Women increasingly migrate as primary movers, yet how gender inequality shapes this process remains unclear due to methodological limitations. Competing theories predict that greater gender equality should facilitate women's migration by loosening norms and expanding women's aspirations, whereas...

As countries in Asia and the Pacific continue to integrate into the global economy, what are the implications for women's labor market participation in these countries? The literature on international trade considers the effects of import competition and export orientation on gender gaps in...

This paper presents the results of a field experiment aimed at reducing the gender bias in teaching evaluations at a higher education institution. In the intervention, before they completed the teaching evaluation questionnaire, students were individually randomized in three groups. One third...

Does gender identity affect judicial decisions? This paper provides novel evidence of in-group gender bias in the judicial decisions for almost all divorce cases in China. Exploiting the effectively random assignment of cases to judges, the analysis finds that female judges are 1.2 percentage...

"We examine differences in jobs held by men and women based on a measure not used before, the standard human resources measures of "knowledge, skills, and abilities" generated by job analyses. While there is an abundance of evidence on gender disparities in pay, we know much less in detail about...

We develop a framework for quantifying barriers to labor force participation (LFP) and entrepreneurship faced by women in India. We find substantial barriers to LFP, and higher costs of expanding businesses through the hiring of workers for women entrepreneurs. However, there is one area in...

Is it possible to improve women's agency by providing information about their abilities? Using a lab experiment in the field, I study how perceived abilities and gender stereotypes shape intra-household dynamics. I use an incentivized decision-making game with 525 married couples from 42 rural...

Women are severely underrepresented in American politics, especially among Republicans. This underrepresentation may result from women being less willing to run for office, from voter bias against women, or from political structures that make it more difficult for women to compete. Here we show...

Women are severely underrepresented in American politics, especially among Republicans. This underrepresentation may result from women being less willing to run for office, from voter bias against women, or from political structures that make it more difficult for women to compete. Here we show...

The rapid ascent of digital platforms and the gig economy has prompted concerns about the gender pay gap. The results show that in the gig economy, gender continues to be a crucial determinant of workers' earnings, with women earning 85% of what men earn on a monthly basis. Nevertheless, in...

We conduct an incentivized experiment with a nationally representative sample to investigate gender discrimination among people receiving advice on risky investments. Participants learn about actual start-up firms they can invest in. Before deciding how much of their endowment to invest, they...

Ours is the first meta-analysis synthesizing results from econometric studies carried out in the UK to assess the size of the gender wage gap (GWG). Drawing on 90 primary studies published between 1974 and 2024 we assess trends in the gap and identify the substantive and methodological factors...

This paper replicates and extends the evidence on the lifetime effects of school starting age on earnings by Fredriksson and Öckert (2014) for Sweden. Using German data for individuals born between 1945 and 1965, we examine a more rigid system of ability tracking in secondary education, a...

Does increased legal infrastructure empower victims to leave abusive relationships? Structural barriers often prevent victims of intimate partner violence from seeking help, with two-thirds of female victims in Europe neither reporting incidents nor accessing support. I study Germany’s 2002...

LLMs are rapidly entering the hiring process, but their most pronounced effects may occur before any screening by changing who chooses to apply. We study how human versus LLMbased evaluation and gender transparency shape entry into competitive jobs. In a preregistered online experiment,...

This paper investigates the impact of the #MeToo movement in the workplace, drawing on French survey data on harassment behaviours and administrative data on worker flows. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, we find that, following the #MeToo movement, women began leaving high-risk...

We study whether gender-biased financial advice contributes to the gender gap in pension wealth. Using administrative records from four private pension funds in Italy, we document that women are ceteris paribus 8 percentage points less likely than men to choose stock-focused investment lines at...

This report takes stock of gender equality in ECA, with a particular focus on women’s access to economic opportunities and jobs, alongside the urgent challenge of VAWG. It highlights the World Bank Group–supported initiatives across the region, illustrating both the range of solutions being...

Engineering remains a highly gendered and racialised profession in South Africa, shaped by enduring historical inequalities and the imprint of institutionalised exclusion that structures women's experiences of belonging and professional legitimacy. While women's underrepresentation in STEM is...

This paper investigates the methodological performance of Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression and Random Forest machine learning algorithms in measuring adjusted gender pay gaps. The research is motivated by the European Union's Pay Transparency Directive (2023/970), which mandates that...

LLMs are rapidly entering the hiring process, but their most pronounced effects may occur before any screening by changing who chooses to apply. We study how human versus LLMbased evaluation and gender transparency shape entry into competitive jobs. In a preregistered online experiment,...

