Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Women Managers And The Gender-Based Gap In Access To Education: Evidence From Firm-Level Data In Developing Countries, Mohammad Amin, Asif Islam

Mohammad Amin

A number of studies explore the differences in men and women’s labor market participation rates and wages. Some of these differences have been linked to gender disparities in education attainment and access. The present paper contributes to this literature by analyzing the relationship between the proclivity of a firm having a top woman manager and access to education among women relative to men in the country. We combine the literature on women’s careers in management, which has mostly focused on developed countries, with the development literature that has emphasized the importance of access to education. Using firm-level data for 73 …

Family Wages: The Roles Of Wives And Mothers In U.S. Working-Class Survival Strategies, 1880-1930, Ileen Devault

Ileen A DeVault

The common image of a female wage earner in the U.S. in the decades around the turn of the 20th century is that of a young, single woman: the daughter of her family. However, the wives and mothers of these families also made important economic contributions to their families' economies. This paper argues that we need to rethink our evaluation of the economic roles played by ever-married women in working-class families. Using a range of government reports as well as IPUMS, I document three ways in which working-class wives and mothers strove to bring cash into their family units: through …

Female Vs. Male Top Manager Of Private Firms In Developing Countries: Implications For Country And Firm Characteristics, Mohammad Amin

Mohammad Amin

Gender disparity in various economic dimensions has prompted policy measures aimed at providing greater employment opportunities for women. However, greater employment may not solve the problem much if this is concentrated in low paying and vulnerable jobs such as jobs in informal sector. Hence, it becomes important to understand how women vs. men compare in high paying formal sector jobs such as top managers of private firms. Using data on private firms in 86 developing countries, this paper analyzes how firms with female vs. male managers differ in their structure and performance. Relationship between various country characteristics and the proportion …

Gender And Race Heterogeneity: The Impact Of Students With Limited English On Native Students' Performance, Tim Diette, Ruth Uwaifo Oyelere

Ruth Uwaifo Oyelere

Women's Pay In Australia, Great Britain And The United States: Commentary, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] My reaction to this paper is mixed. On the one hand, it represents one of the few serious efforts I know of to place discussions about comparable worth in a comparative perspective and to bring evidence from other countries' experiences into the debate about policy in the United States. For this the authors should be resoundingly applauded. On the other hand, I am left with the feeling that they have not pushed their empirical analyses as hard as they might have, and because of this, in places they may have drawn some inappropriate conclusions. My discussion will elaborate on …

Do Retail Firms Favor Female Managers? Evidence From Survey Data In Developing Countries, Mohammad Amin, Asif Islam

Mohammad Amin

Using firm-level data for 87 developing countries, the paper analyzes how the likelihood of a firm having female vs. male top manager varies across sectors. The service sector is often considered to be more favorable towards women compared with men vis-à-vis the manufacturing sector. While our results confirm a significantly higher presence of female managers in services vs. manufacturing, the result is entirely driven by the retail firms with little contribution from other service sectors such as wholesale, construction and other services. We also find that the higher presence of female managers in the retail sector vs. manufacturing is much …

Empirical Consequences Of Comparable Worth, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] To help focus subsequent debate, this paper presents a nontechnical survey of the small but growing empirical literature by economists on the consequences of comparable worth. I discuss in turn studies of the consequences of comparable worth on the male-female earnings gap, of its potential to affect adversely the employment of women, of its effects on the labor supply and occupational mobility of women, and of its effects on women and their families as a group. The survey is critical in nature and points to areas in which research is needed.

[Review Of The Book Discrimination In Labor Markets], Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] In sum, I consider Discrimination in Labor Markets a fine volume. Anyone who has the slightest interest in the analysis of labor-market discrimination should seriously contemplate purchasing it. The relatively nontechnical nature of the papers will appeal to a wide range of readers, and the book should quickly find its way onto reading lists for undergraduate and graduate courses that discuss the economics of discrimination.

Comparable Worth In The Public Sector, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Robert Smith

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] At the theoretical level, we conclude that the case for comparable worth rests on the argument that the current distribution of female employees is based on discriminatory barriers which existing legislation have not broken down. If this argument is valid, the desirability of comparable worth depends upon one's perceptions of how the benefits it provides contrasts with the efficiency losses it induces. Given the trade-offs involved, ultimately one's position on comparable worth must depend on value judgments.

Comparable-Worth Wage Adjustments And Female Employment In The State And Local Sector, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Robert S. Smith

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Our paper simulates the likely effects of a comparable-worth wage-adjustment policy in the state and local sector on female employment in the sector. The simulation is based on estimates of within-occupation male/female substitution and across-occupation occupational employment substitution that we obtain using data from the 1980 Census of Population.

