Discriminatory Social Attitudes and Varying Gender Pay Gaps within Firms

Abstract

This study analyzes the relationship between discriminatory social attitudes toward gender equality and firms’ pay-setting behavior by combining information about regional votes on constitutional amendments on equal rights for women and men with a large data set of multi-establishment firms and workers. The results show a strong relationship between discriminatory social attitudes toward gender equality and gender pay gaps within firms across regions. The results remain robust, even when the authors account for detailed worker and job characteristics and for regional sorting of firms. Overall, the results suggest that gender pay gaps are larger in regions where more people oppose gender equality rights. In other words, in the same firm women earn lower wages than their male coworkers in regions where more people have discriminatory social attitudes toward gender equality.

Sexism, Social Outcomes, and the Gender Wage Gap

“…In Column 2, we present results that suggest that sexism has a larger effect on the wage gap in manufacturing and commerce industries. This result is similar to that found in Janssen et al (2016) who argue that discrimination is less costly in manufacturing because it is a less competitive industry and is more beneficial in commerce industries because they require more interactions between workers and customers who may be biased. 16 The fact that sexism has a larger influence in the less competitive manufacturing industry is suggestive of discrimination by employers, but the greater impact of sexism in the commerce industries suggest that discrimination by customers is also at play.…”

“…Importantly, our results hold when controlling for a large number of characteristics and a broad set of fixed effects. Previous studies do find some evidence suggesting the relevance of sexism in determining the gender wage gap, but the evidence thus far has been correlational and contextspecific (Charles et al, 2009(Charles et al, , 2018Janssen et al, 2016).…”

“…However, discrimination could be less prevalent in competitive markets because employers who choose to pay to discriminate may be driven out. For example, Janssen et al (2016) use data from Swiss referenda to assess discriminatory attitudes towards women and correlate them with the gender wage gap, finding that it has a larger impact in the high-concentration manufacturing industry. Similarly, Hirsch et al (2010) use data at the worker-firm level and find that the gender wage gap is larger in German firms with greater monopsony power.…”

Employment of R&D personnel after an educational supply shock: Effects of the introduction of Universities of Applied Sciences in Switzerland

“…Following Janssen et al (2016), who exploit variation in workplace locations within firms at the cantonal level, we use the information on employees' workplace locations to determine the locations of firms' establishments. 10 We split firms by assigning all employees working in the same MS region to one establishment.…”

Gender unemployment in the Czech and Polish labour market

“…Nevertheless, on the demand side, it is the discrimination that is emphasized as one of the key factors explaining the differences between male and female unemployment rates. The first source of discrimination refers to the discriminatory social attitudes towards gender equality (Janssen et al, 2016) and prejudices that some employers or clients have against women.…”