The glass ceiling revisited: empirical evidence from the German academic career ladder

Katrin Heinrichs and Hendrik Sonnabend

VfS Annual Conference 2020 (Virtual Conference): Gender Economics from Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association

Abstract: Women are underrepresented in leadership positions - academia is no exception. Using data on careers of doctoral graduates in Germany, we study gender differences in the decision to stay at university as a postdoctoral researcher and in the intention to become a professor. We find that gender gaps related to aiming for a professorship can be fully explained by observable characteristics other than gender. On the contrary, even after adding controls for an array of characteristics relevant to academic careers, we find female graduates to be 5.9 percentage points less likely to hold a postdoctoral position which allows them to qualify for professorship.

Keywords: female labour supply; gender gap; higher education; glass ceiling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I26 J16 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-eur, nep-hrm and nep-sog
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:vfsc20:224594

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