Do Teachers’ Race, Gender, And Ethnicity Matter? Evidence From The National Education Longitudinal Study Of 1988, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Daniel D. Goldhaber, Dominic J. Brewer

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Using data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS), the authors find that the match between teachers' race, gender, and ethnicity and those of their students had little association with how much the students learned, but in several instances it seems to have been a significant determinant of teachers' subjective evaluations of their students. For example, test scores of white female students in mathematics and science did not increase more rapidly when the teacher was a white woman than when the teacher was a white man, but white female teachers evaluated their white female students more highly than …

Single-Sex Schools, Student Achievement, And Course Selection: Evidence From Rule-Based Student Assignments In Trinidad And Tobago, C. Kirabo Jackson

C. Kirabo Jackson

Existing studies on single-sex schooling suffer from biases because students who attend single-sex schools differ in unmeasured ways from those who do not. In Trinidad and Tobago students are assigned to secondary schools based on an algorithm allowing one to address self-selection bias and estimate the causal effect of attending a single-sex school versus a similar coeducational school. While students (particularly females) with strong expressed preferences for single-sex schools benefit, most students perform no better at single-sex schools. Girls at single-sex-schools take fewer sciences courses and more traditionally female subjects.

Why Are Returns To Education Higher For Women Than For Men In Urban China?, Emily C. Hannum, Zhang Yuping, Wang Meiyan

Emily C. Hannum

It is well established that women’s returns to education are higher than men’s in urban China. We argue that this finding, while accurate, is misleading due to its individualist perspective. The incomes to which most working-age women and men have access include not only own income, but spouse income. Further, decisions about participation and investment in the labor force, both consequential for income trajectories, are likely made with partner income and potential income in mind. To our knowledge, no research in China has explored the returns to education enjoyed via spouse income, or the implications of pooling couple income, for …

What Code-Mixed Dps Can Tell Us About Gender, Elena Valenzuela, Joyce Bruhn De Garavito, Ewelina Barski, Maria De Luna Villalón, Ana Faure, Yolanda Pangtay, Alma Ramírez Trujillo, Sonia Reis

Ewelina Barski, PhD

There has been a growing interest in the examination of the steady state of simultaneous bilinguals. An understanding of what leads to the possible weaknesses in the grammar of early bilinguals can contribute to our understanding of the possible causes of the apparent characteristic ‘failures’ in second language acquisition (Montrul 2008). Spanish has a gender feature for nouns (Carroll 1989) and gender agreement for determiners and adjectives. Problems with the acquisition of gender marking on the noun and/or with gender agreement are well-known in the L2 literature (Hawkins 1998; Fernández–Garcia 1999; Franceschina 2001; Bruhn de Garavito and White 2002; White …

Men's And Women's Definitions Of "Good" Jobs: Similarities And Differences By Age And Across Time, Pamela S. Tolbert, Phyllis Moen

Pamela S Tolbert

Whether and to what extent men and women hold differing preferences for particular job attributes remains the subject of debate, with a sizable number of empirical studies producing conflicting results. These conflicts may have temporal sources—historical changes in men's and women's preferences for particular job attributes, as well as changes in preferences that commonly occur over individuals' life cycle. Most previous research has neglected the effects of time on gender differences. Using data from national surveys of workers over a 22-year period, this study focuses explicitly on changes by age over time in men's and women's preferences for five key …

What Code-Mixed Dps Can Tell Us About Gender, Elena Valenzuela, Joyce Bruhn De Garavito, Ewelina Barski, Maria De Luna Villalón, Ana Faure, Yolanda Pangtay, Alma Ramírez Trujillo, Sonia Reis

Joyce Bruhn de Garavito

There has been a growing interest in the examination of the steady state of simultaneous bilinguals. An understanding of what leads to the possible weaknesses in the grammar of early bilinguals can contribute to our understanding of the possible causes of the apparent characteristic ‘failures’ in second language acquisition (Montrul 2008). Spanish has a gender feature for nouns (Carroll 1989) and gender agreement for determiners and adjectives. Problems with the acquisition of gender marking on the noun and/or with gender agreement are well-known in the L2 literature (Hawkins 1998; Fernández–Garcia 1999; Franceschina 2001; Bruhn de Garavito and White 2002; White …

What Code-Mixed Dps Can Tell Us About Gender, Elena Valenzuela, Joyce Bruhn De Garavito, Ewelina Barski, Maria Eugenia De Luna Villalón, Ana Faure, Yolanda Pangtay, Alma Ramírez Trujillo, Sonia Reis

Maria Eugenia De Luna Villalón

There has been a growing interest in the examination of the steady state of simultaneous bilinguals. An understanding of what leads to the possible weaknesses in the grammar of early bilinguals can contribute to our understanding of the possible causes of the apparent characteristic ‘failures’ in second language acquisition (Montrul 2008). Spanish has a gender feature for nouns (Carroll 1989) and gender agreement for determiners and adjectives. Problems with the acquisition of gender marking on the noun and/or with gender agreement are well-known in the L2 literature (Hawkins 1998; Fernández–Garcia 1999; Franceschina 2001; Bruhn de Garavito and White 2002; White …