Can Role Models Enhance Gender Equality on the Labor Market? Evidence from the Post-Unification Migration Experiment

The paper uses the natural experiment of German unification to study the role of labor supply behavior in explaining occupational segregation by sex. Analyzing a panel of regional labor market data constructed from administrative records, we observe that inflows of East German migrants with distinct labor market attitudes significantly reduced gender imbalance within occupations in West Germany. But also West German women enter male dominated jobs more frequently in local labor markets with a larger employment share of East German women. This spillover-effect, which we interpret as a role model effect, holds controlling for endogenous location choices of East-West migrants.