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Share of Women on the Executive Boards of Large Companies Has Increased, but Generally Is at Most One Woman

The number of women serving on the executive boards of large companies in Germany once again increased in 2023: Around 18 percent (153 of 875) of executive board members at the 200 largest companies were women as of late fall 2023, two percentage points higher than in 2022. Thus, growth has slightly picked up again. In some of the groups of companies analyzed, the figure was even higher. Around 23 ...

Women can make a difference in company management but remain under-represented

Wealth Creators or Inheritors? Unpacking the Gender Wealth Gap From Bottom to Top and Young to Old

This paper investigates the gender wealth gap using wealth recorded in the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). Ranking women and men by their individual wealth reveals that the average gender wealth gap is driven by the large gap in the top tail. We find that the gender wealth gap widens during working age and closes during retirement. This is associated with men receiving higher inheritances and inter-vivos ...

The obstinacy of gender stereotypes. Evidence from the Found-in-Translation Task

The pursuit of science (especially exact sciences) is commonly associated with the male gender. This might have a lot of negative consequences, including discrimination and underrepresentation of female researchers at academia. We conduct two experiments with a series of conditions that make it gradually easier to avoid misattribution of gender of a female scholar. In a novel Found-in-Translation...

Beyond Hot Flashes: The Health and Career Cost of Menopause

Menopause marks a crucial juncture in women's lives and careers, coinciding with the peak of their income and working hours trajectory. On average, a third of women encounter severe health problems during this phase, exposing them to the risk of adverse labor market and health outcomes. Leveraging Norwegian registry data, coupled with panel data on doctor visits related to menopausal issues and...

The Judge in the Marriage Bed: The Modernization of the Swiss Marital Law and Female Labour Force Participation

This paper analyses the impact of the modernization of the Swiss marital law in the 1980s on married women's labour force participation in Switzerland. The reform of the law comprised multiple measures to foster the equality between husband and wife within the marriage. The Swiss people voted on the reform in a referendum in 1985, accepting the new marital law. Hence at the time of the vote, it...

Technological Progress, Occupational Structure, and Gender Gaps in the German Labour Market

We analyze if technological progress and the change in the occupational structure have improved women’s position in the labour market. We show that women increasingly work in non-routine manual and in interactive occupations. However, the observed narrowing of the gender wage gap is entirely driven by declining gender wag gaps within, rather than between, occupations. A decomposition exercise reveals ...

Lifting Women Up: Gender Quotas and the Advancement of Women on Corporate Boards

Research Question/Issue The introduction of gender quotas on corporate boards can disrupt the status quo, resulting in externalities that affect women's advancement within the company. This study investigates whether boardroom quotas contribute to promoting women further up the corporate ladder and facilitate access to a broader spectrum of positions. Research Findings/Insights Using legislative changes ...

The Long Way to Gender Equality: Gender Pay Differences in Germany, 1871-2021: halshs-04424048

This paper provides the _rst time series of the gender earnings ratio for the full-time employed workforce in Germany since the 1870s and compares Ger- many's path with the Swedish and U.S. cases. The industrialization period yielded slow advances in economic gender relations due to women's delayed inclusion in the industrial workforce. The _rst half of the 20th century exhib- ited a marked leap. In ...

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...