RESEARCH MAKING THE NEWS
Working Women are Underrepresented in the C-Suite – and in Google Images.
Andrew Keshner | 
| 12.18.2018
Men seem to get first preference when researchers from the D.C.-based nonprofit think tank searched for people in certain professions. What’s more, women showed up farther down in the results overall. Men usually appeared on average about two images into the results, while woman showed approximately four images in. Pew came to its conclusions after reviewing U.S. Bureau of Labor 2017 statistics for 105 common occupations and comparing them with which pictures popped up in a Google Image search for those professions.
Cites: Gender and Jobs in Online Image SearchbyOnyi Lam, Stefan Wojcik, Brain Broderick & Adam Hughes at Pew Research Center Dec, 2018
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Most Americans Believe Women Should be Equal at Work, but Attitudes About their Roles at Home are More Complicated
Emma Newburger | 
|12.13.2018
Sixty-five percent of Americans say women should have equal roles at work and at home. But the study also revealed a more complicated view of gender equality: Nearly 25 percent of Americans believe that while women should have the same opportunities as men to work or participate in politics, they should still take on a bigger role in the household. A smaller share of people believe that men and women should be unequal in both spheres — 5 percent of millennials and 7 percent of those born from 1946 to 1980.
Citing: Attitudes and the Stalled Gender Revolution: Egalitarianism, Traditionalism, and Ambivalence from 1977 through 2016 by William J. Scarborough, Ray Sin and Barbara Risman at University of Illinois at Chicago, Nov, 2018
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After #MeToo, Those Who Report Harassment Still Risk Retaliation
Lauren Weber | 
| 12.12.2018
More than two-thirds of workers who filed sexual harassment complaints with the EEOC say they have suffered retaliation, ranging from job transfers and shift changes to getting fired, according to an analysis of more than 45,000 harassment complaints filed with the EEOC between 2012 and 2016. Of those, nearly all were ultimately fired or left their jobs voluntarily when they felt their work environment became intolerable, the analysis released Wednesday found. More victims are coming forward, but retaliation remains a risk, data show. In the 12 months through Sept. 30, filings with the EEOC alleging sexual harassment rose nearly 14% over the prior year to 7,609 complaints. Allegations of retaliation in connection with sexual harassment have risen by about 5%, said Victoria Lipnic, the EEOC’s acting head.
Citing: Employer’s Response to Sexual Harassment by Carly McCann, Donald Tomaskovic-Devey & M.v. Lee Badgett at University of Massachusetts, Center for Employment Equity, Dec, 2018
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These are the Countries with the Worst Gender Pay Gaps
Andrian Francisco Varela | 
| 12.02.2018
The report—which looked at almost 80% of the world’s earners—analyzed and compiled data on the gap between men and women’s pay across 73 different countries, assessing them based on their income level, and ultimately attempting to ascertain the key culprits behind the wage gap. Interestingly, the phenomenon doesn’t seem to correlate with the differences between men’s and women’s differing education levels.
Citing: Global Wage Report 2018/19: What lies Behind Gender Pay Gaps? At International Labor Organization.
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Making Salary Information Public Helps Close the Gender Pay Gap
Rebecca Greenfield | 
| 12.05.2018
When workers know how their pay compares with their colleagues, the difference between what men and women earn gets smaller, according to new economic research. Pay transparency has long been suspected to help close the stubborn gap between men’s and women’s average earnings, but a relatively new Danish law gave researchers from several business schools, including INSEAD, Columbia University and the University of Copenhagen, the chance to prove it. In 2007, Denmark required companies with over 35 employees to disclose pay data by gender. The researchers looked at what happened to salaries between 2003 and 2008 — before and after the law took effect. They also analyzed pay at companies that didn’t have to comply with the law.
