Topic Gender

The #ManyDaughters Study is Officially Kicking Off!

We are happy to announce the launch of the #ManyDaughters Study, an international research initiative exploring how having daughters influences behavior, preferences, and attitudes. Researchers from all fields of social sciences are invited to participate in this collaborative project, which will use data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) to test four key hypotheses on the impact of daughters ...

Pension entitlements for women significantly lower than for men

Breaking the Silence: The Role of Women's Shelters and Legal Infrastructure in IPV Reporting

Does increased legal infrastructure lead to higher intimate partner violence (IPV) reporting and empower victims to leave abusive relationships? Structural barriers often prevent IPV victims from seeking help, with two-thirds of female victims in Europe neither reporting incidents to the police nor accessing support services. I study the rollout of women’s shelters and the introduction of the 2002...

Special Brown Bag: Moving to Opportunity, Together

Many couples face a trade-off between advancing one spouse’s career or the other’s. We study this trade-off using administrative data from Germany and Sweden. We first conduct an event-study analysis of couples moving across commuting zones and find that relocation increases men’s earnings more than women’s, with strikingly similar patterns in Germany and Sweden. Using a sample of mass layoff...

GENELLI

Gender inequality remains a pressing issue in our society. Women are underrepresented in many decision-making positions and the gender pay gap remains at 16%. Whether or how language contributes to forming and transporting gender stereotypes has sparked intense scientific and public debate. In German, masculine role nouns are still often used in a generic sense to address people of unknown gender ...

Gender gaps in the labour market

This project investigates the underlying causes of gender gaps in the labor market, emphasizing skill mismatches, task divisions, social norms, and implicit gender biases. By employing quasi- and survey-experimental methods with data from Germany and OECD countries, the research examines policies like parental leave and public child care. It explores the effects of these factors on skill...

The Gender Gap in Fair Earnings Increases with Age Due to Higher Age Premium for Men

This study explores how gender and age interact in shaping beliefs about fair pay through a factorial survey experiment conducted with German employees. Respondents evaluated hypothetical worker descriptions varying in age, gender, and earnings. While no gender gap in fair earnings was found for the youngest hypothetical workers, a significant gap favoring men emerged with increasing age. This suggests ...

The Gender Pension Gap Grows the More Children a Woman Has

The gender pension gap, the difference in pension entitlements between men and women, is 32 percent for 60-yearolds according to data from the German Pension Insurance (Deutsche Rentenversicherung). In addition, there is a considerable motherhood pension gap: Statutory pension entitlements for mothers and childless women differ greatly. Pension-related childcare credits, which were introduced in 1986 ...

Despite Rising Shares of Women on Executive And Supervisory Boards, Gender Parity Remains A Far-off Goal

In 2024, the share of women on the top decision-making boards of the largest companies in Germany increased. A solid 19 percent of all executive board members at the 200 largest companies are now women, and almost 26 percent of members at the 40 largest listed companies are women. The financial sector is also catching up in this regard. Moreover, legal requirements, such as the inclusion requirement ...

The Diverging Trends of Male and Female Bottom Earnings in Germany

Men at the bottom quintile of the German male earnings distribution had lower average earnings in 2019 than in 2001. In contrast, female earnings have increased throughout the distribution. What explains these diverging trends and how did they translate into changes in net income? Data from the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) reveal that the drop in bottom male earnings is mostly due to a decrease in work ...