This research improves our understanding of overeducation by highlighting its risks among middle-educated workers, especially the specific risk that motherhood may pose for job mismatch among them, compared to highly educated women. It employs random-effects and Heckman selection models with...

Health-harmful norms persist because they fulfill a socially valued function. In many Nigerian communities, female genital cutting (FGC) is practiced because it is believed to discourage sex outside marriage, outweighing its perceived costs for many households. This paper examines the impact of...

Routine-Biased Technological Change (RBTC) is viewed as reshaping labor markets, yet its implications for gender inequality in developing economies remain underexplored. This study examines these dynamics among formal wage workers in Indonesia from 2001 to 2019. Using stacked first-difference...

Despite several policies and legislation enactments to address gender inequality in the post-apartheid South African employment landscape, a significant proportion of female academics still face marginalization and underrepresentation in senior executive positions. This paper aims to investigate...

Concerns about corporate scandals and abusive leadership suggest that individuals with an opportunistic and manipulative personality sort into managerial positions. Indeed, a fledgling number of econometric studies have shown that individuals high in Machiavellianism are more likely to hold a...

This paper examines the effect of proximity to mining activity on men's adherence to traditional masculinity norms. Combining geocoded survey data with detailed spatial information on mining activity across 37 countries, we employ an instrumental variable strategy that exploits exogenous...

Can legal reforms shift social norms around intimate partner violence (IPV)? We examine Vietnam's 2007 Law on Domestic Violence Prevention and Control using a difference-in-differences strategy that leverages the greater relevance of legal protections for married and cohabiting women relative to...

This paper estimates the causal effects of monetary policy shocks on household consumption, with additional analysis of labor market and income responses, disaggregated by gender and race. I find that contractionary monetary policy reduces consumption more for black than white households, with...

How large is the gender pay gap among university professors, and how do institutional pay-setting mechanisms shape this disparity? This paper provides novel empirical evidence on the gender pay gap among professors at a renowned German university. Using detailed human resources data for the time...

Gender gaps in earnings persist even among high-skilled workers, partly because men and women often perform different tasks within and across jobs. We study a rare setting in which high-skilled men and women perform the same tasks under comparable conditions, allowing us to assess gender...

While rent-sharing is known to vary according to worker characteristics, the impact of profits on the gender wage gap warrants closer examination. Most studies adopt a single-gender view, neglecting factors tied to bargaining power. Our paper aims to fill this gap by leveraging rich matched...

While rent-sharing is known to vary according to worker characteristics, the impact of profits on the gender wage gap warrants closer examination. Most studies adopt a single-gender view, neglecting factors tied to bargaining power. Our paper aims to fill this gap by leveraging rich matched...

This study leverages whole-of-population linked census-administrative data to examine gender gaps in educational outcomes from early primary school through early adulthood in Australia and to assess the contribution of socioeconomic factors to these gaps. We find that females outperform males...

We study whether policy can shift gendered beliefs, norms, and labor market outcomes by exploiting a major expansion of earmarked paternity leave in Denmark. The reform generated large first-stage effects, substantially reallocating leave from mothers to fathers. Using a regression discontinuity...

This article takes as its starting point the warnings issued by the World Health Organization (WHO) on the perverse effects of a sedentary lifestyle on people's health, resulting in additional health expenditure that diverts significant resources away from other areas of public spending. The...

We study whether gender-biased financial advice contributes to the gender gap in pension wealth. Using administrative records from four private pension funds in Italy, we document that women are ceteris paribus 8 percentage points less likely than men to choose stock-focused investment lines at...

Women increasingly migrate as primary movers, yet how gender inequality shapes this process remains unclear due to methodological limitations. Competing theories predict that greater gender equality should facilitate women's migration by loosening norms and expanding women's aspirations, whereas...

We propose a new approach to estimate selection-corrected quantiles of the gender wage gap. Our method employs instrumental variables that explain variation in the latent variable but, conditional on the latent process, do not directly affect selection. We provide semiparametric identification...

Using 1979-2019 Current Population Survey data, we study the effect of state and federal minimum wage policies on gender, race, and ethnic inequality. We find that minimum wages substantially reduce intergroup wage inequality at least up to the 20th wage percentile, with no evidence of adverse...

We study whether digital platforms for high-skilled professionals level the playing field or reproduce traditional gender inequalities. Using high-frequency data on physicians, we examine gender differences in labor supply, pricing, patient engagement, and platform visibility. Although the...