Citing: Do Firms Respond to Gender Pay Gap Disclosure? By Morten Bennedsen, Elena Simintzi, Margarita Tsoutsoura Daniel Wolfenzon at University of Copenhagen, Department of Economics, Oct 2018
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NEW RESEARCH REPORTS
Do State Laws Protecting Older Workers from Discrimination Reduce Age Discrimination in Hiring? Evidence from a Field Experiment
David Neumark, Ian Burn, Patrick Button, & Nanneh Chehras | The National Bureau of Economics Research | Dec, 2018
We provide evidence from a field experiment in all 50 states on age discrimination in hiring for retail sales jobs. We relate measured age discrimination – the difference in callback rates between old and young applicants – to state variation in anti-discrimination laws protecting older workers. Anti-discrimination laws could boost hiring, although they could have the unintended consequence of deterring hiring if their main effect is to increase termination costs. We find some evidence that there is less discrimination against older men and women in states where age discrimination law allows larger damages, and some evidence that there is lower discrimination against older women in states where disability discrimination law allows larger damages. But this evidence is not robust to all of the estimations we consider.
Discrimination at Intersection of Age, Race and Gender: Evidence from a Lab-in-the-field Experiment
Joanna N. Lahey & Douglas R. Oxley | The National Bureau of Economics Research | Dec, 2018
We show race discrimination against prime-age black job applicants that diminishes into middle age before re-emerging for older applicants. Screeners mechanically process black and white resumes similarly, but spend less time on younger black resumes, suggesting they use negative heuristics or taste-based discrimination. Screeners demonstrate levels-based statistical discrimination, believing that younger black applicants have worse computer skills and more gaps in their job histories. We find no evidence that screeners believe black applicants have worse previous experience. Screeners demonstrate variance-based statistical discrimination against black applicants of all ages, suggesting that screeners perceive the stronger history signals for white applicants, with this type of discrimination disproportionately affecting older applicants. We find suggestive evidence that the signal sent by high school attended is weaker for younger black applicants compared to younger white applicants, and we find no evidence that the signal strength of the applicant’s address varies by race.
Unions and Wage Inequality: The Roles of Gender, Skill and Public Sector Employment
David Card, Thomas Lemieux, & W. Craig Riddell | The National Bureau of Economics Research | Nov, 2018
We examine the changing relationship between unionization and wage inequality in Canada and the United States. Our study is motivated by profound recent changes in the composition of the unionized workforce. Historically, union jobs were concentrated among low-skilled men in private sector industries. With the steady decline in private sector unionization and rising influence in the public sector, half of unionized workers are now in the public sector. Accompanying these changes was a remarkable rise in the share of women among unionized workers. Currently, approximately half of unionized employees in North America are women. While early studies of unions and inequality focused on males, recent studies find that unions reduce wage inequality among men but not among women.
Women, Wealth Effects, and Slow Recoveries
Masao Fukui, Emi Nakamura, & Jon Steinsson | The National Bureau of Economics Research | Nov, 2018
Business cycle recoveries have slowed in recent decades. This slowdown comes entirely from female employment: as women’s employment rates converged towards men’s over the past half century, the growth rate of female employment slowed. We ask whether this slowdown in female employment caused the slowdown in overall employment during recent business cycle recoveries. Standard macroeconomic models with “balanced growth preferences” imply that this cannot be the cause, since the entry of women “crowds out” men in the labor market almost one for-one. We estimate the extent of crowd out of men by women in the labor market using state level panel data and find that it is small, contradicting the standard model. We show that a model with home production by women can match our low estimates of crowd out. This model – calibrated to match our cross-sectional estimate of crowd out – implies that 70% of the slowdown in recent business cycle recoveries can be explained by female convergence.
The Job Characteristics of Low- Income Hispanic Parents
Elizabeth Wildsmith, Maria Ramos-Olazagasti, & Marta Alvira-Hammond | The National Research Center on Hispanic Children and Families | Nov, 2018
Parental employment can increase the availability of financial resources that can support children’s development. As such, many publicly funded programs are designed to support children in low-income families encourage and support parental employment.1-3 However, there are additional characteristics of parents’ work that matter for children, characteristics that help determine the availability of non-monetary resources and family dynamics.4-8 In this report, we describe the job characteristics of employed low-income Hispanic parents across four domains associated with child well-being: job security, work schedule, earnings, and employer-provided benefits.4 We look at mothers and fathers separately because of the gendered nature of work. Additionally, we examine differences among Hispanics by nativity, and compare the job characteristics of low-income Hispanic parents to those of low-income non-Hispanic black (“black”) and non-Hispanic white parents (“white”).
