Inequality and Growth: The Dual Role of Human Capital in Development

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Gender and competition: evidence from academic promotions in France

Differences in promotion across genders are still prevalent in many occupations. Recent work based on experimental evidence indicates that women participate less in or exert lower effort during contests. We exploit the unique features of the promotion system for French academics to look at women's attitudes towards competition in an actual labour market. Using data for academic economists over the period 1991-2008 we find that, conditional on entering the competition, there is no difference in promotions across the genders, which is difficult to reconcile with either discrimination or a poorer performance of women in contests. In contrast, women have a substantially lower probability than men to enter the promotion contest. Our data does not support that this gap is due to differences in costs or in preferences concerning department prestige, indicating that women are less willing than men to take part in contests

Gender gaps in promotion: it is also because women apply less

A related recent post (Who stays longer, male or female CEOs?) documents that women account for 5 per cent of CEOs of major North American firms as of January 2018 (Catalyst). According to Bertrand and Hallock (2001), they represented 2.5 per cent of top executives in US firms in the 1990s. Even if these two figures are not perfectly comparable, they are interesting in two regards: first, it seems that there has been some progress in terms of female representation at the top over the last decades. Second, despite the rapid increase in women’s educational attainment, which is now higher than that of men on average, gender gaps in labour markets are still large in terms of wages, promotions and seniority

Gender and promotions: evidence from academic economists in France

The promotion system for French academic economists provides an interesting environment to examine the promotion gap between men and women. Promotions occur through national competitions for which we have information both on candidates and on those eligible to be candidates. We can then examine the two stages of the process: application and success. Women are less likely to seek promotion and this accounts for up to 76% of the promotion gap. Being a woman also reduces the probability of promotion conditional on applying, although the gender difference is not statistically significant. Our results highlight the importance of the decision to apply

Réduire les inégalités de salaires entre femmes et hommes

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