analyze if technological progress and the corresponding change in the occupational structure have improved the relative position of women in the labour market. We show that the share of women rises most strongly in non-routine cognitive and manual occupations, but declines in routine occupations. While the share of women also rises relatively strongly in high-paying occupations, womens' individual-level wages lag behind which implies within-occupation gender wage gaps. A decomposition exercise shows that composition effects with respect to both individual and job characteristics can explain the rise of female shares in the top tier of the labour market to an extent. However, the unexplained part of the decomposition is sizeable, indicating that developments such as technological progress are relevant
COVID-19 and the Gender Gap in University Student Performance
Autor/in:
Bratti, Massimiliano; Lippo, Enrico
Quelle: IZA Discussion Paper, (2022)
Inhalt: The gendered impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been observed in many domains, such as labor market outcomes and mental health. One sector that was particularly disrupted by the pandemic was education, owing to the need to close educational institutions and move all learning activities online. In this paper, we investigate the gender gap in university student performance, focusing on a large public university located in one of the European regions most affected by the first pandemic wave (Lombardy, in Northern Italy). Despite concerns that the pandemic might have had a heavier toll on the educational performance of female students, our empirical analysis shows that the gender gap in student progression (number of credits earned) was not affected by the pandemic and that in some college majors (social sciences and humanities) women even improved their GPA relative to men
Schlagwörter:Benotung; gender gap; Leistungsdifferenzen; Leistungsfähigkeit; public universities and colleges; student; Student*in; Universität
CEWS Kategorie:Hochschulen, Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung, Studium und Studierende, Geschlechterverhältnis
Quelle: European Journal of Women's Studies, 29 (2022) 1, S 168–177
Inhalt: Knowledge production in gender studies needs journals as its lifeline not only because it offers academic authorization to the authors but also because that is the way to ensure the knowledge produced is shared widely. A number of gender studies journal editors were invited to an online roundtable discussion about the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and of open access (OA) practices on gender studies journals, which took place as part of the European Journal of Women’s Studies 2021 online Spring Symposium. The participants of the roundtable represent different types of gender studies journals: self-financed and published (Identities Southern Europe, Kohl, lambda nordica), project financed (Aspekt), institutional (Open Gender Journal), profit oriented with a national focus (Gender) and with a transnational focus (Feminist Theory, Feminist Encounters) financed by publishing houses.
Schlagwörter:COVID-19; Gender Studies; Geschlechterforschung; Journal; open access; Publikation; Publishing
Quelle: European Journal of Politics and Gender, (2022) , S 1–17
Inhalt: The aim of this article is to provide empirical insights into the process of building solidarity. I focus on the way in which feminist movements are funded and discuss the question of the structural conditions for building feminist solidarities within movements that already display different hierarchies of income, visibility and recognition. My key message is that feminist solidarities are more easily produced if feminist movements challenge traditional alliances of money, expertise and power, and thus propose an alternative to ‘NGO-isation’. I outline the particular practices of participatory grant-making of the Polish Feminist Fund and argue that such organisation practices may foster greater solidarities across different identities, issues and locations, and result in the more politically oriented redistribution of funds to those who are in most pressing need of support.