Topic Inequality

Markedly More Women on Executive Boards of Large Companies; Inclusion Requirement Seemingly Already Having an Effect

There was a significant increase in the number of women on executive boards of large companies in Germany from 2020 to 2021 after years of slow progress: In fall 2021, there were 139 women on the executive boards of the 200 largest companies, 38 more than in 2020. This is an increase of a good three percentage points to almost 15 percent, the largest seen since the beginning of the DIW Berlin Women ...

While Gender Quotas for Top Positions in the Private Sector Differ across EU Countries, They Are Effective Overall

This second report in the DIW Berlin Women Executives Barometer 2022 explores the designs and effects of gender quotas across Europe, coming to the conclusion that they are an effective instrument for increasing the share of women in top positions at large companies. Furthermore, the quotas differ greatly between the countries, for example in regard to the number of companies subject to the quota, ...

Social Mobility and Economic Development

We explore the role of social mobility as driver of economic development. First, we draw the geography of intergenerational mobility of education for 52 Latin American regions, as well as its evolution over time. Then, through a novel weighting procedure that considers the aggregate participation of cohorts to the economy in every year, we estimate the effect of changes in mobility on economic...

Gender Pay Gap in a European Comparison: Positive Correlation between the Female Labor Force Participation Rate and the Gender Pay Gap

Public interest in the gender pay gap has risen significantly over the past years in Germany, but the size of the gender pay gap has barely changed. A comparison across European countries shows that a lower female labor force participation rate is associated with a smaller gender pay gap. The gender differences in the characteristics of the labor force, which vary across countries, are one explanation ...

Few Top Positions in Economics Are Held by Women

Momentum in Sight for the Executive Boards of Major German Companies: Editorial

Number of Women on Boards of Large Firms Increasing Slowly; Legal Requirements Could Provide Momentum

The proportion of women on the boards of large companies in Germany continued to increase during 2020. In the fourth quarter of 2020, there were 101 female executive board members in the 200 largest companies, seven more than in 2019. However, growth was slow, as it was in some of the other groups of companies as well: The proportion of women on the executive boards of the top 200 companies (around ...

Gender Diversity Benefits Supervisory Board Work of Many Companies

Over the past years, the proportion of women on the supervisory boards of major companies in Germany has increased. As this second report in the DIW Women Executives Barometer 2021 shows, this has a meaningful, positive impact on the supervisory boards of many companies, and affects interactions between members, discussions, and decision-making. These findings are based on qualitative interviews with ...

Selection into Employment and the Gender Wage Gap across the Distribution and over Time

Using quantile regression methods, this paper analyses the gender wage gap across the wage distribution and over time (1990-2014), while controlling for changing sample selection into full-time employment. Our findings show that the selection-corrected gender wage gap is much larger than the one observed in the data, which is mainly due to large positive selection of women into fulltime employment. ...

Essays on Gender Pay Gaps and Wealth Concentration

Diese Dissertation besteht aus vier unabhängigen Kapiteln. Während sich die ersten drei Kapitel mit unterschiedlichen Gründen für den Gender Pay Gap auseinandersetzen, fokussiert sich das letzte Kapitel auf das obere Ender der Vermögensverteilung. Kapitel 1 befasst sich mit der Frage, warum einige Berufe große und andere nur geringe Gender Pay Gaps aufweisen und, ob dies mit den Berufsmerkmalen zusammenhängt. ...