Undergraduate majors favoured by women pay less 10 years after graduation
02 Dec 2016 Leave a comment
Women Working: What’s the Pill Got to Do With It?
01 Dec 2016 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, discrimination, economic history, economics of education, gender, health economics, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice Tags: contraception, gender gap, gender wage gap
Skill-specific atrophy rates drive the STEM gender gap
08 Nov 2016 Leave a comment
in discrimination, economics of education, gender, human capital, labour economics, minimum wage, occupational choice Tags: gender wage gap, reversing gender gap
Rendall and Rendall (2016) found that women prefer occupations where their skills depreciate slowest when taking time out from motherhood. Verbal and reading skills depreciate at a far slower rate than mathematical and scientific skills so this gives women yet another strong reason to avoid science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) careers.
we show that college educated women avoid occupations requiring significant math skills due to the costly skill atrophy experienced during a career break. In contrast, verbal skills are very robust to career interruptions.
The results support the broadly observed female preference for occupations primarily requiring verbal skills – even though these occupations exhibit lower average wages. Thus, skill-specific atrophy during employment leave and the speed of skill repair upon returning to the labour market are shown to be important factors underpinning women’s occupational outcomes.
Not only do women have vastly superior verbal and reading skills, worth somewhere near 6 to 12 months extra schooling, these skills do not depreciate much during career breaks. Indeed, reading and verbal skills tend to naturally increase with age until your late 60s.
Source: Reading performance (PISA) – International student assessment (PISA) – OECD iLibrary.
Maths skills get rusty if not used while knowledge of computer languages and the like and of specific technologies can be quickly overtaken by events while on maternity leave. Rendall and Rendall (2016) again
… college educated females avoid math-heavy occupations, and pursue verbal-heavy occupations instead. This is due to the high skill atrophy associated with math skills, and the ability of verbal skills to act as “skill insurance” against gaps.
Additionally, for college educated individuals, math is the skill most vulnerable to loss during employment gaps, which also implies a slow rebuilding post-break. In contrast, non-college educated individuals experience a much smaller math skill loss.
Rendall and Rendall’s point about college educated women avoiding maths heavy occupations even if it costs them wages so as to maximise the lifetime income may explain the larger gender wage gap at the top of the income distribution than at the bottom.
At the bottom of the income distribution, skill atrophy do not really matter much. At the top, it do. Women make occupational choices where annual income may be lower but lifetime income may be higher because of the lower rates of skill depreciation when they are out having children.
What people miss about the gender wage gap
22 Sep 2016 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, discrimination, gender, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice Tags: gender wage gap
Pinksourcing With Kristen Bell
21 Sep 2016 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, discrimination, entrepreneurship, gender, labour economics Tags: entrepreneurial alertness, gender wage gap
The gender commuting gap between mothers and fathers
28 Aug 2016 Leave a comment
in discrimination, economics of love and marriage, gender, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, poverty and inequality, transport economics Tags: asymmetric marriage premium, commuting times, compensating differentials, female labour force participation, gender gap, gender wage gap
The first three bars in each cluster of bars are for men. in almost all countries mothers with dependent children spend less time commuting than childless women. This might suggest that working mothers have found workplaces closer to home than women without children. The gender gap in commuting where it is present in the country is larger than the gap between mothers and other women in their commuting time.
Source: OECD Family Database – OECD, Table LMF2.6.A.
Johan Norberg – Nordic Gender Equality
10 Aug 2016 Leave a comment
in discrimination, economics, gender, labour economics Tags: gender wage gap, glass ceiling, Norway, Sweden
World Cup pay gap: Here’s why it’s justified
06 Aug 2016 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, discrimination, gender, labour economics, sports economics Tags: gender wage gap, superstar wages
Is academic philosophy a “safe space” for women?
23 Jul 2016 Leave a comment
in discrimination, economics of education, gender, labour economics, occupational choice Tags: gender wage gap
Wage gaps by gender, race and ethnicity persist in the USA
03 Jul 2016 Leave a comment
in discrimination, economics of education, gender, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, politics - USA Tags: employer discrimination, ethnic wage gap, gender wage gap, racial discrimination, racial wage gap
Gender differences in jobs and occupations since 1960
07 Jun 2016 Leave a comment
in economic history, economics, gender, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice Tags: gender wage gap
The Nordic Gender Equality Paradox
30 May 2016 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, discrimination, gender, labour economics Tags: Finland, gender wage gap, glass ceiling, Norway, Sweden
Bill Allen on the profitability of discrimination against women
26 May 2016 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, discrimination, entrepreneurship, gender, labour economics Tags: employer discrimination, gender wage gap
Source: Bonus Quotation of the Day… – Cafe Hayek from William Allen, The Midnight Economist.
More on the top 1% giving women a pass on the great wage stagnation
23 May 2016 Leave a comment
in discrimination, economic history, economics of media and culture, gender, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, poverty and inequality Tags: gender wage gap, middle class stagnation, reversing gender gap, wage stagnation
Source: Read Online — Visualizing Economics.
Is it merchandising that drives gender bias in Hollywood casting?
17 May 2016 Leave a comment
in discrimination, economics of media and culture, gender, industrial organisation, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, survivor principle Tags: entrepreneurial alertness, gender gap, gender wage gap, Hollywood economics
Iron Man 3 changed the gender of the film’s villain from female to male after pressure from the production company Marvel, which feared toy merchandise would not sell as well.
This is a rather frank admission of what drives gender bias in Hollywood casting decisions. Its customer preferences – customer discrimination. It was not nasty producers and directors choosing not to hire women.
It was producers and directors casting a movie that might sell at the box office given what the box office wants. The great majority of box office sales is outside of the USA and US cultural values, interests and concepts of humour.
Hollywood is a cutthroat market where producers and directors do do whatever it takes to make their movie sell at the box office. But would not last very long if they indulge their personal preferences at the expense of the box office.
Not every movie has the merchandising potential of action films but they still have to pay careful attention to what audiences want to avoid having produced a run of flops and never get financing again.
That is not made any easier by the first law of Hollywood economics, which is nobody knows nothing. Audiences have a constant demand for novelty but they do not know what they want delay see it.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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