Do women earn less even as social entrepreneurs?

Saul Estrin, Ute Stephan and Sunčica Vujić ()

Working Papers from University of Antwerp, Faculty of Business and Economics

Abstract: Based upon unique survey data collected using respondent driven sampling methods, we investigate whether there is a gender pay gap among social entrepreneurs in the UK. We find that women as social entrepreneurs earn 29% less than their male colleagues, above the average UK gender pay gap of 19%. We estimate the adjusted pay gap to be about 23% after controlling for a range of demographic, human capital and job characteristics, as well as personal preferences and values. These differences are hard to explain by discrimination since these CEOs set their own pay. Income may not be the only aim in an entrepreneurial career, so we also look at job satisfaction to proxy for non-monetary returns. We find female social entrepreneurs to be more satisfied with their job as a CEO of a social enterprise than their male counterparts. This result holds even when we control for the salary generated through the social enterprise. Our results extend research in labour economics on the gender pay gap as well as entrepreneurship research on women’s entrepreneurship to the novel context of social enterprise. It provides the first evidence for a “contented female social entrepreneur” paradox.

Keywords: Social entrepreneur; Gender pay gap; Social enterprise; Earnings; Job satisfaction (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J28 J31 J71 L32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 50 pages
Date: 2014-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ent, nep-hap, nep-hme, nep-lab and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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https://repository.uantwerpen.be/docman/irua/4b7497/f8f27254.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Do Women Earn Less Even as Social Entrepreneurs? (2014)
Working Paper: Do women earn less even as social entrepreneurs? (2014)
Working Paper: Do Women Earn Less Even as Social Entrepreneurs? (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ant:wpaper:2014027

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